Chop, Chop, Chop, Snip!

A good friend of mine (whom I do not see often enough) lives in Bali with his beautiful wife. The two of them are great company and he has one of the strangest sense of humour that I have ever encountered.

Their relationship has been rocky, not anything to do with themselves, more interference from his wife's family and their reluctance to admit him into it.

He has a barcode tattooed on the back of his neck, a strange propensitiy for every thing that can go wrong going wrong and a smile that breaks even the darkest gloom!

Here's what happened to him this week in preparation for his upcoming second wedding (the Islamic one) where it looks like the family may finally acept the fact that thay are in love!  

Look's like it will be a cracking wedding! Also, knowing John he probably got the wrong procedure......

I must admit, I've been debating whether or not to write about this. It's not an easy topic to discuss at the best of time, and it would be fair to say it's something of a sensitive subject (I'd say 'ha ha' at this point, but I'm really not in the mood).

You see, on Wednesday I got circumcised.


OK, by this point anyone that really doesn't want to know will have stopped, left the room and is probably concentrating very hard on something - like by doing weights and such.

The reasons are obvious. 1, my wife is a Muslim, and as part of getting married to her I have to undergo a few changes. 2, I live in Bali which is a really hot country, and for hygiene it's a rather good idea. No one wants to talk to someone with that kind of itch.

So the appointment was made for 10 am. I canceled my private classes for the day, and sat down to have a really good thing about something else for the 2 weeks leading up to the big event.

The day arrives, and Tia gives them a call to confirm.

"Hi, I'm ringing to advise that Pak John is still coming in for his 10 o'clock appointment"
"Who? We don't have anything down here."
"Why not? You were the guys that gave us the time!"
"Erm, sorry. We can squeeze you in at 12?"

So I have an extra 2 hours to wait. I'm trying not to think about the whole situation as you might expect, and a delay at this point is not something I'm pleased about. Finally the time comes and we get into a taxi. 

We drive for a bout 10 minutes, and then turn down a little side road and pull up outside a house. A house - not a clinic, but an actual house. This is when I really start to worry. It's exactly the kind of little side of the road Doctor that you see all over Indonesia's cities. Just somebody's garage, usually.

My mind is awash with a plethora of images. I expect to be taken off by some guy that looks like a grubby, short-sighted Gandhi, and led into a darkened garage. Coils of hose pipes litter the floor, and there are small piles of screws and nails and metal scratchings over any available surface. 

Rusty power tools come to mind, and then I see them too sitting off in one heavily stained corner of the room. There's an arid smell to the air, and it's so thick that I can taste it. Then I notice an area that has been hastily cleared, and an old, well-used wooden chopping board. It's stained. It looks like someone was cutting some fresh steak on it, but then forgot to clean up for several weeks. 

That doesn't bother me so much as the rusty steak knife that's lodged in it. The knife changes as I look at it, the image varying as my fear conjures up even more original and exciting method of torture. There's a clever, and then a katana; even a circular saw at one point. 

But my imagination finally settles on a rather brutal looking machete. All of these are rusty, of course. Just underneath the edge of the table is a small pile of what I can only describe a distressingly organic 'scraps'. Gandhi tells me not to worry. "I be doing this 80 years long Pak John" he says, whilst looking me directly in the right ear. 

My eye is drawn to movement. In another corner of the room is a pile of...something, underneath a tarpaulin. There's something sticking out of it. Something familiar. What is...is it..is that..? Is that someone's elbow? "Very high rate success" Gandhi says. What does that mean? I look over at him and without realising it, point to the tarpaulin. So looks confused, and then shrugs saying "Not worry Pak John. 3 times is charming, yes?".

I'm shaken out of my meandering by my wife, who's getting bored of waiting.

"What's up?"
"They have a powercut. So we're waiting" (I'm thinking that a machete doesn't need power)
"So what now?"
"They're going to take us to the clinic to do it"

Well, thank God and sonny Jesus for that, thinks I! No more machetes. It'll be the laser, like it was meant to be. Yes, that'll put me off ever watch Goldfinger again, but at least it 'sounds' modern and hygienic!

So we wait a bit more. There's not much to do, so I glance over to the Indonesian language newspaper of the table, despite being unable to read Indonesian. Practice makes perfect right? 

And I need something else to think about. 

The Radar Bali, it's called, but I soon stop when I realise that it's choc full of words with 'c', 'o' and 'k', roughly in that order. The last think I need to be reminded off. So instead, I close my mind to everything, and just think of nothing.

