To wonder how you actually use a bidet?

[Bearbehind]

I can honestly say I have never used a bidet and it's not really the kind of thing you see other people using and learn from them, so how do you actually use one?

When I was about four and had never seen one, on a visit to one of my mum's friends, I was having a look round her bathroom and turned on the taps of her bidet. Cue a faceful of freezing water and hysterical screams. Have never fancied one much after this terrible trauma :o

PS how do you stop the water going everywhere if your legs are meant to be akimbo?

well obviously men can use them, but i was always brought up to believe they were primarily for lady parts.

Now I'm proper confused because if we are only holiday and there's one in the hotel room my DH uses it (cos it's wet if I go in afterwards and the 'arse' towel is crumpled.)

What in Gods name can he be doing then?

Also, on the subject of foreign toilets WTF do you do with those shower heads in some toilet cubicles that only have a lav and no bidet?

sorry to disagree with MrsKoala, headlesslady, but it is very common for men to use it.

Not to mention the Arab world where toilet paper is much frowned upon.

OK. That clears it up.

Well, actually it doesn't, really

if you have taps and a plug then you run it as you would a bath then splash the water up. If you have a hose you point it at your parts. If you have a fountain you position your parts above the fountain and let it spray up. You are sitting with your legs akimbo btw. Not standing hovering above.

X-post.

Controversy reigns!

Understand having them at home/hotels, but have been to several restaurants in Europe where they have them. Now that confuses me, do the locals take a 'bottom towel' out with them in their handbags??!! What would a man do - have it hanging out of his back pocket?

Yes, redundant - i didn't think about other countries. My Italian friends say only the ladies use them there, and that was my understanding in the uk where we have other methods for cleaning our ring piece. I don't think i'd fancy washing my byjingo in there after DH had been using it to get rid of his clinkers!

MrsKoala, I'm impressed and at your mastery of obscure yet unmistakably scatological/anatomical language in that last post, and the sheer amount of terms you managed to squeeze in.

Sheer NUMBER of terms, not amount!

my ambition is to write for the Profanasaurus

What they are is a complete pain if you have toddlers. All my four have found them irresisitable and made the fountains soak themselves and the bathrooms . Our bidets have three taps each ; hot ,cold ( which is scalding in the Middle East summer) and the middle one has a little arrow controlling the fountain height. If you are even in the Ritz Carlton in Bahrain they have the swishest loos ever. They have a little button panel on the wall
which you can select front or back washing , jet level, temperature and even drying heat .

So you sit on the rim, not in it? Isn't that cold? The one we ripped out when we replaced the bathroom was burgundy. It had a plug, but the taps didn't work so gave no clue as to what went on.

In the 80's my friends had them in their bathrooms and were equally perplexed by the strange sink. We used it as sindy's swimming pool. Seemed to work.

No that long ago some (much older) friends of mine bought a new house and the husband was showing me round, he pointed to the bathroom and said he'd had a bidet installed as his wife liked to use it. I was

I don't understand how you get the friction required to wash a grubby bunghole. A rinse is neither here nor there but would be very soothing on piles.

I still don't understand how you don't get the tap up your arse, or fall in, or get water all over.

I just still don't get how it works but I think it's hysterical that it is so shrouded in mystery!

I used the hotel one to wash my arse and fanny and one drunk night to have an orgasm.

yes, your thigh on the rim and your myfanwy over the middle. you don't get a tap up your arse because you face the taps.

We have a bidet - it's avocado and was already in the house when we bought it. We keep the kids bath toys in it or, predictably, wash feet in it. ?working class emoticon?

Okay bearbehind, stop thinking of it like a toilet. You do not sit on it like that. Using your toilet as a practice bidet walk towards it. Do not turn around. When your knees touch the edge of the rim straddle the loo, still facing it. sit on the seat, facing the back, knees either side of the cistern. Bum on the edge of the front of the loo and thighs along the sides of the seat. The taps would be where the cistern is and a fountain would squirt up your flu. Does that make sense?

I'm a bit about the logistics, do you do a kind of pooey bunny hop from the loo to the bidet and wash off the sticky bits?

Also, what happens when you want to dry off, if you stand up and your jeans are round your ankles they will get all wet as the water runs down you legs won't it?

We don't have a bidet but DH lived in Germany for a bit and has just done a mime in the middle of the living room to try to show me (including sound effects) but I'm non the wiser.

nope, still not getting it MrsK. Gawd I am being thick.

The fountain, does it squirt up, emerge from, if you will, the front edge of the bidet what you sit on, or from the back what you look at?

Yeah, what Fifi said too

I've always wondered how you're supposed to use these things and what they're actually FOR too.
This thread has been (sort of) enlightening. or confusing
Someone said it can be used for wiping arses. Or washing lettuce. Where's the (boak) emoticon when you need it?!
I'd certainly think twice about accepting an impromptu lunch round at their house....

Sorry mrsK I'm still not getting it.

I can see how your approach works, but that washes your fanjo and if a man used it that way round he'd have dangly obstructions restricting access to his arse so if Arabs use it instead of loo roll they must sit on it the same way round a a loo surely?