Foreskin

To those who have sadly lost it, who are straight, and to those of the opposite sex who have only known circumcised Men, The foreskin is this mysterious thing which people don’t tend to talk about much.

I discovered that I almost got the snip as a baby, but narrowly avoided it.

I was a terrible birth, and so was My Sister, Eighteen years earlier… Yes, Eighteen!

Late in the year, in the spring of 1965, Mum went into labour, and back in those days if you needed sedation, it was ether, a nasty chemical which made patients, and staff, sick.

So I was pulled out gently with forceps and Mum spent hours in recovery, feeling completely rotten, and when the room stopped spinning and she felt better, all She wanted was to get home to her own bed.

A story She told me on each and every birthday.

Apparently when She was about to leave for home, Dad piped up with “Has he been… done?” Mum lied and said yes, anything to get home, She didn’t want to be in the hospital a minute longer.

The funny thing was that apparently Dad was none the wiser, even when He bathed Me, which He took a certain pride in doing.

He’d scrub the devil out of us, it was no gentle rinse over with a sponge, but we were certainly clean.

Years later when I was about sixteen or so, either My Mum or Sister made a comment about circumcision, to the effect that I was still intact.

Dad turned to Me and asked quite seriously “Haven’t you been done?”

I was quite surprised.

I’d heard all the old arguments for getting it done, such as “Well it’s a hot country”. I sat and thought about this one and realised that it goes back to colonial days when it’s likely a lot of our ancestors may not have had a bath for weeks, but now once a day is quite normal.

It’s not hard to wash under the foreskin, I don’t see what the fuss is… We actually spend a lot more time, and money, brushing our teeth, but we don’t pull those out because “they might go bad”.

The mythology about the foreskin says “It’s just a bit of skin” so therefore, cutting it off isn’t going to hurt anything. But as an owner, I can tell your that it’s every bit the same, no really, the same as your eyelids… but without lashes.

If you run a finger over your eyelids, you’ll get almost an identical sensation to what you’d get on a foreskin, if you had one, it’s very sensitive.

And now a secret for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, I’m sure all us us with foreskin have done this at some time in our lives, just like all men have tucked their manhood between their legs and pretended they had a vagina.

If you grab your foreskin betwixt two or three fingers and seal it shut, then start to pee, the foreskin fills up, like a little balloon… well ok, no, it doesn’t stretch much, but it fills up… then we let it go and the pee goes WHOOSH down into the toilet.

Then we generally have a little smile to ourselves.

I don’t think you’ll read about this little joy anywhere online, so remember to thank me, won’t you?

Wolfie!

Dad songs

I began making my transition from kids music to pop in the late 70′s, suddenly becoming intrigued by Countdown and Sounds Unlimited.

Bands who merely played live were generally ignored for the ones who could provide a video with an interesting story to tell, and although I liked a lot of bands, my favourite was ABBA.

Of course some of the stuff I liked was criticised by my parents for being too monotonous (some of it was) or they couldn’t understand a word of it.

Early on, I thought that phrase meant that they couldn’t understand all the words being sung…. I couldn’t either, but I didn’t care.

But then I realised that what Mum meant was that she couldn’t grasp the concepts in the lyrics, and I admit, some songs do take a while to figure out, and lets face it, we’re still wondering about Knights in White Satin.

Mum and Dad liked 3AK, A Melbourne station housed at Channel Nine, which churned out “Beautiful Music” laid back versions of old and new-ish pop tunes, often played by the 3AK Orchestra.

Now music always kicks you in the teeth, and I would advise kids reading this, never to get too cosy with certain musical ideas, that some are right and others are not.

I hated country music, but found myself being cool with it when Thompson Twins released “You take me up” which featured harmonica, which up till then was never an instrument I wanted cropping up in my songs.

So My music was monotonous.

But when 3AK played the song that we thought went “One callamera, ah-dee-dah one callemera”

* We had no idea what the lyrics were, or what they meant, not being spanish, are they Spanish?

Dad would sing that to himself while in his shed, and I never realised how weird this was until now.

My songs couldn’t be understood, Yet Dad, a Full Australian with no other language apart from English was devoted to “Variety Italian Style” a mid morning “ethnic” program on one of the commercial stations, which featured tour videos and current italian songs.

Dad would also watch the Greek show which followed.

If you’re a kid, be aware of this, it happens with every generation.

and realise that your generation is not any different to any which has passed before, it just seems that way when you’re young and don’t know any better.

People are just plain weird.

That dream.

Mum was in bed, it was daylight, and she had the sheets pulled up close around her head, like she was almost hiding, only her face was showing

she looked depressed, her eyes were closed

I asked her “What’s wrong Mum?”

She replied “You don’t love me anymore”

And apart from me trying to counter her suggestion, and her not budging from her case, that was it.

It left me feeling somewhat disturbed all day.