French Toilets
These were not designed with user interface in mind. Had they been invented after the turn of the nineteenth century, their creator would have been institutionalized for not realizing the gravity of his failure. To begin with, J, upon seeing her first French toilet, shrugged and said “like India.”
Whoever says that the French nation is chic has never gone to take a dump there. Imagine all those beautiful, graceful, immaculately dressed, heartless French women, cigarette in hand, red lipstick on the butt, smoke spinning up into the ceiling fan above, squatting over a hole in the ground to do a shit.
That’s right, a hole in the ground. This water-filled, four-inch-wide hole is normally in the center of a white ceramic bowl adorned with two sticky, dirty foot rests, each about a foot in front of the hole, and just over a foot apart.
The idea is that if you need to go for a piss you should aim for the smallish area between the two rests and into the hole, and if you need to do something a little smellier it’s time to drop your pants and squat.
But the dropping of pants is not so easy, really. Due to the fact that the floor upon which you stand is part of the toilet bowl itself, the dropping of pants really means the hitching up of the legs beforehand (if you’re wearing baggy clothing), until you are essentially wearing a trouser belt around your knees. However, if you can manage to squat in this position, the next effort is to lean far enough backwards so that your anus is positioned well enough over the hole. Why they should chose to put the hole so far back is beyond me. In this situation I chose to use the wall behind me for support, also to relieve some of the muscles otherwise blocking the free release of solids.
And when you are ready, you shit. Your anus puckers, your bowels release, and onwards flows the build-up of croissants, croque-monsieurs, and espresso biscuits. However, as your innards depressurize the seal on your bladder also begins to weaken. As everybody knows, it is particularly difficult to avoid doing a “number one” during a “number two,” even if you hadn’t thought you’d need to. For the next few seconds you have to work out a way of keeping one muscle tight while relaxing the other. I preferred under this situation to stuff my penis in between my thighs, so as to avoid any unexpected leaks. This is also a fairly practical method as after you have finished your poo, and completed the balancing act of wiping, you can use the pee to wash any mistakes that the flush can’t reach.
Mistakes. On our little trip we talked of two. My first potty time was smooth sailing. Plop, plop, plop, and flush. Had I been a cheeky Parisian toddler (of which there are many) I would have stood to the applause and beaming eyes of a proud mother happy in the knowledge that never again will she need to wash extensive stains off my clothing. However, my second attempt was a little more difficult, being made up not of solids, but of a liquid and gassy blend from eating very rich food. The first drips hit the rim, but then a sudden, uninvited wet fart sprayed an unbroken circle — roughly the size of a banana and Nutella Crepe — up and over the back of the basin, onto the flush head, and the floor behind. I think a little also went on the white-tiled wall. Within a minute I was standing to observe and reflect on my work. My white trainers, thankfully, were untouched. However, the room was less lucky, and I had only a half-full bladder.
Coming down the following morning I noticed the stain had not moved, and I blushed as I passed the cleaning lady on the stairs. N also had a little mistake, aiming a little too far in front of the hole. I attribute this to his lack of any belly to counterbalance his squat, meaning he couldn’t leverage his butt far enough over the hole. He left a large pile a couple of inches in front, and decided to use the toilet brush to shove it all the way in. He also flushed several times.
We were in Paris for only one complete day, and we made two stories out of pooing there. We were also, for the most part, sober. I can only imagine what the several million drunk tourists who visit Paris every year achieve. J, to her credit — rather than risking the ignominy of being completely French, and even though she had spent three months in India — decided to wait until the Eurostar.
American 1, Europeans 0, Paris -2.
Who would have thought I’d long for an English toilet?
