On the circumcision – Gary Shteyngart in The New Yorker:

‘Most poorly performed circumcisions stem from two misjudgments on the part of the circumciser: either too much or too little foreskin is removed. In my case, it was too little (and, one might add, given that I was seven years old instead of the eight days prescribed by the Torah, too late). After the infection had subsided, the shaft of my penis was crowded by a skyline of redundant foreskin that included, on the underside, a thick attachment of skin stretching from the head to the shaft of the genital, a result of improper healing that is called a skin bridge. A small gap could be seen between this skin bridge and the penis proper. In texture and appearance, the bridge reminded me of the Polly-O mozzarella string cheese that got packed in the lunchboxes of my generation. It produced no pain on its own after the infection had died down and the two years of difficult urination were over, but the strangeness of my penile appearance—and the manner in which it was brought about—became lodged in my consciousness. In my novel “Absurdistan,” which was written in the mid-two-thousands, when I was in my early thirties, the hero, Misha Vainberg, is also circumcised under Hasidic auspices and under pressure from his religion-obsessed father. “Eighteen is too old for cutting the dick,” Misha begs the Chabadniks who have driven him to a Brooklyn hospital, but he is told by one of them that “Abraham was ninety-nine when he performed the bris with his own hands!” I had long used humor to articulate the trauma of non-neonatal circumcision, the forcible removal of a part of me that had been intended by nature as a nexus of pleasure. But, looking down at the hair that had wrapped itself around my penile skin bridge in the shape of a gift bow on the morning of August 24, 2020, I knew that my luck had run out and that the forty-year interregnum between the brute pain of the initial procedure and whatever would happen next was over.’

(…)

‘The immigrant children of my fiction had taken charge of their lives, as I had mine. But only fools and Americans think they can outrun the past.’

(…)

‘Several days later, I sought medical attention in a neighboring village. Because of the pandemic, a pleasant middle-aged woman was performing triage outside the doors of the urgent-care facility. When I tried to explain my predicament to her, she said, “Oh, honey, it must hurt so bad to have an ingrown hair in your Gentile region.” If only that region had stayed Gentile. The local urgent-care doctor tried his hand with some forceps but was clearly not an expert at removing tiny hairs wrapped around extraneous pieces of penile skin. I would have to go to the city to seek a specialist.
My primary-care doctor recommended a urologist on the Upper East Side. Like many of the urologists I would subsequently meet, he was middle-aged, Jewish, and possessed of an easy humor. Let’s call him Dr. Funnyman. In fact, the first thing I noticed when I went to see him was a Jewish-humor anthology on his desk. He asked me if I was famous, and I did my customary blush and said no, I certainly didn’t think of myself that way. “You’re not Dr. Shteynshlyuger, the urologist?” he asked. When I informed him that I was Gary Shteyngart, the novelist, he told me he had never heard of me but loved the work of Michael Chabon.’

(…)

‘My gown was lifted and a metal grounding pad was attached to my left thigh with a bandage. Dr. Funnyman said that this would keep me from being electrocuted while I was being cauterized. That sentence did not inspire confidence. I grabbed the nurse’s hand as lidocaine was injected into the shaft of my penis, and she gave me a squeeze ball to pulverize instead. (Later, Dr. Funnyman laughed and said I had been “a lightweight.” He also explained that he was joking about the electrocution.) I could not see what happened next or, mercifully, feel very much, although according to the notes “the distal stump was simply fulgurated using a pinpoint Bovie. The proximal end was resected and then fulgurated giving an excellent cosmetic result.” To “fulgurate,” in medical terms, is to destroy by means of the heat from an electrical current. From my supine perspective, I saw and smelled smoke, pieces of my penis being burned away. After it was over, I examined the result. The skin bridge was no more, which, speaking “cosmetically,” was positive. But parts of the remaining redundant foreskin were inflamed and, along with the termini of the erstwhile skin bridge, covered in what looked like a dense layer of Eastern European soot. Dr. Funnyman told me I would be able to resume normal activities soon, but in the meantime parts of my genital would swell and “look funny” for a week.’

(…)

‘I decided to expand my medical horizons. My primary doctor recommended a specialist in “minor outpatient urological procedures” whom I will call Dr. Neuroma. I visited the doctor’s aerie in the medicinal slab of the Weill Cornell tower on York Avenue. The doctor, younger than Funnyman but not as funny, could not give a full examination, because touching either of the termini of the former skin bridge produced intolerable pain. He ventured an opinion. In all likelihood, I was suffering from a penile neuroma. Some readers may be familiar with Morton’s neuroma, a highly painful malady that often manifests itself between the toes and may make walking difficult. This was that but in the penis. “A tiny nerve gets swollen,” the doctor said. “A nerve was snapped or cut during the surgery, and the proximal end is angry or inflamed or trying to reach for the other end, but there’s no other end to receive it and that may be felt as pain.” In this interpretation, my nerves were a bunch of ragtag troops stranded on a remote island who had not been informed by general staff that the war was over.’

