A Return to the Powder Room

I knew that Muslims had to pray five times a day. However, what I didn’t know is that before each call to prayer there is something called Wudhu. This is the term used for the act of cleaning your hands, face, and feet before beginning your prayer. In addition to this, the average person in Indonesia takes 2-3 baths a day [I only take one, but please keep that under your hat. I can’t help it. I have a very strained relationship with both my bathroom and my water supply that the giant spider I found hanging out in my toilet bowl last night certainly did nothing to improve. As a result, I try to take 100% of my showers at the hotel gym and keep the AC up high at home to avoid sweating.]. So, yes, I would say that I do not really doubt the standards of anyone's personal hygiene here. However, I still have some trouble with the bathroom hose.

I had heard of the hose/water method before I coming to Samarinda. At the beginning of one of Jack Kerouac’s books he spends a few pages on it. I think it was in either Desolation Angels or Dharma Bums where he describes the irony of the fact that the squares think all of the beatniks are dirty, but in reality they are far cleaner because they use soap and water instead of TP in the bathroom. When I think of beatniks I think of "Howl", jugs of wine, and turtlenecks. I had no idea they were anti-TP before the Kerouac phase of my early 20s.

It’s not like I haven’t tried it out for myself. I have been caught a few times without my tissue pack. I can’t say it’s terrible, but it is weird. I mean, I’m a novice. I have so many questions about this hose in the bathroom thing. Mainly, how close is too close? How far is too far away? How do you strike that delicate balance between keeping a hose used by countless strangers at a hygienic distance from your person while having it close enough to ensure the cleanliness of your unmentionables? I’m not sure I’m ready to for this. I’m not sure I’m even qualified to make these decisions.

There is another question that has been plaguing me since I arrived: Why doesn’t everybody have wet spots on their butts? I can’t figure it out. If everybody is using this hose method and using nothing to dry off afterwards, where are the wet spots? I don’t know. My friend Karen and I have had several long conversations about this and have come up with nothing. We have agreed it is simply a mystery we cannot figure out. Have the Indonesians stolen a page from the Mormon handbook and devised some sort of special underpants that focus on extreme exorbancy? Does the moisture evaporate in the intense heat? Karen and I have come to no definitive conclusions.

Perhaps this is why I didn’t like Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert was obsessed with the meaning of life, the existence of God, her place in this vast and confusing universe. Those are some pretty deep questions. I, on the other hand, seem to spend my time contemplating wet spots and butts. Luckily, I have little to no desire to go to India to sit in a cave or have crying jags that last four hours at a time. In the end, I am probably better off thinking about wet spots instead of the meaning of life. At the very least it definitely makes me a lot less weepy. I will leave that other more perplexing job to philosophers and college students who have way to much time on their hands.