A Masterpiece

(2)

In what seemed to me to be an unusual Kaiser Permanente (?) interest in the results of Doctor Mangele's pernicious penile prescription, a nurse asked me, on a subsequent visit, whether I had followed doctor's orders in that regard. I replied that, having had previous experience with the medication I decided not to apply it to such a sensitive area.

Did I need that medication? I think not. I wash my dick almost every day and it looks fine to me. Maybe I need to examine it in a magnifying glass... Doctor Mangele was awful close to it when she made her pernicious pronouncement... Did she see something I can't see? Well, maybe. In any case I had visions of spontaneous sub-cutaneous hemorage following masturbation and shuddered to think that a follow-up visit to Kaiser would yield only the dry advice to, '...stop jerking off... and at your advanced age! Aren't you ashamed?!'

Which apparently brings us to the subject for tonight: Circumcision.

Since Pat Robertson's pernicious prescription of two weeks (or so) ago I have been occasionally looking at my copy of, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy. It is my new 'potty book.' That is, I read parts of it when I am sitting on the potty. It's been fifteen years since I last read it, and I must say that it reads better the second time around.

The book, written by Edward Wallerstein, a Jew, is not without the kind of ommisions which are typical of an author who is writing about something observed but not experienced. Wallerstein could not have experienced a 'foreskin.' He had no intimate knowlege in that regard. But to his great credit Wallerstein produced a masterpiece in spite of that deficit in personal knowlege.