PISOT

* * *

Once, the Cantillons were rich and influential, possessing agricultural farmlands as far as the eye could see. Sugar was their main crop - hectares of their arable land were devoted to the cultivation and harvest of sugar. In fact, the family was the largest sugar producer in their entire province - which is no small feat since Negros is the sugar capital of the Philippines.

When the price of sugar collapsed in the world market, the family adapted by shifting into the cultivation of tobacco. They were among the lucky ones. The price collapse triggered massive unemployment and poverty in the sugar-producing province.

The family's fortunes reversed with the removal of Ferdinand Marcos, a dictator who held the country in an iron grip for 20 years. The newly-installed president, Corazon Aquino, signed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program into law, mandating that large tracts of land be broken up and sold by the landholders to the former tenants.

From a spread of over 20,000 hectares, the Catillons were soon left with less than a thousand. The partition of their ancestral property was exacerbated by the inability of Government to compensate them. Apparently, years of Marcos looting has impoverished the nation, and the Cantillons were left only with promises of payment.

Although they were still self-sufficient, the family soon learned to do without the luxuries they were once accustomed to.

* * *

Visions of gifts do not dance around Pedro's head. Rather, he was thinking about penises. More particularly, smooth and circumcised penises which all of his third grade classmates, elder brother, and father possessed.

His own penis was anything but smooth. Covered in a protective foreskin sheath, his foreskin was the cause of much taunting and derision for Pedro.

Not that it would matter for long. Tomorrow, he would undergo a rite of passage. A ritual which would symbolize Pedro's passage from the carefree days of childhood to the world of adulthood. He would be circumcised and finally be rid of his shameful stigma.

* * *

The day quickly passed in a whirl of thoughts and color for the boy. He could barely sleep that night for his excitement. As he lies prone on his cot, the door opened a bit.

"May I come in?" his father asked through the crack.

"Sure. I can't sleep anyway."

"Tomorrow is a big day for you, my son. It is a rite which I and your brother had undergone when we were your age."

"I know. I want tomorrow to come already!"

Father chuckled. He could sense the boy's impatience. He was no stranger to this reaction, having undergone it twice. Once as an initiated, and the second time as a father of the initiated. Juan Cantillon had two sons who were the pride of his life. Juan Jr. is 15 years old, and Pedro, who is 8 years younger. No, seven years younger, he corrected himself.

"Don't worry. Tomorrow will come soon enough. Get some rest first."

His father gently closed the door. He didn't even have to enter the room. Despite his excitement, Pedro would soon slip into a serene sleep. Pedro was like that, an unending dynamo of energy. But certainly not one with infinite energy.

* * *

The ritual was simple enough. The parish priest recounted the rites which were first performed on Abram and his household. Although Pedro appeared to listen with rapt attention, his thoughts were a million miles away. He wished that the cleric would hurry up with the mass.

An hour later, Pedro was feted through the streets of his isolated hometown. Sitting on top of a perch normally reserved for nobility, the boy was carried off into the town clinic. Clearly, the Cantillons were still well loved in this town despite the loss of much of their wealth and power.

He was certainly dressed for the occasion. Clothed in a glittering garb of yellow and purple silk, he looked every bit like a little prince.

He was finally set down on a mat inside the hut. An old woman, carrying various implements in a wicker basket, was waiting for him. "So she's the one," he thought to himself, "The one who would circumcise me." She looked frail and wrinkled, with graying hair. "But she moves pretty fast," he thought. "Pretty fast for someone who looks over sixty years old."

The old woman sat the trembling boy down. "This is going to hurt quite a bit," she said, wiping some sweat from his tousled brow. "But you have to be brave." Pedro looked over the crowd assembled outside the hut.

"Be brave."

* * *

The moment of reckoning has come. For so long, the third grader had wondered why his penis looked different from the rest of his classmates. They had a communal "comfort room" at their school, where the curious boys catch glances of each other's equipment.

Pedro was careful in concealing his penis from his classmates' view, until the day he was dared to a shooting contest. Whoever could pee the farthest would win the game. In a show of bravura, he whipped open his shorts and joined in the fun.

The stares he got quickly bothered him, although by his own reckoning, he was the victor since his urine stream had shot over four feet away. "What's wrong?" he asked his classmates.

That's when the jeers started. "Pisot!" (Uncircumcised) His peers formed a circle around him and pointed at his crotch, playfully shouting and drawing the attention of quite a few girls...

It was a very upset Pedro who returned home that day. He confronted his parents about it, demanding an explanation of why he wasn't circumcised as an infant. His father tried to hide a smile, and took him aside.

That night, Pedro would learn that although his parents eschewed infant circumcision, he would be cut on his eighth birthday. "After all, it was my rite of passage as well," boasted his Father.

"Eighth birthday?" cried Pedro, indignant at having to endure the jeers and laughter of his classmates for two more years. "Why can't I have it done now?"

