WARNING: The following column contains some horrifying information that may not be appropriate for some readers. Hell, it's not appropriate for any readers. It has to do with something very wrong being done to a very personal, very sensitive, very private, very male part of the body. Reading this column may make men scream "GAAAAAAAAAK!" and curl up into a shaking, blubbering ball of frightened testosterone. It may provoke an uncontrollable urge in straight women to become temporarily lesbian. Anne Heche is rumored to have read something similar shortly before she met Ellen Degeneres. So, for the love of Pete, turn the page and read another part of this newspaper, such as that zany Mutts comic strip, for your own damn good. Thank you, and God save the queen (Elton John).
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So, I am minding my business the other day, checking out some various Internet publications in an effort to become a better read, well-rounded person (read: I was procrastinating from doing real work). I happened along Salon.com, a very good Web-based magazine. I poked around the site, and soon a headline caught my eye: "SOME CIRCUMSIZED (sic) MEN TRY TO GROW FORESKIN BACK."
Oh, lord. "What in the goofy world is this about?" I thought.
Here, for your utter terror, is the first five paragraphs from this article, by Susan Skiles Luke (which may be viewed in its entirety at: www.salon.com/sex/wire/2001/01/30/foreskin/print.html). If you are like me, you will get increasingly freaked out the further you read, and will scream "OH MY GOSH!" after the fifth paragraph.
Greg Beirise has never quite forgiven doctors for circumcising him 32 years ago, nor his parents for requesting the procedure.
"It always bothered me," said Beirise, a Web page developer from Chicago. "I just wanted to be whole."
Beirise is included in a group estimated to number several thousand men in the United States and other countries who are trying to take back what is cut away at birth by physicians and "mohels," or those trained to perform the sacred Jewish ceremony.
Brought together mainly over the Internet, these men are young, retired, straight, gay, blue collar, professional, Jew and gentile. They say they are growing back their foreskin, transforming themselves from circumcised to near natural in a few years for better sex, general comfort and emotional "healing."
Beirise has worn a pair of men's tall-size suspenders under his pants for the past four and a half years. The suspenders are attached to various devices -- from first-aid tape to a contraption made of halved plastic Easter eggs and copper wire -- that gently stretch the skin on his penis.
After some heavy medication, I uncurled out of a ball and stopped blubbering. I then realized this article had prompted some serious questions in my mind:
-- How big of a goober (please note I did not use the word "dork" because it would have been just too ironic) must this Greg Beirise fellow be in order to not feel "whole" -- and hold a grudge against his parents -- because, to use the proper terminology, his little soldier is missing his helmet?
-- "Emotional healing?"
-- Will I ever again be able to look at plastic Easter eggs in the same way?
-- Wouldn't a man who is fairly young and single -- and I have to assume that Mr. Beirise is single here based simply on his gooberness quotient -- have his dating life significantly curtailed by wearing such a contraption?
-- How is it possible to "GENTLY STRETCH" that part of one's body? I do not believe this is, in any way, shape or form, something that can happen in a gentle fashion, I am sorry.
People point to crime rates (even though they're down), a lack of morals (even though the world, in some ways, is a more moral place than ever) and George W. Bush being in the White House (um, OK, you got me there) as signs that the world is, as they say, "going to hell in a plastic Easter egg with suspenders and surgical tape attached." I, however, point to people like Greg Beirise -- who, by the way, call themselves "tuggers" -- as a sign that there is a lot of MESSED UP stuff happening on this planet.
Well, if you'll excuse me, the medication is wearing off, and I think I need to go curl up into a ball again. Commence blubbering ...
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who holds no grudges against his parents for things they may or may not have done to him 26 years ago. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and a column archive may be viewed at www.jimmyboegle.com.