When I was a kid, I remember my penis always feeling raw. The glans always felt abraded and uncomfortable. I wore my underwear a little small so nothing down there would move. As it was, I was constantly re-adjusting. I didn’t dwell on it or anything. I just dealt with things the best I could. Then, when I was 12 or 13, I went to a father and sons’ dinner at church and the fathers were talking about circumcision — whether or not to do it. It got me thinking about what it would be like if I hadn’t been circumcised.

After college I became a quality control engineer, overseeing the construction of major commercial buildings in the Bay Area. I did the main post office in San Francisco, a bridge at Mare Island, a hangar at Travis Air Force Base. Later, I was employed by the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District, and I oversaw the renovation of pump stations and other projects on the site.

Wayne Griffiths

I had five children. Three boys and two girls. The boys were circumcised; back then, for many people, circumcision was considered the modern thing to do. It was kind of automatic. Nobody debated or paid much attention to the issue.

In 1986, I saw a show on TV about the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Center. Coincidentally, it was in San Francisco, so I went. I remember they had a pamphlet there about foreskin restoration. At that point, I was 51 years old. My kids were nearly grown; I had divorced their mother for various reasons and had been living alone for many years.

The pamphlet had 66 pages. It had been put out by a dentist from Louisiana under a pseudonym. Inside, he described something called the Pondus Judaeus, a foreskin restoration device pioneered by Jews in Palestine during the second century before Christ, when the embrace of Hellenistic ideals led to persecution of Jews; laws were passed making circumcision punishable by death. Because nudity was prominent in Greek culture, especially on athletic fields and in public baths, Jews who wished to participate fully in society had two choices — hide their genitalia or restore their foreskins.

The Pondus Judaeus was essentially a weight made of bronze, copper or leather. It was affixed to the remaining foreskin and pulled downward. Unfortunately, no detailed description or illustration of the device has survived time.

The pamphlet also described a more modern, Rube Goldbergian device that employed medical tape and elastic-suspender things that tied to your knee or ankle. Even though I wasn’t an expert at the time, I was an engineer. I could see there was no way that contraption — or even some modern adaptation — was going to work.

I thought about it a while, and eventually, I got an idea. I phoned a company called Bearing Engineering in Emeryville, California. They made ball bearings out of stainless steel. I got two stainless steel ball bearings of different sizes.

I figured I could attach the smaller one to myself while the other ball bearing acts as a weight to put continuous tension on my foreskin. To attach them together, I took some waterproof tape and cut it in half, lengthwise, making it a quarter-inch wide. With this tape, I barrel-tied the balls together. To wear it, I took the smaller ball and placed it on top of my glans. I pulled my foreskin over it, then secured it by taping the skin down between the two balls — tight enough to hold the inner ball in. The outer ball, weighed 7 and a half ounces. It would hang down and put tension on my foreskin.

“Foreballs.” Image via NORM

For the next 18 months, I wore my device five days a week. If it ever started to hurt, I took the device off. It should never hurt. I mean, you feel tension, but it doesn’t hurt. At the end of that time, my foreskin had elongated. I had three-quarters of an inch of overhang. It’s been that way now for 25 years. It’s comfortable and pleasurable.

I’ve had a few intact men ask me, “How long can I grow my foreskin?” I tell them, “You can get it down to your knees if you want.” There’s no limit on the amount of skin you can grow because what you’re doing isn’t stretching the skin, you’re actually putting enough tension on the skin that the cells undergo mitosis — that is, they grow new cells, just like when you get fat you grow new cells for skin to cover you. So you grow new skin, and it’s permanent.