"Be patient, my son," admonished his father. "That time will come when you'll have to be brave."

* * *

"Be brave."

The words resonated inside Pedro's head. He smiled and nodded at the old woman. He slipped his hands on his trousers and pulled them down. Closing his eyes and steeling himself for the pain to come, he said in a small but resolute voice, "I am ready."

The old woman tried to hide her smile at the boyish enthusiasm of Pedro. Over her 50 years of her practice, this must be one of the bravest patient she's ever had. She motioned to her two assistants standing in front of the crowd, and nodded her head at Pedro's direction.

The assistants pinned the boy to the mat, one holding his arms and the other holding his legs. The woman gingerly bent over and placed a sheet of abaca leaf over the white mat. "You are going to bleed a little, Pedro," she warned him, "But it will be over in a few minutes."

Pedro nodded his assent and closed his eyes. It is now or never. In a few more minutes, he would be normal, just like the rest of his classmates. Despite the increasing temperature in the room, a cold breeze from the hills sweeps into and around the hut.

The woman stripped Pedro of his underwear. His penis, freed from the confines of his briefs, sprang out in the open, as if to bid the world a fond hello. His testicles were shriveled and drawn close to his abdomen. Undoubtedly the cold wind contributed to this tightness, but it was probably more excitement than chill. The boy started at the sudden cold assaulting his most private parts. But if he were humiliated at being exposed in this manner in front of three complete strangers, not to mention his family and friends, he didn't show it.

"Now, you must remember to hold still. One false move and I might end up cutting off your penis!" the old woman warned. The boy vigorously nodded his head and stayed absolutely still, suddenly remembering that it had been some time since he had last taken a breath.

The woman grabbed hold of his little penis. It was undeveloped and not even three inches long, but she could tell that this would some day be a magnificent specimen. "More's the pity," she thought to herself.

While Pedro's eyes were closed, his other senses were working overtime. His ears pick up the nearest rustle of leaves and the breathing of the old woman's assistants holding him down. His heart pounded vigorously, while his bare skin felt the slightest breeze that goes his way. He swallows once or twice, suddenly realizing the dryness of his throat. All this waiting was so excruciating that he almost felt relieved when she finally took his penis in her hand.

He felt the incision slice through the most delicate part of his young body. His brain quickly commands every ounce of his body to fight back against the assault. His body responds strongly with a new sheen of sweat enveloping every pore of his body, but with equally strong willpower, Pedro successfully suppresses this urge to move. Not that he could move freely though, since the grips on his limbs were as hard as iron.

It was just as the old woman said. It was painful, but after the initial impulse had coursed through him, the ebbing pain that remained is at least barely tolerable.

"We're done!" exulted the old woman. She plants a kiss on his still-sweating forehead, and shuffles away into the crowd. Suddenly, the grip on his arms and legs relaxed, and Pedro could move. He opened his eyes and smiled weakly at his family members who made their way into the room.

And froze.

Something was wrong. His family wasn't reciprocating his smile. His mother had her mouth wide open, but no sound emerged from her lips. His father's normally small eyes were agape and wide open with terror, legs frozen stiff. Still not comprehending, he followed their horrified looks to his now-circumcised penis.

Only to find out that where his glans used to be, there is now a gaping hole filled with blood. Blood that is still spurting into the ground and staining his ceremonial garb. Pedro fainted about 2 seconds after his mother.

* * *

Pedro woke up hours later, with a throbbing headache. As his eyes slowly adjusted to the now-familiar interior of the clinic, he suddenly felt very faint. His breathing was short, sharp, and tortured.

But he was alive.

Pedro later learned that he nearly died of blood loss. Only when a quick-thinking teacher cauterized his wound with a heated iron rod did the blood stop gushing from his mutilated penis.

The old woman escaped during the confusion that followed. She and her assistants would never be heard of in the province again. His father would desperately pull all his strings in the military and police to locate her, but all efforts always ended in vain. Neither could the boy's severed glans be located, for it disappeared as mysteriously as the old crone.

Never again would Pedro be taunted and teased about being "Pisot". Where there was once amusement, he now detects respect in his classmates' eyes. And pity, he suspects. He would never be whole again, but he would always be brave.

* * *

Somewhere deep in the forest, the old woman cradled Pedro's severed glans in her hand. It was still warm, although now devoid of blood. This blood now stains her hands, but she doesn't care. Whispering a few words into the ether, she presses the faintly-glowing glans into her mouth, and starts to chew.

A small but discernible change takes effect. Her hair seems a bit darker, her wrinkles a bit less wrinkled, and her posture a little less stooped. She turns to face her assistants. "He was filled with courage," she explained. Suddenly twenty years younger, she flicks through her ebony hair and continues.

"And he fills me with youthful vitality."

This would only be the beginning.

THE END

of Pisot

This is a fictional story. Any similarities to any person, places, and events, except the background information stated herein is intended.

This is my second effort. Comments and criticism much appreciated. Please don't send spam.