It all started in 1921 - I'm eighty-three now. In 1921 I attended kindergarten and at the first recess I found myself in the restroom with two boys on either side of me at a trough. I happened to look to both sides, and suddenly I realized I was different. I was stunned by the fact that I had been circumcised and they had not. I never went back to a public restroom up until high school.
When I got to high school, like so many boys I fought having to take my clothes off for gym classes. But finally the day arrived in my junior year when I had to go to gym class and take off my clothes. And to my amazement, fifty percent of the boys in my class were circumcised. All of our fathers worked for a company that had a Jewish doctor, and this doctor saw to it that all of us were circumcised. So for all those years I'd been hiding myself for no good reason.
This lead to an insatiable curiosity as to whether everybody I met was circumcised or not. It was not a serious concern...I did very well in school...but I've been pursuing it ever since.
When you're interested in the circumcised or intact status of other people, you wonder about everybody. After moving out to Hollywood I thought it would be great to find out which movie stars are clipped and which ones are not. I put an ad in the Advocate, a gay magazine, because gay men seem to have more interest in penises. I said that I was preparing this list and that anyone who contributed the status of certain stars would receive the list. I had a great response to the ad, and the first list went out with the names of several hundred people.
We now have about 2500 names on the list. It's considered about 99% accurate. We get reports in many ways; a lot of athletes on the list have been photographed nude. Other reports come from witnesses in the locker room. I went to the Beverly Hills Health Club and practically all of the movie crowd were members there, so that helped me add to the list. Phil Donahue had the list once on his show. Phil said, "I'm right next to Troy Donahue, and the listing is wrong." I had had two reports that Phil was intact, and he said that he wasn't. That was a confirmation from the horse's mouth.
Since the early days, I've found myself becoming more and more brazen in trying to find
out if people are clipped or not. I found that I could get an answer from almost
anybody by using the right approach. I have a seven foot statue of Michelangelo's David
in my backyard. If I had a visitor at my house whose status I was interested in, I would
say, "What's wrong with this statue?" They'd look at it. I'd say, "What about the penis?"
They either knew or I told them that David was Jewish and should have been circumcised.
So what would I say next? "Were you clipped when you were born or did you have it done
later?" And I would get my answer.
[WEBMASTER'S NOTE: According to some art historians, Michelangelo's famous statue is not a depiction of the biblical David and therefore his intact penis should not be considered an error.]
I began writing articles on the subject. The first one was "Circumcision: A Big Issue Over A Small Tissue." That appeared in practically every gay magazine in the country. Even a lesbian magazine ran it. It also appeared in England, Australia and New Zealand. People began writing to me and the list grew.
Some men began sending me their experiences. The men who were intact would write and explain that often they were the only one in their classes who had not been circumcised. They talked about the problems they had, how they were ridiculed. Others wrote supporting their intact status and offering their points of view.
Circumcised men seem to be less interested in the subject, except for those who became circumcised as adults.
Before long I thought, "Why don't I start combining all of this information in newsletters?" I began quoting them. Many of the men claim that hearing what other intact men experienced... and their feelings about their intact status... was very helpful to them. To this day, I'm still getting letters of that sort.
I'm now up to my fortieth newsletter. It covers a wide range of material, from cartoons and jokes to personal experiences. One group of men likes one thing, and another group of men likes another. Maybe 9% of the men who get the newsletter are straight, one is a librarian (a woman), and the rest are gay men.