Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The circumcision decision could affect a baby's future sex life.
Sep 11, 2000 | "He'll never get a blow job!" pregnant Abigail fretted, "if we don't circumcise him."
"Fellatio," her husband Kent conceded, "is man's best friend. But why won't my son get sucked if he's whole?"
The Berkeley, Calif., baby shower had disintegrated into yet another debate about circumcision. Every well-wisher on the festive patio knew that neo-natal Zachary already owned 15 stuffed animals, nine Dr. Seuss books and enough green overalls to costume an elf army, but the parents -- like so many others -- hadn't determined yet if the tot would be sporting a foreskin.
"Smegma," Abigail spat out the word, "is gross. Future girlfriends are going to gag if we don't snip him."
"Really?" Kent petitioned the room for support. "Is that true?"
Two women wrinkled their noses and nodded. The remainder said "probably." They hadn't actually licked any floppy fellas, but the elephantine trunks seemed potentially rank.
"Leave his weenie alone," I spoke up. "You're just culturally biased."
"I've been there!" trilled Abigail. "I have tasted uncut men and I've had them wiggle inside me and I'm telling you: It's rude and inferior."
Her slice-happy statements terrified and conflicted me. I'm a hacked-and-bitter hetero who believes "male genital mutilation" should be abolished, but now I was wondering: Are "roundheads" actually yummier? Is my trimmed prick a superior love machine? Multiple reasons are posted in both the pro-circ and anti-circ columns (penile cancer, bloody baby trauma, zipper fodder, infant hygiene, AIDS resistance) but I had never before heard circumcision proposed as a sexual convenience for women.
Returning home, I telephoned Anne O'Leary, my San Francisco singer/dancer pal who has a promiscuous résumé with Teutons and Slavs. (Most Europeans, non-Muslim Asians and Africans, Latin Americans and Pacific Islanders are left unsevered.) She was eager to discuss her encounters with dick hoods: "Foreskin guys are more sensitive," she revealed. "I can't hump on them as hard and my pubic hairs chafe them. Foreskins are also like big tube socks with no elastic and sometimes it gets smelly in the tube-sock wrinkles. Especially with Germans, because they don't consider body odor a turnoff."
Her testimony was not an uncut recommendation. Sheaths are odoriferous, she implied, plus they're whimpering sissies when the pumping gets passionate. What's going on here? Two entirely different copulatory styles? Are Americans, Jews and Muslims pounding away with our antiseptic staffs while the remainder of the planet gingerly strokes a rancid, oily worm?
Cosi Fabian received my next call. She's been a "sacred whore" for 15 years, plying her erotic trade like an ancient Babylonian temple prostitute. (Recently she was featured on a "20/20" episode called "Women of the Night.") "It sounds silly," she admitted, "but I have to ask uncut men what a good touch is because I'm not sure what to do with the long, pointy, hanging thing. Esthetically, I also prefer cut to look at, but that's a shame, really. Nature doesn't make mistakes; my resistance is just fear of the unknown."
Ah, the immigrant foreskin. Animalistic interloper in American bedsheets. Does the untampered organ cause queasy horror in American women, like viewing a phallus for the first time, but more of it? Are flayed penises the preference of cautious, lazy Ms. Americans, because they're familiar? Hm ...
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