(not my work - from circfanuk on tumblr)
Matt was seven when his mother caught him fingering his penis erotically the first time. Her efforts to correct him over the years had failed, and now that he was 20, and a sophomore in college, she was horrified to see that he was still at it. Normally, he pulled his foreskin back to wash while taking his bath, but this didn’t produce erection often. Now, she stood outside his room, peering through the crack in the doorway as he lightly stimulated his fully grown penis to erection, then began moving the supple skin sleeve up and down the purple bell at the end of it. This produced obvious pleasure, and he continued sliding his foreskin rhythmically, enjoying the sensation as he lay naked on his bed. His mother watched and listened as he brought himself to climax, groaning in obvious pleasure as he spurted his thick white jets into a wad of Kleenex.
Matt had not been circumcised at birth, as all the other boys in town had been, because he’d been born prematurely. This caused his parents anxiety, because they feared that the foreskin would cause him to masturbate, something forbidden by their religion. Their family doctor at the time reassured them, saying that if they just taught him to keep his penis clean, his attention wouldn’t be drawn to it and he wouldn’t masturbate.
Matt’s father had been circumcised at birth, because of family tradition, and it bothered him a lot that his son had a foreskin while he did not. Matt’s mother had never before seen a penis that had not had its foreskin removed, and she thought it looked funny with the thick wrinkled skin hiding and covering the head entirely. She’d been brought up to think that a penis with a surgical scar ring and the bell at the end fully exposed was normal.
Now she confronted her son:
“Didn’t I tell you that if you continued playing with it, we’d have the end cut off?”
Matt jumped, shocked at having been caught at his favorite pastime. He turned over, buried his head in his pillow, and eventually his mother left. That evening, she discussed the incident with her husband, who was also concerned that Matt would become a habitual masturbator, in violation of their religious commandments.
“I don’t know if it’s an irritation, but he was playing with his penis this afternoon” she began.
“Irritation, or whatever, there’s something wrong with his penis,” replied his father. “It’s not normal to have that skin on it, and he’s been doing this self-abuse or years. I think you ought to make an appointment with the doctor to have this taken care of. One way or another, we’ve got to teach him to stop his self-abuse.”
“Last time the doctor examined him, a couple of years ago, she mentioned that it would be a good idea to circumcise him. She thought his skin was much too long and this would cause him problems. She thought he should at least have the skin cut back a little.”
“Well, she’s right, but he should have all that skin removed, like I did. I have no problems with my penis, and I’m glad I was circumcised at birth. So were my brothers. My father and grandfather were too. My cousins were circumcised when they were born, just like me. Nobody in my family has foreskin. I always thought he should have been done as a baby, as soon as he was strong enough.”
“When he was born, the doctor thought he might not tolerate the anesthetic,” his mother replied.
“He’s old enough now, for sure. Call the doctor and get it done this week. He’ll suffer the consequences of not having enough self-control.” Next day, Matt’s mother telephoned Doctor Flora Jamison, their family doctor, explaining that they’d decided to go along with her advice and have Matt circumcised, not mentioning that Matt was being punished. Doctor Jamison cautioned her not to tell Matt about the operation, instead telling him that he was visiting the doctor for an examination. She explained that it was best if they didn’t know about it until they came out of the anesthetic because the thought of a blade slicing into the penis was sure to produce intense anxiety in any male, even one who was old enough to attend college.
Two days later Matt and his mother appeared at Doctor Jamison’s office, where she would perform the outpatient surgery. The doctor whispered to his mother that he would be put to sleep for his little operation, and that she could stay and watch if she wished. Doctor Jamison ushered Matt and his mother into the examining room where she performed minor surgery, and told Matt to remove all his clothing.
Matt did as he was told, and soon was lying naked on the cold padded table, his large pointy penis lying flat on his stomach, cushioned by his thick pubic bush. The outline of the big bell shaped end was clearly visible through his long tapering foreskin. The doctor filled a syringe with liquid from a small bottle.
