Minutiæ

When the St. Regis Paris opens in early 2013, it will boast ameni­ties gar­nered from the last 100 years of five star lux­ury hotels. “Aside from being in one of the great­est cities in the world for food,” says Mar­tin Ulrich, Vice Pres­i­dent of New Oper­a­tions for Star­wood Hotels & Resorts, the par­ent com­pany of St. Regis, “We have gone all around the world and brought the most pre­mier ser­vices to Paris. From Dubai, the exquis­ite lux­ury of the room design. From New York, the grand lobby and expan­sive bar. And from Tokyo, their advanced lava­tory expe­ri­ence.” The St. Regis Paris aims to be the great­est hotel in the world; frankly it may very well be.

This much became clear on a recent press tour. As soon as I walked into the demon­stra­tion room set up inside a ware­house, I was whisked to a world of calm and relax­ation. The air in the room is flown in from the Himalayas, and the room tem­per­a­ture is con­stantly adjusted based on time of day, out­side weather, and the clothes one is wear­ing. The beds are a mix­ture of spring coiled with clay, the sheets are from a 150 year old tex­tile mill in Scot­land, and the mints on the goose feather pil­lows are pre­pared by the in house choco­latier. Yet, for all its lux­u­ries, the most fas­ci­nat­ing part of the room is the restroom.

Upon open­ing the door, there is only a drain, two woven han­dles extend­ing from the ceil­ing and two rub­ber tiles to pre­vent feet move­ment. An inter­com panel allows for the guest to press a but­ton, and a highly trained Japan­ese Fecal Exca­va­tion Crew enters the room. I was delighted by the calm­ing music as the four per­son squad in dark haz­mat suits entered the room. After plac­ing my hands on the han­dles, my pants and under­gar­ments were removed and placed in a secret com­part­ment in the room. Stand­ing naked with my arms and legs out­ward, the crew pro­ceeded to gen­tly ease the feces from my large intes­tine out my anus by rub­bing my stom­ach and using a low-charged elec­tri­cal stim­u­lat­ing wand on my colon. The excre­ment was col­lected in a cus­tomized St.Regis Tyvek medical-grade enve­lope to be sent to the house lab tech­ni­cian for analy­sis. The crew then used a fine spray bot­tle of arc­tic water and wet­ted tow­els (again from Scot­land) to clean my anus, legs and feet of any fecal mater. Finally, with my pants back on, the face­less crew left.

Friends, I felt, for the first time in my life, truly empty. Hav­ing a grown per­son rub down my stom­ach until strong con­tigu­ous tubes of feces dropped from my anus was like noth­ing I had expe­ri­enced since infancy. We spend the shock­ing, prim­i­tive and fright­en­ing expe­ri­ence of using the restroom all alone, and hav­ing a trained crew gave me com­plete plea­sure. Even the phrase “going to the bath­room” sounds as if we are cut­ting our­selves off from the world, and this lux­ury ser­vice brings the world back in. I know that once the St. Regis Paris opens up in early 2013, I plan to spend a lovely evening at one of their two pre­mier hotel restau­rants, and then retire to a suite over­look­ing the Sene, eagerly await­ing the highly trained oper­a­tives to remove the doody from my butt. ✦