In the Nighttime III

Later, Tara’s asleep and I’m listening to some late-night talk show. The topic is circumcision. There are pros and cons. There are callers on both sides. It seems strange to have an opinion, beyond your own cock, to me, but people are pretty fired up. A doctor calls in, says he’s an expert. The host asks how.

“I reconstruct foreskins,” the doctor says. “Many young men make a mistake—they’re nineteen, maybe twenty, and they’re at that age when they want the same hair as their friends, the same clothes as their friends—”

“The same penis as their friends,” the host says.

“Exactly,” the doctor says. “I reverse the process. Give them back what they’ve lost.”

“Is it the same?” the host says. “The restoration?”

“I like to tell my patients this: only God can make a rose and only God can make a foreskin.”

I picture this guy walking through his life saying this, I wonder how many times he’s said that to someone, Only God can make a rose and only God can make a foreskin. I think about his kids, how often they’ve heard this at dinner or something. His wife must cringe and wish him dead now and then.

“So it’s not the same?” the host says.

The doctor pauses. “It’s never the same. But I do my best.”

Another guy calls in and says he hates his parents because of his circumcision. The host tells him to make it quick, his hate, because time is running out on the show. Tomorrow, she promises, she’ll be interviewing a guy who talks to vegetables. I take the headphones off until the voices are a distant buzz. The headphones vibrate in my fingertips every time someone says whatever it is they have to say.

Tara’s chest rises and falls a little. She sleeps so quietly that I get scared every once in a while and I have to check close to make sure she’s still breathing.