CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
The first 10 years of my life were punctuated by occasional episodes
of pure hell (painful infected penis, or embarrassment & terror caused
by clumsy, insensitive doctors who yanked the foreskin back while muttering
about smegma & my need to be circumcised) followed by months of inattention
(benign neglect?). At last, by age 10 years and 3 months, I managed
to stretch & loosen my foreskin so that it became easy to retract at
any time.
That was the end of any physical problem but by then the idea had
been firmly implanted that there was Something Wrong With Me that would
have to be remedied some day by circumcision. (I eventually got it
done--after having tried dorsal slit which several of my college roommates
had experienced and lived with quite happily--but by then the psychological
harm had been done.) I believed that as "damaged goods" I would never
be able to make a successful marriage.
I truly feel that this had an inimical effect on my psychic makeup,
and I am convinced that without the wrongly-treated foreskin problems
of my early life, my later life wouldn't have been the emotional mess
it often has been.
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