Facts & Phalluses of America's favorite organ

Restoring the unkindest cut of all has become a newquest for thousands of men.

Circumcision is a delicate enough operation without people running off with the equipment needed to perform it. But that's exactly what happened recently at New York Hospital where a 23-year-old circumcision protester snuck into the maternity ward and tried to abscond with a circumcision board. That's a restraining device that holds down a baby's arms and legs with Velcro straps while his foreskin is lopped off.

After alarms sounded and culprit was caught, he informed a security guard that he'd felt the pain when circumcised as a child. He also claimed he'd become radicalized by contacts he'd made over the internet with such anti-circumcision organizations as NORM, NOCIRC, and INTACT.

While noting that circumcision opponents are a law-abiding lot who would never sanction breaking into a hospital, Jim Bigelow, author of The Joy of Uncircumcising (Hourglass, P. O. Box 171, Aptos, Calif. 95001), the bible of the movement, asserts that increasing numbers of men wish they'd had a say in their parents' decision to circumcise them. And they're finding less confrontational ways to deal with their loss and to remedy the situation than breaking into maternity wards. Foremost among the countermeasures is a nonsurgical procedure known as foreskin restoration: An individual's remaining foreskin is stretched back over the head of the penis using a variety of means, including surgical tape, weights, even suspenders.

Those who successfully complete the procedure, which can take a couple of years report a return of their self-esteem and vastly more satisfying sex lives. I couldn't feel anything more by the age of 40, says D. Evans, creator and manufacturer of the Restore-Skin System kit. Using his own method, Evans claims that in only six months he grew enough foreskin to cover the head of his penis and restore it to the little pleasure dome it once was.

Nature intended the head, or glans, of the penis to be a moist, perpetually lubricated, hypersensitive shielded surface, something like the lip's inner lining, Evans and Bigelow both point out.

None of the restoration techniques fully restores the penis to its pre-circumcised state. But sheathing it, not to mention the back and forth action of glans against the foreskin, can still make it far more cuddly and fun to play with.

Its still hard not to envy the formerly insensitive Evans who claims that sex has become so fulfilling and all-involving since he restored his foreskin that he barely finds thetime to run his blossoming mail order business.

The difference for me is that each stroke during sex is as intense as the orgasm was [before the procedure], reports Evans, who now describes himself as multi- orgasmic, capable of three or four orgasms in an hour.

As appealing as the possibility sounds of being able to perform like a testosterone-crazed 18-year-old, it would be wise - as Bigelow advocates in a disclaimer at the front of his book - to consult a physician before embarking on foreskin restoration yourself.

And after watching the video companion to The Joy of Uncircumcising, where a penis is variously bound in surgical tape, has ball bearings unceremoniously pressed upon its head, gets fitted with a metal helmet, that bears an eerie resemblance to the nose cone of an I.C.B.M., and finally surrenders to Evans's tape and suspender system. It's hard to believe the stoical little organ doesn't suffer trauma. Some of the applications must be removed in order to urinate or to have sex, others supposedly don't.

In any case the retro-fittings that don't employ metal have a distinct advantage over those that do - they make it easier to pass through airport metal detectors as Evans discovered while attached to a stretching weight before he invented his own system. When the metal detector continued to screech even after he removed his keys and ballpoint pen, Evans meekly admitted to the security guard that he was undergoing the process of foreskin restoration.

There's one more potential complication, at least with Evans's product. Not only does all that stretching lengthen the foreskin, it also lengthens the penis - a half inch to an inch increase under erection Evans says. A lot of men are calling and [asking] how will they ever have enough skin to restore the foreskin if their dick keeps getting longer. There are those, of course, for whom this side effect may be a selling point.

For more information about uncircumcising, write Evans Industries, 3750 West Goret Road, Tucson, Ariz. 85645.

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