“I’m going to give you a multi-vitamin shot,” she said as she swabbed his arm with alcohol. She jabbed the needle into his arm and pressed the plunger. “This is a shot of Versed,” she whispered to his mother. This is to keep him calm while we administer the anesthetic.“
Matt didn’t hear the words but the whispering seemed ominous to him. Three nurses entered the room and began to strap him to the examining table. As she fastened the last strap, one said to another, loudly enough for Matt to hear: “This is the third circumcision this week.”
Matt knew about circumcision, because he’d heard it discussed between the adults in his family, and he and the neighboring boys had compared their equipment as they’d been growing up. In the locker room at college, he’d seen that his penis was the only one with a long pointy foreskin covering the big purple tip. The other boys all had thick brown rings of scar tissue on their shafts, evidence of their neonatal circumcisions. He had become aware of the differences between the type with the blunt bell exposed and his tapered model that hid the bell under a pointy foreskin. He was comfortable with his intact penis because at heart he was a nonconformist, and was even happy that he had something no other boy he knew had. His long thick foreskin had allowed him delicious and sensual pleasure during his masturbation sessions, something circumcised males would never know.
Because he’d noted the thick brown scar rings on other boys’ penises, he understood that circumcision meant surgically removing the foreskin from his penis, and began crying and screaming: “NO! I don’t want to be circumcised! Don’t cut me!” The thought of having a knife cutting into the tender flesh of his penis terrified him. The adrenaline rush overcame the effect of the sedative and he struggled to get off the table, but the tight straps restrained him. His eyes were wide with raw fear as he realized the extent of the deception that had been practiced on him, and that he was about to lose forever his precious foreskin.
“Let’s put him under, fast!” ordered the doctor, annoyed that Matt was carrying on about his imminent surgery, and she was eager to get it over with.
The anesthesia nurse clamped the black mask down tightly on his face, muffling his cries. The pungent flow of ether and oxygen made him choke and hold his breath for a moment, then he resumed howling, crying, and screaming as he struggled against the tight straps. His mother looked distressed, and Doctor Jamison reassured her:
“Don’t worry about his struggling. It’s good when they cry and scream like that because they breathe harder and inhale the gas faster than if they hold their breaths,” the doctor told his mother. “He’ll go under more quickly now.” Matt’s eyelids were already fluttering and his cries weren’t as loud as before, becoming incoherent as the anesthetic hit his brain, dulling his consciousness.
“See? He’s slipping under already. Another minute and he’ll be out cold, then we’ll be able to proceed.” Matt’s eyes closed and he stopped crying as the acrid fumes filled his lungs, bringing blessed relief from his intense fear as the chemical annihilated his consciousness. One nurse anointed his groin with shaving cream, and carefully shaved his pubic hairs with a straight razor. The other wiped his penis with orange disinfectant, then draped his body with a surgical sheet with a hole at the center. She grasped the five-inch penis by the long nippled foreskin and pulled it through the hole.
“Now we can proceed. You can stay and watch,” the doctor told Matt’s mother. “He’s totally under and won’t feel a thing. If he’d been circumcised as a baby, there would have been no anesthetic because a baby’s system is too delicate to tolerate it, and he would have felt it. We would have tied him down so he couldn’t move as we performed the circumcision. Believe me, it’s very painful for a baby, but they don’t remember.”
“I’m glad he won﹀ feel the pain,” his mother said. “I wouldn’t be able to watch it hurt him.”
“I wouldn’t let you watch if he weren’t anesthetized. It’s hard for us to take, listening to babies screaming when we cut them, and it would be even worse for parents. However, he’s completely under now, and all he’ll remember is being put to sleep. Now let’s see how we’re going to do this. Do you have any preference, a tight cut to remove all the foreskin, or should I leave a little slack?”
“My husband and I hadn’t discussed it,” his mother replied. “I know my husband’s cut pretty tight, as he has no slack at all in his skin. All of the neighborhood boys I’d seen through the years are the same way.”
“That’s the way most parents want it, anyway,” replied the doctor. “They’re used to seeing a penis that’s neatly cut, so that the glans stands out at the end. It’s better that way, as well. If I left a bit of slack, it might grow to the head of his penis during healing, and I’d have to cut it loose. That would mean another small operation, and more anxiety for Matt. It’s also easier to keep clean if there’s no slack. Just wash it like any other part of the body.”
