Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander

Author:Shalom Auslander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

I didn’t solicit foreskin opinions, but they were offered. It didn’t take much:

—Do you know the sex of the baby?

—It’s a boy.

And they’re off.

Our friend from the posh neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights was in favor of circumcision “for, you know, aesthetically,” while my attorney, who is gay, recommended that if we had even the slightest suspicion that our son was homosexual, we just leave the damn thing on.

—They’re very prized in my community, he said.

At least someone was thinking of the boy.

I found myself a week later, back in Craig’s office, sitting across the way from Patricia, a formerly Orthodox, currently Buddhist, macrobiotic, pro-Palestinian, animal-rights-activist art director.

—I can’t believe you’re even considering it, she said.—Why don’t you just cut off his finger or slice off his nose? Stab him—knife him—for God. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?

I was beginning to feel a bit like a foreskin myself.

—Why don’t you just punch him in the face? she suggested as she gathered her papers in an angry pile and started to leave.—Wait eight days, invite the family over, put out some wine and kugel, and just punch him in the fucking face.

A lot like a foreskin. Cut off from my past, uncertain of my future, bloodied, beaten, tossed away. I wondered if there was a place where the foreskins could go, a place where they could live together, peacefully, loved, wanted, a nation of the foreskins, by the foreskins, for the foreskins.

Patricia slammed the door behind her as she left. Craig sat down on the chair across from me.

—Listen, he said.

He took a deep breath and told me that as far as he was concerned, growing up was difficult enough, and that the only reason he had circumcised his own sons was so that they wouldn’t wonder someday why they were different from their dad.

—And that, he said,—seemed like a pretty important reason.

I nodded. I liked the whole selflessness angle, but I sighed and shook my head. The fact was, I said to Craig, if I really wanted to ease my son’s insecurities by making his penis look like mine, I wasn’t going to have to just circumcise him; I was going to have to shave his balls and give him a Prince Albert.

Craig looked at me for a moment before checking his watch.

—I’ve got a ten o’clock, he said.

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