When I moved in with my girlfriend at the beginning of this year, the very first thing I did was buy a bidet. I’d wanted one forever but had never quite felt comfortable ordering one when I lived with housemates. I knew in theory it was totally fine to share a bidet with anyone, obviously, but in practice bringing it up felt overwhelming. What if they didn’t want a bidet? What if the bidet somehow got very dirty and I ended up having to clean someone else’s poop off of it? What if they thought I was ridiculous for wanting a stream of warm, luxurious water to squirt into my butthole after every bathroom experience? I just couldn’t get a bidet when I was living with friends and strangers and potential enemies, aka, housemates.

But when I started to live with a partner (for the very first time!) I realized that the sparkly possibility of owning my own bidet could finally become a reality.

While they’ve been popular outside of the USA for centuries, I can say anecdotally that 2020 was the year all my friends got into bidets. I don’t know if it was lockdown, toilet paper shortages, aggressive Instagram advertising, a rise in anal sex, or some combination of these variables, but suddenly it seemed like every queer I knew owned a bidet and was loving it. I hesitated for a moment, but only a moment.

I, like many queers, have a lot of problems with poop. A bidet — something specifically created to help clean your anus — does seem particularly well suited to our people. I say I have IBS but that’s not a formal diagnosis — it just means I’m sensitive to dairy, had a parasite in 2015 that never really fully resolved, occasionally have to lie in bed not moving at all and trying not to cry because when I shift my body I’m in so much intestinal pain it feels like my very hard and gas-filled stomach might pop open, and I can’t eat cheese on a camping trip because of my aforementioned dairy sensitivity. So like, pretty regular! Just your average hot dyke with self-diagnosed IBS! Nothing to see here!

My girlfriend was delighted when I told her I wanted a bidet, and I ordered one swiftly. I did quite a lot of research into different options but ultimately decided to go with the Tushy toilet attachment. Tushy’s marketing is sleek and it is the bidet of choice amongst Millennial Queers. It also boasts that it’s easy to install, but I wasn’t super worried about that — installing bidets is definitely one of the jobs that falls solidly under My Girlfriend’s Domain in our home. She’s handy and fearless, so I wasn’t concerned about the installation process. I hit “buy” and waited for my butthole cleaning device to arrive.

It did arrive swiftly, in a nondescript slim brown box delivered to our front door. I gleefully told my girlfriend it was here, and she celebrated with me, and then… the bidet sat in our kitchen, in the spot where we leave packages, for weeks. Every few days I’d ask my girlfriend to install the bidet and she’d say yes, of course she would, and then she… wouldn’t.

I have to explain to you, this is very bizarre behavior. My girlfriend is a real go getter. She likes to get things done. Whatever the opposite of procrastinating is, that’s what she likes to do when it comes to household tasks. I’ll suggest we change the sheets at some point over the weekend, and she’s done it at 5:03pm on Friday after work. I’ll ask if she can hang a hook for my plant some time, not urgent, and before I’m finished making the request the hook is in the ceiling. She’s generous and capable and extremely into making me happy, and putting off a household task — especially one that will aid in my comfort when it comes to anal! — is just really unlike her. But I didn’t push it, and I waited patiently for the day she would finally install the bidet.

I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, I started to suspect that maybe something was going on.

“Baby,” I asked tentatively one morning, “do you think you… feel a little intimidated by the bidet?”

She looked sheepish, then nodded.

“Have you been putting off installing the bidet for three months because you’re worried it’s going to be too hard?”

She nodded again.

My girlfriend hates not being good at something, and it dawned on me that she was worried she was going to not be good at installing our bidet, even though the instructions said it was easy. I had ordered the model that allows one to use hot water instead of freezing cold water, and it requires being hooked up to our sink pipe, and the pipe is challenging to get to, and like I said, this whole thing is extremely outside of my job description — so I totally understood being a little bit nervous. I wanted to help.

“Would it be helpful if I cheered you on and gave you a lot of positive reinforcement as you install the bidet?”

“Yes!” she responded, delighted. “That would be very helpful!”

So that’s exactly what we did. My girlfriend, handy dream babe that she is, gathered her tools and her courage and took to the bathroom to install the bidet, and I popped in every so often to praise her and her efforts and ooohhhh and ahhhh over her progress. When she was done she called me to the toilet to try it out, and after the powerful stream of water was done ricocheting off my asshole, I turned the bidet off and gave my girlfriend a standing ovation.

“You’re my dream girl,” I told her. “And this is my dream bidet.”

“Dreams really do come true,” she said.

Just kidding, she didn’t say that. But it’s true, they do!

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