junkmail for blankets

a different take on circumcision

. . . from a few months back. trying to milk the circumcision thing for all its worth . . . .

This Essay Belongs to Jeremy Huggins

I’ve been getting in touch with my Jewish side. My Yiddish is woefully non-existent, and I learned only recently that a yamika is really a yarmulke. I’ve decided to take baby steps, namely 144 (or so) baby steps to the grocery store to buy bagels and lox.

I’ve also been getting in touch with my perfectionism. My friends call it obsession. To get specific, maybe intrusive, they call me the grammar nazi. So tell me this: If you happened to see a sign in a parking lot that said “ . . . car will be towed at owners expense,” wouldn’t you notice the lack of apostrophe? Maybe get a bit farklempt? Surely the thought would cross your mind to return to the parking lot at night with a Sharpie and insert the appropriate apostrophe into “owners.” It’s possessive, people. The possessive is important.

My last roommate, Paul, believes in the power of narrative, of recollection, of sharing stories. Sit and schmooze with him for a while, you’ll get a story. If you’re lucky, he’ll tell you about “the drive.” Paul was eleven, his brother thirteen, his dad a generation older. Normal day, normal trip in the car to a normal place, and dad notifies his sons, matter-of-factly, that they’re on the way to the doctor. Dad has decided that it’s about time for the men in the family to be circumcised.

When I heard that story for the first time, I was with a group of friends. Everyone was laughing, asking for another, generally delighted with the tale. I, on the other hand, was incensed. “Good God, Paul,” I responded, “it’s your foreskin. Your foreskin to do with what you want. That’s not fair; didn’t you get a say? Your foreskin!” This, as far as I can tell, is the moment when my friends began worrying. After the circumcision, Paul began smoking.

A few years after the foreskin fiasco, Paul and his brother were in the backseat of the family car, generally displeased to be teenagers in the back of a car on the way to Florida for a family outing. They didn’t dare let their mom know that they smoked, so Paul’s brother scored a “patch” for the long car ride. The patch being a low-demand item in his circles, he was able to procure only one. Being patch virgins, Paul and his brother, both in need of a fix, decided to share the patch. Pleased with their ingenuity, they proceeded, half-patched, through middle Alabama. Somewhere around Opelika, they began to notice the low ceiling in the car, the space between them shrinking, each other’s face ripening. At this point in the storytelling, Paul’s audience knows what’s coming, knows that half a patch does not deliver half the strength of a whole patch, that a cut patch is worse than no patch at all. The audience anticipates the ending and starts laughing. I, however, feel didactic: “That’s what you get for sharing. The patch is either yours or not yours – you can’t share a patch, man.”

Maybe I should be content to let him have his laughs. They’re his stories, not mine.

The first specific thing I remember my dad’s teaching me is to resist throwing pencils in class. The second is to share. It’s one of the “first lessons,” a precept handed down universally from parent to child. We have a built-in propensity toward possession, a need to call something “mine” – ask any parent. And, universally, something seems to happen between childhood and adulthood. Somewhere along the way, the child’s “share” turns into the adult’s “shares” – how many do I own? I didn’t get my share.

At some point in our elementary education, we’re introduced to our forefathers, asked to know their beliefs so well that we can recite them and then pass them on to our children. We learn that certain truths are “self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I specifically remember Dale Riley, the frighteningly young Trekkie, laugh when he heard the word “unalienable.” Mrs. Budlong, God bless her, taught us to use our dictionaries (“that’s why you own them”), whereupon we learned that “unalienable” meant something along the lines of “this belongs to me, and you can’t have it.”

Five or six grades later, we were taught that these forefathers were Christians. Five or six years later, I bought into the Christian concept of redemption, the idea that “our bodies are not our own,” that “we’re slaves to Christ, and pilgrims, no place to lay our heads.” That, in essence, I have no claims to make, no right to a happy life in a world that ain’t my home. We are aliens. I didn’t know whether Mrs. Budlong or Ben Franklin had lied to me.

I’ve often heard people talk about “owning their faith.” After college I decided to look into the major world religions. I found that the big three – Christianity, Buddhism, Islam – share a number of fundamental precepts, one of them being the need to surrender. The Christian is called to forsake all and follow Christ, to surrender to God’s leading; the Buddhist is taught that desire causes suffering, so surrender your desires; the Muslim must surrender to the will of Allah. And the American grade-schooler’s forefathers were Deists, not Christians. Mrs. Budlong, I know you were worried about our ability to understand the distinction, but didn’t we have a right to the truth?

Christians, Buddhists, Muslims – do the majority religions represent the majority of our beliefs? Do we have legitimate rights? Can we claim to really possess anything other than our freedom to surrender or not? Will possession destroy us? Will it really not make us happy?

My friend Anne cuts herself. She says the pain doesn’t make her happy, but she likes the idea that it’s her skin to do with what she wants, and it’s possibly the only thing she truly owns. She tries to lighten the mood: “It’s my body and I’ll cry if I want to.”

Smokers, tattoo artists, pro-choicers: “It’s my body and I’ll do what I want to.”

A couple in love sits in a crowded airport terminal, sharing the crossword puzzle, sharing cryptic looks, sharing a secret knowledge: “We own this place.”

The tribes of Israel failed to surrender to the will of Yahweh. “You will be my possession,” he said, “and you must keep the words of the covenant I give you today, and you must teach this covenant to your children.” The Hebrew word for “covenant” is “berith,” “to cut.” “Cut these animals,” he said, “and look. If I’m lying, may I be as these animals. May I spill my own blood. If you agree,” he said, “make it known by cutting off your foreskin. Detach your foreskin, a present possession, and I will attach a promise in its place.” The wilderness wandering – no home, no meat, no nice Egyptian possessions – became wearisome. The adult Israelites, those redeemed from Egypt, failed to keep the covenant, failed to circumcise those children born in the desert. “You will not possess the Promised Land,” he said, and they perished in the desert.

“Your forefathers broke the covenant, wanted possession and not surrender,” Joshua said, “so they didn’t see the Promised Land, but you, surrender yourselves to Yahweh, and you shall possess it.” He ordered all the males, child, teen, and adult, to circumcise themselves in the desert, to surrender their foreskins.

Centuries later, a man named John the Baptist paced the desert floors, owning nothing but sackcloth, locusts, honey, and a precept: “Repent. Give up your claims to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He said that another Jew was coming, one who would call them all to forsake everything and follow him. That man claimed to be the only thing they would need. He claimed that if they believed him, that he wasn’t lying to them, that they would possess all they could imagine. Do this, and you will, in a sense, have it already, and in a sense not yet. He declared something better than independence. He said trust me, though I rip on a Roman cross, though I cut and bleed – it’s my body and I’ll die if I want to.

Those who’ve believed him insist there’s more to come. Some of us do.

Those who haven’t believed him find it laughable to part with what makes us happy. Some of us don’t believe him, and if this is all we’re getting . . .

. . . that’s all that I claim to know. I thought I should share.

Posted by ghetto monk at March 8, 2004 03:56 PM | TrackBack