Tom's circumcision and piercing experiences

At A Glance Author Tom Contact Tom@bme.anon Artist self Studio home Location UK

Part 1 (previously submitted) began:

TOM'S CIRCUMCISION IN STAGES.

1 I was born in 1941 and raised in East Africa

Part 2 continues:

7 At the age of 26 I enlarged my urethral meatus: a meatotomy. I pierced a hole into the urethra about 6 mm proximal to the meatus along the line where the frenum had been, using a needle heated to cauterise bleeding, which can be profuse in this area. I passed monofilament nylon through this hole and tied it with a slip-knot. At night I attached a weight to the free end and hung this over the foot of the bed to apply tension. After about two weeks the stitch sloughed through and the meatus was left about double its previous capacity, so that it measured about 12 mm (½ inch) front to back. This considerably increased the volume of urine flow without being so extensive as to cause the stream to break up.

Soon after this I started the first of three heterosexual relationships, all three intensely enjoyable and the third of them the beginning of a 30-year partnership. In none of them was circumcision an issue, although my second partner had previously had a circumcised African partner, and clearly preferred roundheads to cavaliers. I am convinced that the reduced sensitivity compared to my memory of a painfully sensitive glans in my uncut state allowed me to last longer before orgasm. The relatively open meatus was an additional area of pleasurable stimulation.

8 The successive foreskin operations left a rather irregular scar-line, with a small tag of skin at the preputial root on the lower left side of the penis (where operation 6 had not removed enough skin), and there was also a fairly large patch of inner foreskin on the right, where the first tightening operation had not been extended as far as on the left. At age 43 I tidied up these two areas. After thoroughly cleaning the pubic area, I carefully marked the two pieces of skin to be removed using waterproof ink. In each case these were lozenge-shaped and included the old scar-line. The relatively small piece on the left was the first to be removed. I gripped it firmly in locking forceps, aligning the marked edges with the edges of the forceps. It was seriously but bearably painful when I locked together the forceps, and it was a relief to cut off the marked area of skin. For this I used a scalpel and the edge of the forceps as a guide. I sutured together the cut edges of skin, starting in the middle of the wound and inserting 5 sutures along a wound about 25 mm (1 inch) long. I lifted the cut edge of skin with forceps, pushed the needle through, and repeated the procedure on the opposing edge of skin. I used a slip-knot at first, followed by two overhand knots to secure the suture. Although minor, this part of the operation took about an hour including the preparations. The suturing was rather slow until I gained practice and working with such fine filament was difficult.

On the right I used a more effective technique. I made a shallow cut with the scalpel for the full length of the previously marked lines. Then I gripped the piece of skin to be removed firmly at its centre with the locking forceps, pulled it away from the body of the penis, and dissected it away with the scalpel, following the marked line and using many small cuts to ensure accuracy and to avoid cutting deeply. The sharp cutting sensation was significantly more painful in the old inner skin than when outer skin was being cut. Then I sutured the cut edges of skin together at approximately 5 mm intervals along the 35 mm length of the wound. Again this was slow because I wanted to be sure that the sutures were firmly tied. I dressed the wounds with a single strip of non-adhering Melolin dressing held in place with sticking plaster. By the time the dressings had been applied, the sharp pain of cutting had given way to a duller but more intense ache, which lasted only about three hours. Dressings were changed daily and I removed the sutures after six days. The resulting scar-lines were neater than those they replaced. The cumulative result was a circumcision scar line which ran in the coronal sulcus ventrally, on the left, and dorsally, but on the right was uneven and for about 10 mm was still as much as 15 mm away from the corona.

9 When I was 44 I arranged for our two sons to be circumcised by a Muslim GP in East London, for whom circumcisions were a routine service to the parents of his patients. The elder son was 12 years four months old and the younger was just seven. His school friend and the friend's elder brother had recently been circumcised, which raised the topic for discussion. The operations were done less radically than I would have preferred, but healed quickly and in that sense were a success. Until they were done, the boys' uncircumcised state was a constant worry to me, and I am sure that I was acting in their best interest, although my wife did not agree. Subsequently the younger boy has talked openly about it, with some resentment and raising the subject when he judges that it will cause me maximum embarrassment. The older boy occasionally joins in this conversation, but seems to have fully accepted being circumcised, even though in 1990s England he is in a minority.

