WRITTEN 6/26/12
German courts have banned circumcision of older boys on the grounds that the traditional cutting off of the male foreskin causes the child bodily harm. In babies the healing process takes up to 10 days, but for older boys the scar will remain for months. Jews and Muslims angrily protested such a judgment as an attack on religious freedom.
I was circumcised at birth. My parents were told that the procedure was painless and my penis would be cleaner than someone with a foreskin. I had no choice in this matter. The doctor sliced off my foreskin and that was that.
As a boy we heard the following joke.
A surgeon retires from his long career as a specialist in circumcision. Throughtout his career he has saved hundreds of foreskins as mementos and now wishes to turn them into a souvenir. He takes his specimens to a leathersmith and asks him to make something out of them. A week later the surgeon returns and the leathersmith presents him with a wallet.
“All those foreskins and you only made me a wallet?” exclaims the surgeon.
The leathersmith replies, “Yes, but if you stroke it, it becomes a briefcase.”
None of us who were circumcised found any humor in the joke, because circumcision takes away more than a snip of skin. The total area of skin removed from the penis is about the size of a 3″ X 5″ index card and with this loss of elasticity the skin becomes taut thereby shortening the penis by a 1/2 inch.
Not much doctors say to guarantee cleanliness, except in coitus the phantom nerves of my absent foreskin ask me, “Why?”
The origins of circumcision lay in ancient times. Some scholars of antiquity consider it a rite of passage or religious sacrifice pointing to Egyptian hieroglyphics, although the man in the image looks more like he is being punished for a crime, since his hands are restrained by another man.
In the Victorian era English doctors prescribed the the theory that circumcision would prevent masturbation in young boys. I have disproved that hypothesis thousands of times as a boy and a man without the pleasure of that extra length or sensitive flesh.
My foreskin is gone.
The operation was performed at Boston Lying-In for Women.
It did not accompany me home.
I doubt it was buried with respect.
In fact it might have been used for cosmetics.
Years ago at the Bangkok-Pattaya hospital I looked into the possibility of a foreskin reconstruction. The Thai doctors shook their heads. They were good at transforming men into women or re-attached penis cut off my angry wives, however there was no procedure for replacing my foreskin.
There is no unschlocking the schlong.
And that is the final cut.
