The day before I had the chop, I visited the National Gallery in London to study a painting of the baby Jesus. Without wishing to get too CSI: Bethlehem about this, there is very little physical evidence to warrant the title The Circumcision. In this painting by someone from the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, the sumptuously bearded mohel, tasked with removing the foreskin, hides the operation from our view with his hand. Look as I might, I could see neither knife nor holy penis.
The day after my encounter with Jesus, I am due to have a centimetre of my foreskin removed for a condition called phimosis, which means tight foreskin. While phimosis is normal among male infants as the foreskin is attached to the glans in early development of the penis, in adults the condition is pathological. I have not been able to find out how many British males have been circumcised as adults, but my urologist told me it is not uncommon: during what he hilariously called “insertive sexual intercourse”, the foreskin retreats, causing tearing if it is non-retractable. Tearing didn’t happen in my case, but the attachment of foreskin to glans caused soreness and, without wishing to suggest this was a cosmetic procedure, looked wrong.