(…)

‘Dr. Neuroma had told me that, when it came to the male genital, MRIs and other modern tools were “low yield,” and that any further surgery might only make matters worse. When I talked to my friend Mary Karr, the poet and memoirist, she was surprised by how few diagnostic tools were available for the penis. “Why can’t they slap it between two pieces of glass?” she asked. “As fond as people are of dick, that I can’t believe.” She was right. It startled me how little literacy my otherwise literate male friends had about the organ. When I mentioned the glans, some responded with a version of “You mean the mushroom part?”’

(…)

‘Male circumcision is an important part of Islam—two-thirds of circumcised men are Muslim—as well as Judaism, though I can speak with a modicum of knowledge only of the faith in which I was brought up. My friend David Fine, the rabbi, has a progressive outlook on many issues, but he is staunch on this subject. He tells me that a man need not be circumcised to be Jewish; in the matrilineal tradition of the religion, a boy born to a Jewish mother is automatically Jewish, and yet, to Fine, circumcision means that “we are God’s partners in creation.” The Talmud specifies that, if a child’s older brothers die of complications from the procedure, the child should be spared circumcision. In “Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?,” Shaye Cohen, quoting Rabbenu Tam, the well-known twelfth-century Talmudist, writes that even “a man who was left uncircumcised out of ‘fear of the pain of circumcision’ . . . is not to be considered an apostate since his ‘heart is directed at heaven.’ ” If adult men may be excused from the procedure because of their fear, what are we to say of an infant about to experience what is likely the greatest pain of his young life? Or of a seven-year-old who wants only to please his father?’

(…)

‘Many people around the world, from parents to legislators, are reconsidering the practice. The parliaments of both Denmark and Iceland have debated banning the procedure, and the proportion of infant boys circumcised in the United States between 1979 and 2010 dropped from sixty-five per cent to fifty-eight, according to the C.D.C. It is possible to envision a near future in which the majority of male American infants begin their lives with their genitalia intact.’ (…)

‘The months passed. I got better, I got worse, I got better. I had seen so many doctors that my urine was now infected with klebsiella, a bacteria commonly found in hospital settings. A nurse who was present during an examination of my genitalia fainted on the spot, which did not improve my hopes for recovery or my self-esteem.’

(…)

‘What am I left with in the end? I hope I will continue to get better, though I doubt I will ever be completely right again. I may have to slather my genital with ointments for the rest of my life. There are new associated complications from the various medications, and the treatment of my post-traumatic stress will continue. Even with excellent insurance, I have spent many thousands of dollars for medical care and will continue to spend more.
While discussing the topic with my friends, I came across four instances of pain and disfigurement as a result of late circumcisions or of surgeries to correct botched childhood circumcisions. In the Philippines. In Canada. In Portland. In a neighboring village.
The man who lives near me, a forty-eight-year-old musician, is the son of Italian farmers who moved to the U.S. They did not speak English, yet were somehow persuaded by American doctors to have their son circumcised, a procedure rarely done in Italy. He remembered, as I did, a period of difficult urination. “I was screaming,” he said, “but the masculine Italian response was just to laugh about it.” A second surgery was performed to correct the first when he was around six years old. He told me that the psychological effects of both surgeries have been lasting: “It’s affected my sexual performance and my experiences around partnering and creating bonds with people.”’

(…)

‘The moon is typically gendered as female, but the sun is all over the place: the male Ra to the ancient Egyptians, the goddess Amaterasu in Japanese mythology. The sun was retreating to make room for the winter night, but I clung to the last bits of warmth. Despite what I held in my hand, I could not assign gender to the setting orb. I felt that, if anything, the Sun was beyond gender, and, in Their divinity and mercy, They would not want me or my brothers to feel this much pain.’

Read the article here.

We might be able to outrun the past, but apparently a botched circumcision at the tender age of seven will hunt forever.
(This piece is the best thing I’ve read by Shteyngart.)

In my novel ‘The Jewish Messiah’ you will read a few chapters about a circumcision as well, delightful chapters to write and read if I may say so, but the suffering of Shteyngart is worse than the suffering of my main character Xavier. At least, the suffering caused by his circumcision.

I’m not sure that we should take this is a sign that circumcision should be outlawed, but it’s clear that the lottery in which we engage on a daily basis has almost nothing to do with justice.

It’s probably not comforting to Shteyngart, but this is really the best penile story I’ve read in ages.