John Wayne Bobbitt had all of his toes amputated recently, but told The Post the loss is nowhere near as devastating as when his wife cut off his penis in 1993.
“Now that was trauma,” he tells the Post from his Florida home.
“I was 26 years old when I lost my penis. I didn’t even want to live when that happened, until the doctor put it back on. The toes aren’t nearly as traumatic.”
Bobbitt, now 57, became an international sensation in the 90s when his then-wife, Lorena, cut off his member with a sharp kitchen knife as he slept.
It was later re-attached by doctors, but the shocking incident made him a pop-culture fixture.
Bobbitt was also keen to show the world his reattached member and went on to perform in three adult movies — which became the fastest-selling porn movies of all time.
After all the trauma he’s been through, former Marine Bobbitt can joke about his most recent dismembering.
“At least I don’t have to wash between my toes in the shower,” he jokes.
“That’s the bright side, I guess.”
Bobbitt recently had to have his toes taken off after a diagnosis of toxic peripheral polyneuropathy from being exposed to contaminated water at the Camp Lejeune military training facility in the late 80s.
He told The Post he had substantial nerve damage in his toes, and he also feels numbness in his fingers and now walks with a pronounced limp and has to wear special prosthetic shoes for balance.
Bobbitt also showed The Post documentation he suffers from neurological issues — including memory loss, concentration issues, and inability to read social cues.
He is part of a class action suit against the US government, which has accepted liability and set aside more than $1 billion to pay out their victims. Bobbitt is just waiting for his cut.
Bobbitt believes he may have been suffering from neurological issues before the 1993 incident which made him famous, and his health problems may have contributed to the maiming.
“I wasn’t a great husband,” admits Bobbitt.
“I think the tainted water was part of that. Before that, I had never done drugs, gotten into trouble. But I was exposed to those chemicals by drinking highly contaminated water. And I made stupid mistakes.”
For instance, Bobbitt says, he presented his then wife with a sexy teddy for Christmas in front of her family.
“She closed the box, and I was saying, ‘show it to everyone. Let everyone see! It’s a great color!’ I didn’t realize that I was being inappropriate. And I think that was hard for her.”
Bobbitt told The Post he was young and brash at the time of the penis-cutting incident and Lorena thought he was cheating on her — although he swears he wasn’t.
Days before the incident, he had been riding his bicycle when a woman hit him with her car. When she came to the house to replace the damaged bike, Lorena flew into a rage.
After mutilating him, Lorena drove off, panicked, to her boss’s house, throwing the severed appendage in a field.
A panicked Bobbitt sat on the bed of the Virginia apartment they shared, bleeding profusely from the crotch and wondering if he was going to survive.
But Bobbitt’s luck changed when two police officers stumbled across his penis and packed it in ice.
Doctors reattached Bobbitt’s salvaged penis in a nine-hours surgery.
Days later, Bobbitt called his parents to tell him about his first erection.
“My mother answered the phone and I told her that I had an erection,” he says.
“She said, ‘I don’t want to hear about that. Talk to your father.'”
The incident also marked the end of their marriage.
Lorena claimed that John had raped and beaten her on multiple occasions, and that she had “snapped.”
John went on trial for marital rape, but was found not guilty.
Lorena was later tried for the attack, but acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.
They went their separate ways, and rarely speak.
“She said in court that I ripped out her vagina,” Bobbitt says, “but really, I think I ripped out her heart. I had gotten a job at a nightclub. She didn’t like all the women I met … She always thought I was cheating. And she decided to lash out at me.”
Lorena did not return texts and calls from The Post.
Bobbitt is currently single, but is still open to finding love, saying he’s looking for someone “traditional.”
He said: “I’m not dating right now. I’m working on myself and getting my medical and legal stuff done. I’m waiting for a traditional woman.
“Modern-day women are broken and have a lot of baggage and problems. Those kinds of women take a lot of work, you have to go to a psychiatrist to deal with them.
“I need a proper woman who was raised by her parents and grandparents. I need a strong woman.”