10 At age 47 a I made a Prince Albert piercing at the level of the circumcision scar. This was initially done with a sewing needle, followed through by the thin gold wire of an ear-ring - not the best method, but it worked. Later I used a tapered ring to enlarge this gradually over about three years until it would take a 7mm diameter thickness screw-ball stainless-steel ring.

11 At age 52½ the opportunity arose to correct the uneven distance between the scar-line and the glans rim. I marked out an area, starting at the mid-point dorsally and extending rightwards, distally parallel to and about 5 mm from the coronal sulcus for about 150° (i.e. to within about 10 mm from the median raphé underneath). I drew a second line proximally, the distance between the two lines varying from about 2 mm at the mid-point dorsally (to remove some thick scar-tissue there) to about 10 mm apart at 90° on the right, then tapering to a point at the end of the first line. Using a scalpel, I made a shallow cut along both these lines. Using repeated light cuts with the scalpel, I parted and deepened the two cuts, just to the right of the dorsum, until I could insert the points of forceps under the skin in one cut and up again in the other. With tension applied in this way, I used the scalpel to deepen the marginal cuts until the marked area of skin was dissected away. Taking care not to cut too deeply, and moving in small stages to keep the pain bearable, this took about 40 minutes. Then I washed down the whole area: the warm water stung on the open wound, which I dried with clean paper tissues. Then I sutured together the edges of the wound, beginning with a suture about 4 mm from each end of the incised area, tied off firmly with a triple knot. One end of these sutures was left long and tension was applied to pull them apart from each other: this brought the two cut edges together so that it was easier to see where to insert a suture at the mid-point between the first two sutures. This ensured that the two cut edges were aligned correctly. The distance between each pair of sutures was then successively subdivided by inserting additional sutures until the whole wound was closed with sutures 2-3 mm apart.

Practice since the previous operation had considerably improved my suturing technique, which was as follows. The short curved needle was gripped firmly near its head with one pair of curve-ended clamping forceps, and the free end of the suture was gripped tightly with a second pair of forceps. Both forceps were rested on my thigh. A third pair of forceps was used to lift the edge of the wound at the appropriate point and I inserted the needle from the outside inwards. The lock on the forceps holding the needle was released and they were used to pull the needle through. The needle was then gripped with the forceps again firmly near its head, the opposing wound-edge was lifted and the needle was inserted from the inside outwards, in each case about 2 mm from the wound edge. The suture was pulled through until the free end, gripped by forceps, protruded about 10 mm. A free pair of forceps was then held while the suture with the needle at its end was wound loosely around their tip three times. The free pair of forceps was then used to grip the short end of the suture: when this grip was firmly established the first forceps was removed and the loops of suture around the forceps were eased off the end to form a knot, which was tightened by pulling on the needle end. The procedure was repeated twice more to ensure that the knot was firm, then the ends were trimmed to about 3mm length. Fine polypropylene was used, and this procedure had to be followed carefully to avoid the free end of the suture slipping loose.

I put in a total of 15 sutures in this way (some four or five slipping loose and having to be reinserted), taking about two hours to do so. Then I washed down the whole area again and dried it with paper tissues. This showed that the wound was successfully closed and haemostasis very largely achieved - there was very little blood oozing from it. A non-adhesive dressing was applied.

The following day I inspected the wound closely. From bleeding marks on the dressing it was evident that at two points the sutures were further apart than elsewhere, and between these were the main bleeding points, so I inserted two additional sutures. In addition I inserted a double stitch (blanket stitch) at the dorsal end of the wound in the hope that this would ensure a fine scar-line here. Another blanket stitch was inserted and tightened to temporarily close off the site of the Prince-Albert piercing, so as to avoid urine contaminating the ventral end of the wound. The additional sutures achieved almost complete haemostasis, to the extent that I wore no dressing throughout day two, with only a little lymphatic staining of my under-shorts. A dressing was applied overnight but fell off next morning and was left off. There was some bruising of the shaft dorsally, and some oedema (swelling) at the ventral end of the operation-site.

These further tightening operations, taken together with the chisel-cut in the frenal area (operation 5), have resulted in a very neat circumcision, with the scar-line evenly at 8 mm from the sulcus around the entire circumference.

