Hi, amigo. Circumcise me, please. Won’t you? No one else will do it. I trust in—I live by—your technique, unsteady as it is. Yes, maybe I’m a bit old for the procedure. Not the sort of challenge that stops a great circumciser (or any great person, in general, for that matter, going about anything great). In fact, I don’t actually care about your circumcision-skill level. I know you’ll get the job done. I’ve seen you at work. Many times. You’ve messed up maybe three or four times. Out of however many times, that’s pretty good! You are at least an intermediate-level circumciser. There are different sorts of greatness than straight-up greatness, and they are valid, perhaps equally as valid, as they are more human, whatever these greatnesses are, than that cold sort of straight-up greatness. Plus, I care more about circumciser-vibes than outright circumciser-skill. (A generational thing.) So, it has to be you, is what I’m saying. There’s really no one else, anyway. All the conversos posted up in front of the mutton store make fun of me. They say I’ll never be a real Jew. They call me “gentile-dick” and also many uglier aspersions. But they call me (yeah, yeah) “gentile-dick” so often that it’s kind of been shortened to gentle-dick, I think because they’re saying it so fast now, so accustomed to the pejorative that they’re slurring it, is what I’m thinking. And while the ladies never caught onto the original curse, well, now I’ll hear a jezebel or three call me “gentle” with a certain suggestiveness, there goes that gentle, and fill in the blank after “gentle,” as I prance around the plaza mayor. The strumpets no longer offering me their services. Reputationally, I’m not worth their time, is what I’m hearing. They’re saying I won’t “move the needle,” entrepreneurially speaking. To which I say, My reals are worth as much as anyone’s! and I’m jingling whichever coins I’ve got on hand. But my money, it’s tainted, I suppose, as my very presence is. I am starved for association. I am forced to hang out with the swans. They don’t talk back or make fun—well, I’m told by a top anatomist that their swan-honkings may well be considered talking back/making fun, but still, I see a tenderness between myself and these gloriously cantankerous birds. I thought about learning their song and asking them to do it, yes I did. The leader-swan has a chipped and flaking beak lined with tooth-like ridges. He uses it with a preternatural skill to gather food, little fish and bugs. If I could only train him...and I did try. (Hence the beak-shaped welts...) But you are a man of bewildering faith. You’ve stayed the course and overcome, as they say. And you are beholden to the mystical world far, far more than to the wack physical realm, yes? with its uncooperative fowl and strumpets (and again, this is me accepting/excusing your circumcision-skill level). But tell me: are the sages correct? Does it heighten the sexual act?—which is not to say that that’s why I’m here today, imploring you. (I call that the sage’s bonus!) This whole thing’s an act of bewildering faith on my part, it would be on yours, as well (as is your wont), guaranteeing us each a spot in Heaven or whatever you’re calling it—the Place of Comfort, the Bosom of Abraham, sure. I would love to go to Heaven. I would love Heaven, I think, where they don’t call you names, and if they do, it’s playful, it’s all playful 24/7 up there, at least ‘til Judgment Day, when it’d be really quite serious. So—yes, yes! sharpen that izmel! and, and should I bite down?