Cutting edge of manhood

As well as being a treatment for some ailments, adult circumcision may have the added benefit of an unusual middle-age spread - as John James found out

Following a recent Channel 4 programme on childhood circumcision (It's a Boy!, 21 September) the anguished cry of an unanaesthetised male infant undergoing ritual Jewish circumcision lives painfully in the memory. After his foreskin was removed, the baby, Joshua, endured further suffering as the rabbi, with bare fingernails, freed the skin around the glans, according to Jewish custom. Three days later, Joshua was in intensive carewith severe septicaemia.

"Man must suffer in silence" was the rule for the African ritual of circumcision described by Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, (Abacus Press). At 16, Mandela was considered ready to be incorporated as a male into his traditional tribal society. Having bathed in the river at dawn on the chosen day as a symbol of purification, the boys, clad only in blankets, sat in front of excited parents, counsellors and chiefs while an elderly man, the circumcision expert, prepared to administer the cut. He pulled Mandela's foreskin forward and swiftly sliced it off with a single blow of his assegai (a tribal sword). Crying out was regarded as a sign of weakness, and Mandela bore the intense pain in silence before saying: "Ndiyindoda" - "I am a man".

It was with the memory of Channel 4's screaming infant and Mandela's experience still fresh in my mind that I presented myself nervously last week for an NHS circumcision. Neither religion nor tribe had demanded this ritual but recently my foreskin had become progressively tighter, and retraction impossible. It alsofelt extremely sore. A circumcision, said the surgeon I was referred to, was unavoidable. With regret, I consented: my member had, after all, been intact for 45 years, the instrument for fathering three boys and source of much carnal and loving pleasure.

Like Mandela, I had been ordered to bathe in preparation for the event. Arriving thus purified at the NHS trust hospital by 7.45am, I found myself at 8 o'clock donning the surgical gown which awaited me in Bay 2 of the day-case ward. One trolley remained unoccupied because the sixth patient failed to show up - perhaps he was also due for a circumcision, I mused.

The anaesthetist arrived to check me over, followed by the surgeon, who gave me a cheerful smile. It was at that point that I fell into despair: it wasn't the consultant I had met at Out-patients - he was on holiday - but his young registrar. Had he done a circumcision before? At least Mandela had been put under the knife by an expert.

At 9.25, the theatre porter arrived to wheel me away and, bidding a sentimental farewell to my friend beneath the surgical gown, I was put to sleep. I have no idea what indignity I suffered, nor whether local chiefs and town councillors were called in to witness the event, but at 10am I awoke in the recovery room. In a haze of halothane (an anaesthetic gas), I peered under the blanket to see my penis swathed in a bloody band. Relieved, illogically, that it was still there, I resumed my involuntary slumber.

Back on the day unit I checked again (no one else did) and at 11am, I was given a cup of tea and a piece of toast: a feast to celebrate my emerging from the ritual. Half an hour later I was instructed to get dressed and an hour later was on my way home. Five days later my manhood is still extremely sore and the stitches of dissolvable catgut protrude like a circle of barbed wire in a bloody circle around the glans, or like the raw neck of a poorly plucked turkey. While erections can be controlled during waking hours, the sexual adventures of the night can cause agony: each involuntary movement is accompanied by stretched catgut snagging on pyjamas or quilt and by the stretching of wounds that had been gently healing during the day.

The last few days have seen some frenetic problem-solving activity. How do I protect my stitches from catching underpants or dressing gown, causing indescribable pain? I have sewn an elastic cradle to the waistband of my pants to hold my penis away from my body, and have even slept beneath a quilt suspended by a camera tripod, giving my wife the impression of a permanent prize-winning erection. This morning I cut a small cardboard box to fit inside my trousers, lined with an Ultra-plus towel "for the carefree girl".

In the long term there may be a sexual advantage to my loss. The foreskin, it is thought, plays a major role in defining the shape of an erect penis. A tight foreskin favours a long, thin tumescence. Remove the foreskin, and the penis increases in girth, a welcome sort of middle-aged spread. Once it is healed, intercourse promises to be a new and delightful experience..