When meeting someone new, I usually don't mention that I'm Jewish, because then we're both thinking about my circumcised penis, and it's kind of awkward. But the fact is, I am Jewish, and very much circumcised, though I didn't realize just how circumcised until I was in Hebrew school -- because it was in Hebrew school that I first learned that I was, much to my surprise, circumcised.

I was very shy as a kid, so I never got undressed around other guys, and never really saw penises other than my own (i.e. my own penis, not my own penises). And when I finally learned that I was born with more skin on my penis than was presently to be found there (if you cared to look), I only had my imagination to rely on in conceiving what that skin might have looked like.




The matter of what foreskin looks like has been resolved, but the big question that remains is: If I had to do it all over again, would I do it with a foreskin? I'll never know what it would have been like to learn how to swim with a foreskin, or to graduate from high school with a foreskin, or have my first kiss with a foreskin. In short, experience-with-a-foreskin has been denied me. But I have to say, if I had to do it all over again, I'd still do it circumcised. Because my penis? That's me. That's just who I am.