“I guess you’re going to have to remove a lot of skin, won’t you? I know it was hard to pull all that skin back when I washed him as a child.”
“Yes, he has what we call an `elephant’s trunk’ foreskin, much more than he needs and much more than most boys are born with. The normal foreskin just covers the head, but his skin extends far beyond the glans, forming that long nipple you see. I’m surprised you were able retract it at all because it’s so long and tight.”
“It always was hard to hold it back. I’d have to grab it hard with one hand, and use the washcloth with the other hand. It always wanted to slide forward again.”
“Well, he won’t have that problem anymore. Anyway, as we are going to operate, we might as well do a complete job. Oh, one more thing. Did he have trouble urinating through that tight skin?”
“Sometimes when he was young the opening would be so tight his skin would swell up like a balloon. The pee would just dribble out the end. He’s still dribbling a bit. That’s why I made him sit down to pee. Otherwise, it would go all over the floor and his clothing. My husband never has that trouble because he has no skin over the end.”
“That can be a problem too, if he can’t retract it during urination. The tight foreskin deflects the stream, and he dribbles all over his clothing. Little boys often dribble before they’re circumcised. Even some adult males who have not been circumcised dribble.”
“I noticed some of the pee stays trapped inside his skin, and his shorts were always stained yellow in front. Even now, I still see that yellow stain most of the time.”
“That too. The tight foreskin traps urine and his penis can become smelly with stale urine. That can cause irritation, which is why a boy who hasn﹀ been circumcised often grabs at his penis. It itches and burns, and is very uncomfortable. Sometimes, if he doesn’t clean himself, an infection can result. I’ve had to circumcise many boys because of infection before I moved here. I used to practice in a little hillbilly town where they hadn’t learned to have their boys circumcised at birth. I examined a lot of boys with dirty penises because they hadn’t been taught how to wash, and some were infected as well. When I told their parents about circumcision, they were happy to let me perform the surgery on their boys. In fact, I personally circumcised almost all the boys in that town, once the word spread.”
“You mean you did them as babies and older too?”
“Sure. That was a regular part of my practice. Whenever I delivered a baby boy, I urged the parents to let me circumcise him. At that time, I delivered many babies at home, and did the circumcisions on the kitchen table. Often, they’d bring his older brothers to me for circumcision in the office once they saw how easy it was to care for the baby’s circumcised penis. I even circumcised some of the fathers.”
“You did a lot of circumcisions, then?”
“Oh, yes. I did them in the office and at their homes, when I made house calls. Once I made a house call to circumcise four older boys, and I did them all on the kitchen table too, where I’d circumcised their new baby brother the week before. All I had was a can of ether and a gauze pad to knock them out. The oldest was 21, older than your son, but his parents had decided he needed circumcision too, as a precaution. His father wasn’t circumcised, but I think he was too chicken to have it done. He made all his boys go through it, though. Now let’s look closer at Matt’s foreskin.” Doctor Jamison picked up the large penis in her gloved hand and examined it. She stretched the long tight foreskin back to expose the purple bell at the end.
“He’s got a large glans, that’s the head of the penis. If we left his foreskin covering it, it would become harder to slide the foreskin back during erection. Eventually, it would become so tight that the head would be trapped inside, and that would present a serious hygiene problem. Sex would be difficult for him if the head couldn’t come out of the skin. At least, his penis doesn’t smell as bad as some that I’ve circumcised. That 21 year old hillbilly I circumcised never washed, I think, and his foreskin smelled rank.”
“I’ve heard some of my girl-friends say they wouldn’t have sex with a man who wasn’t circumcised.”
“Most women prefer the circumcised penis because it’s cleaner. With a foreskin, there’s always an odor of sweat and other secretions inside the excess skin, and no woman would perform oral sex on an uncircumcised penis. Even Matt’s has a slight odor to it.”
“One friend of mine is married to a man who wasn’t circumcised, and she said her husband always finishes too soon during sex, before he satisfies her.”