The sound of a clock gently ticking has always been a comfort to me. I've often suspected that it's because of the sound. To me, it's always sounded like an axe. As a child I found this a comfort. My Dad is a tree surgeon, so the sound of an axe hitting wood reminded me of him. Possibly. Well, whatever, I like the sound.

chop.

chop.

Chop.

Chop!

CHOP!

CHOP!!

CHOP!!!

CHOP!!!!!

Argh! Suddenly I'm not so comfortable. MUST THE WHOLE WORLD TAUNT ME!?! Finally the guy comes to take us to the clinic. Another quick 10 minute drive to the clinic. The clinic doesn't have a/c, and I've just spent an hour in a house with no power in 30+ degree heat, on a day when sweating is inevitable. 

So we can't do it there then. No matter! We'll do it at home on the bed! Lovely. And I can watch a DVD while we do it. Deep Joy.

We get back home, and I'm told to lie on the bed. Tia is now asking (repeatedly) "Do you want me to stay? I can stay if you want me to. I can go if you want me to". She end's up staying. There are two doctors here to help. "You can put on a DVD to help you relax" one says TO TIA!

Out comes the anesthetic. Down go the shorts and pants.

"Oh! You haven't shaved."
D'oh!
"It's OK, you can do it afterwards"

Brace yourself John. Here comes the injection. Que three injections - not as bad as I expected. I knew it wouldn't be. Happily, the psychological trauma that leads up to the event more than makes up for it. There are three injections, mind. And then comes what I can only describe as the "rubbing". To get it all into my system. At least, I hope to Christ that's why he did it!

I feel strange. There's a strange whining, ringing sound in my ears, and every thing starts to look a little faded; edges of objects in the room have gone blurry. I feel a little dizzy. And then my heart...explodes. It feels like the time I drank 5 red bulls in a row. It's like a crazed, homicidal manic that's been locked up in HMP Belmarsh for 30 years desperately trying to break free through my rib cage. In short, I feel shit.

"The anesthetic should have made you feel a little funny" says Doc 1.
Thanks for the head's up. 'Should have'? You couldn't have told me before it happened?
"It should feel OK after 3-5 minutes".
Indeed it does.

I get a second round of injections which "shouldn't hurt as much as the first round". LIES!! It's still no worse than an inoculation, but still. After another 15 minutes of acute 'rubbing' it's time to get down to it.

Que a deep sense of dread.

Out come the clamp, which look rather like the long nose pliers my Dad used to use when fishing. Everything is moved into place.

"Do you want to watch? You only get the chance to see this once" asks Doc 2. That's fine and all, but once may be too much. I do look though, because I'm cursed with curiosity. Looking at the clamps I think - and may have said - "that should hurt". Out come the scissors.

"Hang on, what about the lasers?"

That's just the name of this method. There aren't really any lasers"

False advertising, surely?

...
...
snip

And I swear, it was the most unusual mixture of feelings. Horror; fear; sadness; the ever-present curiosity; surprise at the lack of pain. They're all there for the trip. And then the scissors go down. Just that one tiny snip? Something's missing...

My Mum loves her arts and crafts. Every year we get birthday and Christmas card which are hand made - and I must admit, very well. She has this really odd tool for cutting polystyrene.Essentially, it's a bit of fuse wire that's connected to a 9v battery. It heat's the wire, and then you can use the wire to cut the polystyrene.

Now imagine the same thing, but connected to the mains. This is what is known as a 'laser' in the exciting world of 'having a bit of your willy cut off'.

I don't know if you've ever smelt burning flesh, unless there's a large percentage of anomalous Vietnam veterans among my readership, but it's not pleasant. When you know where the burning flesh is, and it's something 'close' to you, it's a whole lot worse - believe me.

Guy Ritchie's Snatch is loaded and started.

And then it was off. Tia asks if she can keep it, and thankfully is told '"no" (this doesn't stop her trying to tell me that she's put it on my pizza later). And then I'm stitched up which takes another hour.

All in all, the whole process took 90 minutes - not the 30 minutes I was promised. The anesthetic lasted for another 4 hours, and then it started to ache, and then just feel sore. Wearing trousers is about as fun as stabbing yourself in the eye with a pencil.

I'm told it'll take 5 days or so to heal. During this time, I have to put up with something that looks like Frankenstein's monster in my trousers.

The things we do for love, eh? I hope Tia is satisfied.

Thank you for sharing that with us ...... Note to self, never eat Pizza with John and Tia!