The Mohel of Mollusks
One day in September, I found myself performing what I was fairly certain were brises on some 70 unsuspecting clams.
GROWING UP A GUILT-RIDDEN CATHOLIC, I didn’t exactly have VIP access to a bris—let alone any training in the mechanics of this Jewish rite of passage. I don’t carry a scalpel in my knife kit. And I have no certification from any institution, religious or otherwise, that would entitle me to remove anything from anyone, much less from a clam.
And yet…for one traumatic day, I was the Mohel of Mollusks.
mohel noun /ˈmɔɪ.əl/ or /ˈmoʊ.əl/ plural: mohels or mohalim /ˌmɔː.hɑːˈliːm/ (from Hebrew מֹהֲלִים)
: a person, typically a Jewish man trained in both the religious and surgical aspects of brit milah (Jewish ritual circumcision), who performs the circumcision ceremony on a male infant, traditionally on the eighth day after birth.
It started, as these things often do, with a recipe. Jasper White’s Steamer Clam Chowder from New England, to be precise—a dish born of nostalgia, cream, and just enough bacon to stir ancestral guilt in both my Portuguese and Jewish-adjacent friends. I was testing the recipe, fiddling with proportions, when I stumbled upon the now-infamous instruction:
“Snip off and discard the siphons and the black, tough skin covering the siphons.”
Innocent enough, right?
Unless you’ve looked closely at a clam. Like, really looked. Medium soft-shell clams have… how do I say this? A certain appendage. It protrudes. It flops. It’s oddly disturbing. If you flick it with your finger, it shrinks back, scared. If Freud had been a fishmonger, he would’ve just pointed at a bucket of steamer clams, shouted, “The root of all neuroses,” and retired rich.
So there I was in our East Hampton rental in late September—The One and I had taken a much-needed break during the off-season—standing in front of a bowl of just-steamed clams, paring knife in hand, squinting at what looked for all the world like a chorus line of little bivalve penises. It was like a seafood-themed bachelorette party gone terribly, terribly wrong.
I hesitated.
Cook the Essay: New England Steamer Chowder
I had never given much thought to the sex life of clams. Or their anatomy. But suddenly, I felt deeply uncomfortable—like I was intruding on something intimate and unspoken. Was I actually snipping off their… you know? I’d eaten clams my whole life—fried, baked, broiled, grilled, steamed—but I’d never been asked to de-man them.
Which, of course, sent me spiraling into memory.
The only time I’ve ever attended a bris was in the early ’90s. I was dating a man named Bradley (names have been changed to protect the awkward), and we’d only been together about three weeks. He was charming in that Upper West Side way: earnest, lanky, emotionally available, and dressed like a Brooks Brothers catalog before midlife crisis.
A mutual friend—let’s call her Denise—had just had a baby and invited us to her son’s circumcision. This all took place in one of those aggressively white-brick Upper East Side buildings that looked like they were designed by an architect who specialized in mid-century sadness. When we arrived, the women were gathered in the kitchen and dining room, clinking wine glasses and rearranging platters of food from Eli Zabar. The men were cloistered in the bedroom with the baby and the mohel.
I think this separation might be tradition? Or trauma avoidance. Hard to say.
Anyway, Denise—YHWH, bless her irreverent soul—was neither particularly observant nor particularly solemn. She met us in the back stairwell with a smirk and handed over a brown paper bag.
“Fried calamari,” she said to me, being the token goy. “I thought it would be funny.”
And so we—Bradley, Denise, and I—stood in the service hallway of a kosher-adjacent bris, munching on non-kosher tentacles, preparing to witness a ceremony that, frankly, I wasn't sure I was emotionally equipped for.
The mohel did his thing. The baby cried. Cameras flashed. Everyone applauded. I don’t recall my penis ever getting a standing ovation, but, perhaps, I missed the moment.
Not surprisingly, Bradley and I lasted maybe two more weeks. Maybe.
But I thought of that moment—the squid rings, the hallway laughter, applause—as I stood over my pot of clams. Were these siphons truly culinary treyf? Were they just chewy nuisances? Or was I perpetrating some culinary genital mutilation?
Naturally, I consulted Professor Google.
Turns out, the gonads of the clam (yes, clams have gonads, go figure) are not in the siphon at all. They’re tucked safely on the opposite end, near the foot. That calmed me only slightly. I may not have been removing their actual reproductive organs, but I was definitely snipping something personal.
As if sucked into a wormhole, I was back on W. 57th Street, where I could hear my former therapist, David Lindsay, murmuring, “Let’s sit with the discomfort, David. Let’s explore what the clams represent to you.”
Duh! They represented EMOTIONAL EMASCULATION BY PEERS! And suddenly, I was sucked farther back in time to my juinor-high gym shower, the object of ridicule of the jocks in my class, spiraling into shame and inadequacy and the inevitable, autonomic shrinkage.
Still, I pressed on. I followed the instructions—removing the black sheath, snipping the siphons—and did my best to avoid looking at the other clams, lest they have eyes hidden among the viscera. Meanwhile, The One was in the other room choosing music and trying to figure out how to light a fire in the ancient fireplace without burning down the rental.
And speaking of ancient, the stove in that house was some sort of relic from a previous era. A hulking, black, professional-style beast that required lighting the pilot with a match. A MATCH! I put stoves that need to be ignited right up there with questionable pressure cookers as one of the worst ways to die in the kitchen.
Every time I struck a match, I flinched as if I were defusing a bomb. Then came the sound—that deep, terrifying WHOOMP of ignition that rattled the copper pots overhead. Even on the lowest setting, the stove managed to output a three-inch ring of fire that could have fit nicely into Dante’s nine circles. And hot? I broke out into a man-opause sweat, drenching my pits and my sizable cleavage.
Our friends Jeffrey and Carlos joined us for dinner that night. I remember we had a few bottles of a lovely Albariño and a crusty boule from Carissa's Bakery. I served the clam chowder, ladled with care, topped with a spritz of chopped parsley and a scrunch of black pepper. I watched all three of them as they ate.
No one said a word. No one paused. No one raised a suspicious eyebrow or made a face. Apparently, they were blithely unaware of my mass mutilation of the mollusks.
And yes, the chowder was incredible. Texture? Perhaps marginally more refined. Slightly less like chewing the end of a number 2 pencil. And visually? Yes, it was definitely less… profane. But it lacked something.
There’s something appealingly unapologetic about a whole steamer clam. That chewy texture? It’s part of the experience. It’s briny, it’s old-school, it’s proud and decidedly clammy. So while Mr. White may call for siphon removal in the name of texture, I, David Leite, respectfully dissent.
I defiantly served my chowder uncut and trauma-free. Clams the way God—and possibly Poseidon—intended.
Chow,
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Your funniest yet! I will blast it around on Notes.
I don't think women really appreciate the attachment and horror of de-attachment that men have for their relevant parts. That's a shame. We probably need more empathy towards them.
Fun post, however. As are all you memories of your past life.