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Read enough historical accounts from non-Western Europeans, and you’ll quickly learn that the culture that founded the United States of America was not exactly the most hygienic. The Japanese talked about this extensively during the first decades of contact with Europeans, as did many other cultures. The English famously believed that baths were the most reliable way to catch a cold and that ailments should first and foremost be solved by bleeding the sufferer.

So, it’s no wonder that in these modern times almost no public American toilet is equipped with a bidet for washing one’s backside.

When you eat barbecue, is cleaning your hands more effictive is you use dry paper towels only, or is it better to wash the sauce off and then dry your hands?

This was a question posed by a podcaster I used to listen to when discussing his life-altering experience with washing out his booty hole after defecating. The question was revelatory for me, having recently returned from India, where squatting to poop and exclusively using water to wash were how people handled number two.

This post is going to be full of TMI moments, so buckle up.

For whatever reason, likely a combo of my diet and microbiome, I’ve traditionally needed a lot of toilet paper to get clean down there. Eating more fiber helps, but I’m usually four or five wipes in before I’m feeling clean; that is, until I started using a bidet in India.

I was astonished by how quickly things were “streak-free” back there, and I’ve never looked back. Well, actually, I always look back…you know what, never mind.

As is often the case when I have these types of life-altering moments, I began to see how abnormal it was for humans to clean themselves the way I had been taught to. Hearing the aforementioned quote brought it all home for me, and I was ready to fully embrace this new way of letting shit go.

Except, I still felt like I needed toilet paper.

When we moved into our new home in Michigan, I was really stoked that the toilet came with a bidet. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear to me still, and despite having wonderful pooping experiences in India (aside from adjusting to new gut microbes), I still hadn’t bought a bidet attachment for the home.

The bathroom with the bidet quickly became my premier pooping palace, and just like when I was overseas, my bootyhole was squeaky clean after every trip. What was sometimes a dozen-wipe ordeal now became a one or two-wipe mini-excursion.

But I was still tied to the toilet paper.

On my most recent trip to India this winter, I had planned to take a roll of toilet paper. As I mentioned, toilet paper is nearly as big a deal there as it is in the States, and the products on offer in India are about the same quality as the stuff I used in elementary school. No toilet paper commercials are touting the softness and quilted nature of the best brands. People don’t have time for that shit.

It was about the second night in Turkey — my stopover with friends before traveling to India — that I realized I hadn’t packed any tissue for my cheeks. Turks are all about the bidet, also, but bath tissue was available.

So, after finishing up at a restaurant on my final day in Ankara, and contemplating what my bathroom experiences might be in the next twenty-four hours, I decided to just handle my shit like a human being.

The first time I reached back there to physically wipe away what remained, I admit, I had to battle a lot of socialized skatalogical programming that told me the hand I was using would never be clean again. This, despite having been wrist-deep in deer and other animal entrails and their contents many times in my life.

I don’t know, that first time in my bootyhole, shit just felt different.

Do you know what your bootyhole actually feels like? I was 42 years old before I found out the details, and the experience was, well, pleasantly (non-sexually) intimate. Butt beyond that, I was sure that my balloon knot was dookie free, and it took far less time to get there than the endless number of wipes it sometimes took.

What about my hand tough?

Many cultures, including folks in India, eat with their hands, or hand rather. One hand, usually the right, is dedicated to feeding oneself, and the other, usually the left, handles the “leftovers” as it were. Not using toilet paper for two weeks helped me get to know my left hand in ways I had never experienced. I’ve always felt a bit bad about the fact that my left hand is not as big, strong, or dexterous as my right. It’s one of the reasons why, as a child, I tried to teach myself to write with my left hand, so it wouldn’t feel less valued. As it turns out, my smaller and relatively more delicate left hand was the perfect tool for the essential job of maintaining good backdoor hygiene.

But what about the fact that using a bidet means you’ve got a wet bootyhole?

In Rajasthan, where temperatures are in the triple digits most of the year, everything dries very quickly. This past winter was cold, so there were a few times I used napkins to dry myself off, but there were many times I simply had to wait a bit for the water to evaporate.

Sewage systems in India and in Turkey are generally not designed to handle the relatively high amounts of toilet tissue that’s flushed in the U.S., which is why in public bathrooms in both countries, there is often a small waste bin to throw away used toilet tissue.

For the entire two weeks I was in India, I left no trace of my daily derrière duties. No sight nor smell was to be had, which, now that I think about it, is delightfully astonishing.

I now have a bidet in the other of our two bathrooms, but I still use toilet paper. If you had asked me before my December trip if I could have gone number two for two whole weeks, without toilet paper, I would have looked at you as if you asked: “Do you think there’s any chance Pete Hegseth doesn’t have a micro penis?” Some shit is just obvious.

I genuinely thought I couldn’t do something so many people do without thinking. Touch my own shit?! Are you crazy?! Feel my own bootyhole?! Why would I ever?!

But that’s just pretentious bullshit I’ve been sold and unthinkingly bought for most of my life. There’s something to be said about proving yourself wrong while also finding a better — and cheaper — way of living.

One of the things not enough people take seriously is washing their hands. We know the benefits of making sure our hands are clean, yet high percentages of people in the U.S. still don’t clean their hands thoroughly enough after going to the bathroom (R).

Let me tell you something, the one thing you make sure you do right after digging around in your bootyhole is making sure your hands are thoroughly washed. I started smelling my hands after my visits to the camode, just to make doubly sure I had done a good job cleaning up back there.

I’m for any moment or practice where I can learn to take myself less seriously, where I can humble myself in a way that removes pretense. The best of those moments I’ve found begin with strong objections that, if I’m open, quickly reveal themselves to be rooted in flimsy cultural relativism and false superiority.

I’m not suggesting that you change the way you poop, and I’m not, despite the jokes, suggesting that people who don’t use a bidet are dirty or nasty. What I’ve written about this week (thank you for sticking around [Ha!] this long) is more about a long and unexpectedly revelatory experience that you can hopefully take something useful from.

It’s all shits and giggles anyway.

Learning to use a bidet is life-changing. The amount of money we’ve saved on not having to buy toilet paper so frequently (mostly because of my peanut butter booty) is worth the wildly inexpensive cost.

This is the bidet I just bought and installed in our second bathroom, and the process couldn’t have been easier. It took me maybe 10 minutes to install, and I love it!

Now, I mentioned the Japanese and their longstanding commitment to impeccable hygiene. On my return flights from India, I had a layover in the Tokyo Haneda Airport and was fortunate enough to spend some time in the ANA lounge.

Japanese toilets are next level!

Calling these a bidet is like calling fillet mignon and potato pave, steak and potatoes. It’s simply not at all the same. The cost to own one of these for yourself is steep, but having a warmed seat and warm water while gently power washing your posterior pucker place is #lifegoals.

The video of my northern Lake Michigan salmon fishing trip is now live. It’s a two-part series, so if you’re hoping for the video version of last week’s newsletter (R), then you’ll have to wait another week. In the meantime, however, check out how this adventure began with some of the best fishing footage I’ve ever recorded.