October 11, 2021 Issue

I’ve had my share of urological issues over the years, but nothing compared to Gary Shteyngart’s “genital bonfire,” as described in his excruciating, brilliant “My Gentile Region,” in this week’s issue. Shteyngart was circumcised when he was seven years old. The operation was botched. He was left with what’s called a “skin bridge” on his penis. Shteyngart describes it:

After the infection had subsided, the shaft of my penis was crowded by a skyline of redundant foreskin that included, on the underside, a thick attachment of skin stretching from the head to the shaft of the genital, a result of improper healing that is called a skin bridge. A small gap could be seen between this skin bridge and the penis proper. In texture and appearance, the bridge reminded me of the Polly-O mozzarella string cheese that got packed in the lunchboxes of my generation. 

Forty years later, on August 24, 2020, attempting to urinate, he feels a tightness on the underside of his penis. A tiny hair had wrapped itself around the skin bridge. He tries unsuccessfully to remove it himself. His primary-care doctor refers him to a surgeon, whom Shteyngart calls Dr. Funnyman. Funnyman takes out a pair of forceps and “in a matter of seconds had cut the hair tourniquet from the skin bridge.” But the skin bridge is irreparably damaged. Two days later, it breaks into two parts, “ ‘a minimal stump distally with a larger stump proximally,’ according to the doctor’s notes, the latter of which was an unsightly piece of skin flapping in the summer wind.” 

On September 8, 2020, Shteyngart returns to Dr. Funnyman for corrective surgery – a second circumcision. It doesn’t go well. Shteyngart says,

The afflicted area improved slowly, but peeing was now painful. A part of the redundant foreskin that had always resembled two flaps was becoming more swollen. Two weeks after the surgery, as I was finishing an hour-long walk, it felt as if hot clothespins had been attached to the areas where the skin bridge had been excised and were pulling ever downward. Whenever any clothing came into contact with the affected area, a Klaxon of pain would sound across my central nervous system.

He says further,

My condition began to take over my daily life, like a game of Twister but with each wrong move resulting in a jolt of groin pain. To get out of my car without the affected organ scraping unduly against my underwear, I began to propel myself from the seat in one quick motion, until one day I hit my head hard on the doorframe, and spent weeks nursing a headache. Eventually, I quit driving. Lifting grocery bags became impossible. Sitting on a hard chair excruciating. Drying my groin with a towel unbearable. Wearing jeans unbelievable (only sweatpants would do). Playing hide-and-seek with my son out of the question. Even sleeping required a fort of pillows placed in strategic locations to keep my penis airborne through the night. I had been advised to use numbing lidocaine jelly, and to wear soothing Xeroform gauze held in place by an improvised bandage. My wife, upon seeing the shaft of my organ covered in bandage and gauze, sadly compared it to the Elizabethan collar worn by dogs (not that I was in danger of licking myself). Erections became dangerous, and at night I turned away from my wife so that I would not smell the deliciousness of her hair. I began to wonder: Was this the rest of my life?

Shteyngart consults other doctors. Nothing they prescribe alleviates his pain. He says,

I’ve always had a rational fear of dying, but when I imagined a life without being able to walk or swim or have sex or travel or do anything without pain or an Elizabethan collar, I wondered what it would be like to kill myself. 

Eventually, he’s introduced to a doctor who prescribes “an ingenious compound cream containing amitriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant.” Near the end of the piece, Shteyngart writes, 

What am I left with in the end? I hope I will continue to get better, though I doubt I will ever be completely right again. I may have to slather my genital with ointments for the rest of my life. There are new associated complications from the various medications, and the treatment of my post-traumatic stress will continue. Even with excellent insurance, I have spent many thousands of dollars for medical care and will continue to spend more.

“My Gentile Region” is powerful testimony against circumcision. Its pain and suffering are palpable. I mentally flinched several times as I read it. Is it perverse of me to confess that many of its sentences also gave me pleasure? Well, they did. This one, for example:

I have always imagined that beyond its pleasurable utility the penis must be an incomprehensible thing to most heterosexual women, like a walrus wearing a cape that shows up every once in a while to perform a quick round of gardening. 

And this:

After the razzle-dazzle of Cornell, this doctor’s office felt more familiar in a urological context, smaller and lower ceilinged, its walls festooned with quotes from Maimonides and a waiting room populated with older Rothian Jews huddled over copies of the Post while waging a final battle with their prostates.

Shteyngart is a superb writer. His “O.K., Glass” (August 5, 2013) is one of my all-time favourite New Yorker pieces. “My Gentile Region” is right up there with it.