“That’s another excellent reason for removing the foreskin. The foreskin keeps the glans moist and hyper-sensitive, which causes premature ejaculation. It also contains a lot of erotic nerve endings, and these also add to the man’s arousal. Once I remove Matt’s foreskin, his glans will be always exposed, and it’ll dry out and become less sensitive. I’ll remove a lot of skin, and the nerve endings the skin contains, as well. That will make his penis less sensitive, and when he gets married he’ll be able to last until his wife has her orgasm. Now I’m going to mark the line of the cut.” The doctor pushed Matt’s long foreskin forward to cover the purple bell and took a marking pen. She marked a line behind the rim, whose outline was clearly visible through the covering skin.
“Now to stretch the skin out for the first cut.” She grasped the end of the foreskin with a clamp like a pair of locking pliers and stretched it out. She placed another clamp on the foreskin just ahead of where the end of the head was visible, and locked the clamp tightly.
“Now we wait for a couple of minutes while the clamp cuts off the blood supply. Any other questions while we’re waiting?”
“Yes. How long will it take to heal?”
“For his age, a week or two. It’ll be completely healed in two weeks at most. Meanwhile, you’ll have to change the bandage every day. Or he’ll have to do it.”
“Will the bandage stick to the cut? If so, how do I remove it without hurting him?”
“The bandage I’ll put on will be a strip of gauze with vaseline to keep the gauze from sticking. This should come off easily. If any scab makes it stick to the incision, just have him sit in warm water until the scab softens, about 15 minutes. Then it’ll come off easily.”
“How soon will his penis be less sensitive? I’m really concerned with that because I noticed him playing with it the other day.”
“The excess skin and all its nerve endings will be gone immediately as soon as I make the incision. Anyway, his penis will be too sore to play with it while it’s healing. Then, it’ll take a few weeks for the glans to dry out and the sensitivity to diminish. You can help this along by soaking it in 91 percent alcohol every time you change the bandage. The alcohol will dry out the tissues quickly, and the glans will become less sensitive. In fact, that’s what I recommend to males circumcised later in life and who haven﹀ been desensitized enough by the operation. With a baby, the glans begins to dry out from the day they’re circumcised, but boys and men circumcised as adolescents or adults retain a lot of sensitivity. As he’s 20, simply removing the skin won’t be enough, I think. Usually, bathing the glans in alcohol once a day for a week or two dulls the sensitivity enough.”
“But won﹀ the alcohol sting?”
“Oh, yes, it stings, but a lot less than being circumcised without anesthetic. That really stings them!,” the doctor chuckled. “Now I’ll sever the foreskin.” The doctor picked up a scalpel and ran the sharp blade along the front edge of the instrument clamping Matt’s foreskin, severing it in one stroke. She dropped the bulky excess foreskin into a stainless steel tray. Removing the clamp, she watched the remaining shaft skin slide back behind the rim of the bell.
“See all that skin I removed? That was only the first step,” she pointed out to Matts’ mother. “See the thin transparent tissue still covering most of the glans? That’s the foreskin’s inner lining, and it contains a lot of nerve endings as well. Now I’ll remove that.” With a small pair of scissors, she slit the skin down the top until she reached the base of the bell end, then cut around the shaft behind the ridge until she’d removed the excess tissue. She lifted Matt’s penis to show the underside to his mother. Under the glans, there was a large triangular groove where the two halves of the corona met.
“See the underside, where that thick strip of skin fills the groove where the two halves of the glans meet? That’s the frenulum, and it’s one of the most sensitive parts of the penis. Removing that will complete the circumcision, and make his penis less sensitive.” Again using the small scissors, the doctor cut away the thick strip of skin, leaving the groove looking excavated. There was bleeding from the cut capillaries.
“Now to take care of the bleeders with the electro cautery.” She applied the probe of the electro cautery to the bleeding spots, and Matt’s mother heard the sizzle as the small blood vessels heated and coagulated.
“The next step is suturing. Baby boys don’t need sutures, but on an adult, the penis is larger, and sutures are necessary.” The doctor picked up a small curved needle with black suture material hanging from it, and began attaching the cut edges together. After each suture, she tied a knot and cut the suture material.
“I’m using interrupted sutures, not leaving them tied together. In case of erection, a solid line of sutures would strangle the penis. Here, they’ll just hold the edge of the incision together.”
“When can they come out?”