12 At 56 I pierced my glans for an apadravya: a piercing front-to-back through the glans, placed in the mid-line and about 3/5 of the distance from the meatus to the corona. This is just distal of the point at which the glans flares out to form the ridge of the glans corona. Having first carefully marked the mid-line in ink, I used a Duval clamp held closed by a rubber band to stabilise the area. A flesh tunnel was inserted into the Prince Albert piercing, which kept it open and gave good access to the urethra. The point of a hollow piercing needle was put in place, I gripped my penis firmly and held it straight, and then pushed the needle through slowly, steadily and firmly. When it started to make a little lump under the skin on the dorsum of the glans, I adjusted the aim slightly to make sure that it came through on the mid-line. This was the toughest point, and considerable pressure was needed to break through the skin of the glans. Once the point of the needle was well through, I inserted a bar-bell into the hollow of the needle, then pulled the needle right through, and the barbell was in place. There was a spurt of blood, but within a couple of minutes this subsided and the retaining ball could be screwed into place on the barbell. Slight oozing persisted for a few days, and a crust continued to form on the bar-bell for four weeks in all, but there was no infection. The placing was very satisfactory. The initial bar-bell used was 1.4 mm diameter, but the next day I used a tapered insertion pin to insert a 2 mm bar-bell (the same diameter as the piercing needle). Later a 2.6 mm bar-bell was inserted, and then a 3.2 mm bar-bell. The advantage of the 3.2 mm gauge is that instead of an external thread, the bar can be female-threaded, which makes insertion easier without an insertion pin. After 8 months I discovered a useful combination: a 2.6 mm by 16 mm long bar-bell, screwing into a 6 mm diameter by 6 mm long 'intimate button' stud, with the bar-bell in the glans piercing and the intimate button filling the PA piercing. Its wider flange, worn externally, is effective in blocking the PA piercing, so that I can urinate while standing, without splashing. The bar-bell stays in place for masturbation but is removed for sexual intercourse.

13 Why? There is no answer in simple cause-and-effect logic. Rather, answers can be glimpsed in the foregoing account.

I was not told, but am fairly sure, that I was left uncircumcised on my mother's decision, despite the prevailing norm for infant care in middle-class families in Kenya at the time, and even though our family doctor until I was 10 was a German Jewish refugee, and therefore presumably pro-circumcision. My father, born in 1899, was circumcised. My mother was Danish, the prevailing norm in Denmark was and is opposed to circumcision, and (I assume) her two younger brothers and their friends were uncircumcised. Moreover, the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany also predisposed against circumcision - although very conservative in outlook, she was not noticeably anti-Semitic herself, but why give unnecessary cause for suspicion?

As a child, however, I 'knew' that 'normal' boys had round-ended cocks, as did my father, and only an 'abnormal' few, including me, had foreskins. The 'normality' of circumcision was reinforced by the display and banter among the boys at boarding school, which intensified among the close-knit group of us from the age of about 11 onwards, and was heightened by the frequent erections of oncoming puberty. Hearing and reading about the tribal custom of circumcision which faced most of the African boys of our age group was an important additional influence.

Once I took the first step, I simply knew that modification was something I could do myself: it was not technically difficult and the pain was quite bearable. Moreover, once across the pain barrier, I could produce results which were steps to what I wanted. Indeed, when at 14½ I gained the bared glans for which I had been striving for some four years, there was a great sense of elation and achievement and liberation. The subsequent tightening and tidying operations prolonged these sensations, and were accompanied by a growing knowledge and mastery of surgical skills. Planning, organising and carrying out each operation in itself brought considerable erotic pleasure of its own kind, and led on to the meatotomy and the Prince Albert and apadravya piercings.

It continued to be interesting to read about and observe the circumcised or foreskinned status of other boys and men, but I was always clear (at least from my early 20s) that my sexual pleasure and satisfaction came from heterosexual companionship and intercourse.

Am I compulsive self-mutilator? I think not, since such people tend to cut themselves or make themselves ill (anorexia, bulimia) from a sense of self-loathing or self-rejection or a wish to attract attention and sympathy to themselves. In contrast, I was striving to improve my self-image so that it would conform with the norm which I had learned and which was repeatedly reinforced through most of my development up to and through adolescence in the male-dominated ethos generated by my boarding school age-group peers, not overtly homosexual, but with an assertive machismo not connected directly with circumcision, that in my perception was led by circumcised boys and young men. Most of the time I did not know of anyone else who wished so passionately to be circumcised that he was prepared to do it for himself, so it was not something I discussed, still less boasted about; indeed, secrecy about my interest in circumcision may have made me secretive about other things too. When, later, I heard about other boys and men who had circumcised themselves, it was a relief to know that in this respect I was not so unusual, and an encouragement to write this account, more for my own interest than for the eyes of any other reader.