ass-wiping challenge for chem students

I'm sitting on the toilet, wiping my ass, when it occurs to me: The Mini Bidet.

A bidet is France's dignified response to the problem of underwear streaks: use water, soap, and fingers to wipe your asshole perfectly clean. Got shitty fingers from that process? Just wash 'em in the sink! (Be sure to wash the hot/cold knobs, too, to avoid getting fecal bacteria all over everything.)

Fortunately or unfortunately, bidets never caught on in the US. We're a manly culture that has chosen a grin-and-bear-it approach to underwear streakage. I sometimes try to create a mini-bidet by wetting my toilet tissue before wiping, but in most cases the tissue, once saturated, simply isn't tough enough to withstand more than one wipe: it disintegrates in my fingers, which is a very unpleasant feeling.

Have you ever done the naughty thing and wiped with a paper towel, though? Paper towels are amazing—they're tough and absorbent, and they don't break down when you wet them. Wiping your ass with a wet paper towel is about as close to divine bliss as you can get. The major problem, though, is that paper towels can clog your toilet's pipe because, as I mentioned, they don't break down. A secondary problem is that, given how tough paper towels are, they can chafe your asshole if you wipe too often with them. (Yeah, yeah—I was once naughty several times. Sue me.)

So the challenge I offer to any chem-minded inventors out there is this: create toilet tissue that (1) is as tough and absorbent as a paper towel, (2) is as smooth as regular toilet tissue so that it doesn't tear up your tender asshole after a dozen sessions in the bathroom, and (3) disintegrates thirty seconds after being saturated—surely enough time to get a good bit of wiping done. Such a tissue can be soaked, used like a paper towel, then thrown into the toilet bowl with no fear of clogging, thanks to the delayed-disintegration property.

Can this become a thing?

UPDATE: my brother David texts that my search for the perfect wet wipe is over. Let us all bow down before... DUDE WIPES.


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