“In about a week. I’ll have you come in for the first post-operative check tomorrow, then a week from now.” It took another ten minutes to finish the suturing, and then the doctor stepped back from the table and nodded to the nurse, who removed the mask from Matt’s face. The nurse then wrapped a strip of vaseline gauze around the cut and taped it in place. The doctor picked up another syringe and made several injections around the base of Matt’s penis.
“That’s local anesthetic, to keep it numb for about 12 hours. Otherwise, he’d be very sore when he wakes up. When it wears off, he’ll be sore, but by then the healing will have begun.”
“That’s it? Can I take him home now?”
“He’ll be groggy for the rest of the day. Take him home and put him to bed, and call me if there’s any problem. If he hasn’t urinated in six hours, just pour some warm water on his penis to start the flow.” Matt’s mother helped the nurse dress him, and they left.
Once she’d driven him home, his mother helped him to the bathroom, because he had to urinate, and she watched happily as the urine stream flowed neatly from Matt’s freshly circumcised penis without the need for warm water to stimulate him. When her husband arrived from work, they went into Matt’s bedroom to inspect the results.
“Looks good,” he commented, “although I can’t see much with that bandage on.”
“That’s just to cover the cut and the stitches,” his mother said. “You can see how the head is free, and there’s no excess skin at all. The doctor did a careful job.”
“Well, we’ll compare it with mine when the bandage and stitches are off. Anyway, I’m glad we got it done. Better late than never. Now he won’t play with himself anymore.” Hearing this, Matt grieved for his lost foreskin, knowing his life had been changed forever.
Next day at the doctor’s office, Matt was still fearful, and the doctor gave him an injection of sedative before beginning the examination. This time, it was necessary only to drop his pants and shorts before climbing onto the table. As the doctor unwrapped the bandage to reveal the sutured cut, Matt winced at her touch.
“No more surgery for you, Matt,” she reassured him. “The circumcision’s all over. Now all I have to do is to see how it’s healing.” Matt’s mother held his hand as the doctor began her scrutiny of the freshly-circumcised penis.
“Looks like it’s healing well. You’ll notice that the base of his glans will begin to flare now that I’ve cut that tight skin away. From now on, it’ll grow normally. I’ll just put some alcohol on it, the way I told you yesterday. The alcohol will help dry the incision as well as the other tissues.” She saturated a gauze pad with alcohol and carefully wiped the large penis with it, paying special attention to the purple bell and the suture line. Matt shuddered as the alcohol hit the tender tissues. Then she wrapped the penis in a strip of dry gauze.
“Okay, you can take him home now. See you next week.”
Matt continued to be depressed, and hardly ate anything at dinner. That evening Matt’s parents again inspected the results of his surgery. His mother removed the gauze, which fortunately came away without sticking to the wound, and they looked at the red line of the cut, interrupted by black sutures. Matt could not bear to look at the site of his recent surgery.
“Looks better today,” his father commented. “His tip looks just like mine. The color’s a little lighter, though.”
“Yes, and see how the skin’s nice and tight, like yours?”
“That will keep him from playing with himself,” his father said. “See what happened for playing with yourself, Matt? You didn’t listen when you were a kid, and you didn’t listen now. We told you we’d have you circumcised, and we did.” Matt closed his eyes and looked away.
“Hold him while I apply the alcohol,” she asked. “He might struggle.” His father held him while his mother ran a saturated gauze pad over his penis, concentrating on the forward part. Matt whimpered, but didn’t struggle against his father’s strong hands. His mother covered the cut again with a gauze strip, leaving the end of the bell uncovered for urination.
In the bathroom next morning, Matt held his penis carefully, keeping his fingers behind the line of the cut, as he aimed his stream into the toilet. The local anesthetic had worn off the day before, and it was very definitely sore. When he replaced it inside his short, the tip of the glans felt very tender as the cloth scraped it.
During that week, when she insisted on helping her son bathe, she was careful to let the bandage soak before removing it, and avoided rubbing his penis with the washcloth. However, she always poured warm water on his penis to stimulate urination, as the doctor had recommended. He didn’t like his mother staying with him and helping him bathe, but she’d told him it was necessary. The following week, she took Matt in to see the doctor again. This time, he didn’t seem as frightened, but the doctor gave him a sedative to calm him while she removed the sutures.
“This will sting only a little,” she explained as she helped Matt climb onto the table. I’ll cut each suture, then pull it out.“ She snipped the first suture, then grasped one end with a forceps and pulled. Matt winced, but did not cry. As she was pulling the second suture from the cut ring, he began to scream.
“You brought this on yourself,” his mother told him harshly. “We told you to stop playing with it and you didn’t listen, so now you’re circumcised like all the other boys.”
“I’d better give him a local. His penis is so tender that it’s painful to remove the sutures.” She injected the base of his penis as she had the week before, numbing it and relieving the sting of the sutures’ removal. He didn’t struggle when the third suture came out. However, he continued moaning and crying as the doctor removed the rest of the sutures, and his crying only subsided after the last suture was removed. A couple of small droplets of blood oozed from the cut line, and the doctor wrapped it again in gauze strip.
Home again, his mother showed his penis to his father. She’d removed the bandage strip, and the large penis was naked, the cut line clearly visible and and the bell shaped end standing ahead of the shaft.
“Looks like a good job,” his father said. “The head’s darker than it was last week, looks more like mine now. The doctor say anything about the healing?”
“She said it’s healing just fine. Hold him for the alcohol,” she told his father. His mother soaked a gauze pad with alcohol and bathed his penis with it, washing away the tiny scabs that had come loose. This time, as the anesthetic was still dulling his penis, Matt did not struggle, and after she’d finished his mother said:
“See? He didn﹀ seem to feel that. Maybe the sensitivity has really gone down. Anyway, the doctor injected an anesthetic when she removed his sutures.”
“Looks like it,” he replied. “It really looks nice now. The skin’s nice and tight, and he won’t be rubbing it over the head anymore. He looks just like little Johnny next door, only bigger.”
“Yes, Doctor Jamison did Johnny too, but in the hospital when he was born.”
Next day, when she gave Matt his bath, she washed his penis with the soapy washcloth, and this resulted in an erection. She saw how the skin became even tighter, stretched along his shaft to the line of the cut. The cut itself was a perfectly oval scar ring, slanted to follow the rim of the bell, the rim of which had begun to flare now that the foreskin no longer kept it compressed. His mother thought that feature was very attractive, but Matt longed for the protective foreskin that would be forever missing from his penis.
The following week she took Matt in again, and once he was on the table, pants and shorts around his thighs, the doctor commented:
“It’s healed perfectly. The scar’s just a thin red line, and the red color will fade during the next couple of years. It’s going to look a lot better than many other boy’s circumcisions, with their thick brown rings.”
Why do some boys have those brown rings?“ his mother asked.
“They were done with the Gomco Clamp, which a lot of doctors use on babies. Some doctors even use them on grown-up males, but I think the technique is crude. The clamp crushes the skin edges even more than the instrument I used on Matt, and usually leaves a thick brown scar ring. Some people think that’s attractive, the `All-American’ look, but I prefer a neater scar.”
“I like it better this way, too,” his mother said. “His father’s scar is thin and neat too.”
“It’s better psychologically if father and son match in an area as important as the penis.”
Later that week, one of the neighboring boys, a year younger than him, approached Matt hesitantly.
“Your mother told mine you had a little operation. Hope you’re okay now.”
“Yeah,” Matt answered unhappily. The conversation, with its reminder of his recent loss, was making him very uncomfortable.
“Look, I know you don﹀ feel good about it, getting your dick cut, but we all had that done. I just don’t remember when it was done to me, though. I was just a baby. Anyway, can I see it?” The boys went into an alley where they unzipped to compare. The boy had a thick brown scar encircling his penis, and it looked much more prominent than Matt’s thin red scar line.
“Hey, yours is real neat!” the other boy exclaimed. “It looks better than what most of the guys have.”
“Guess so,” Matt responded, unenthusiastically. During the following months, most of the boys in the college locker room had seen Matt’s newly modified penis. Several told him that his cut ring looked much neater than theirs. Matt, however, remained unconvinced, as the trauma of his punishment had cast a pall over his existence. His penis was healed, but both his penis and his mind remained scarred for the rest of his life.