The real inner conflict resides in the body.

When I was in high school, I had a dream that continues to haunt me. I was in a house comprised of all hallways. All the rooms were long and narrow and gloomy and painted this awful, dingy, nauseous green. I navigated the hallways until I found the kitchen, another hallway, though this one was lined with kitchen appliances and cabinets. All sick and green. I began to open the doors to microwave, dishwasher, oven... and out of each tumbled a full-grown, naked man. They were beautiful-- white-skinned and dark-haired. Well-muscled. And significant quantities of some milky fluid burbled out of the appliances as they lurched forward from their tucked and cambered postures. And blood. Needless to say (or maybe needful, I don't know), all the men were dead. As is often the case in my dreams, I felt screams well up in my chest, but I just couldn't scream. This non-screaming happened here. And so, in lieu of screaming, I found a scabby-looking screen door at the end of the kitchen-hallway and I banged through it, barely breathing. I found myself on a big expanse of a beach, a swollen, tumescent sky above. I ran to the water, hoping to wash off the blood and fluid that had spilled all over me in the kitchen, but I found more of these beautiful dead men washing up onto the shore. The entire ocean was amniotic and cloudy. I don't suppose I've ever had a dream in which I've felt that level of terror-- before or since.

The imagery of this dream does not strike me as particularly subtle. Though I was probably only about 14 or 15-- and still miserably virginal-- it's clear as day that I was already feeling some anxiety about birthing babies. Dead bleached-out corpses, falling from narrow openings amidst assorted bodily fluids? Yeah, they are tough to miss, my still-born sons. Next week, I'll be 31 and my worries about using my body to produce children have shifted a little. It's not so much a horror show of death and blood anymore-- and more about a simpler vanity, I suppose. I still get carded virtually every time I buy alcohol-- and though I find this ridiculous, as I most certainly look older than 21-- I must admit that I kinda like the fact that all my body parts are still in the right places. I must also admit that I LOVE the social cache that my body parts being in the right places afford me. God help me, I love male attention. Preferably, male attention of my own choosing, but even less desirable male attention is nice, so long as it doesn't cross boundaries. And I worry, to an embarrassing degree, that all that will dry up when I get that post-baby belly-sag and breast-droop. I worry about it so much that I'm finding it difficult to apply language to the thought. And I'm shuddering a little to think of it.

Now, the irony here doesn't escape me. I spend an awful lot of time thinking about sex-- how to get it and what it means, why it's such a powerful force and how it's a filter for virtually everything in my life. And so, I find this insane bodily tug-of-war--- between the ways our bodies goad us into reproducing and a real physical tremulousness at the actual prospect of birthing a baby-- pretty funny. Surely, it's totally stupid that I have such a massive libido and also so much trepidation regarding the natural effects of indulging said libido. But whatever. No human drive is ever simple.

I bring all this up now because, a few weeks ago, I watched a little film called Stephanie Daley, and I found it so difficult to watch that I haven't been able to write about it since. Now, very few films make me squeamish (unless it's got vomit in it, and I feel like I've covered my vomit issues aplenty in this blog). On the list of films that have gotten to me is probably Requiem for a Dream (I really did have to fast forward through the gang-bang-followed-by-vomit scene-- give me exploding track-marks any day!) and well, Four Rooms-- though this is back to vomit again (there's no goddamn WARNING!!!). But in all honesty, I was really on the verge of fast-forwarding though a long, brutal sequence of this film. I managed to weather it, but it's tough, I'm telling you.

The basic story is about a 16-year-old girl and her shrink. The shrink is hugely pregnant and, we learn, found herself in such a state very shortly after suffering a still birth. The girl stands accused of murdering her baby while claiming to not have known she was pregnant in the first place. In many ways, it's clear that the writer/director, Hilary Brougher, drew inspiration from some sensational headline or other. But, ultimately, it's a story of two women dealing with the flip-sides of the birthing conundrum: when you don't want it, it comes so easily, to the detriment of your whole life-- and when you pine for it, it eludes you in the most painful way possible. It's a thoughtful exploration of quiet aches and particularly female aches they are.

However. My goodness. There is a scene in this film. It's pretty much muted out and you get only brief smatterings of sound. It's shot primarily through the gaps around the door of a public bathroom stall. And it's all close-ups of this girl's face while she's giving birth into the leg of her ski-pants. If you ever want to know what it feels like to have your guts ripped out through your vagina, please consult Amber Tamblyn's face during this scene. Her confusion, her physical pain, her utter all-alone-ness are palpable in the most disturbing way. Since when does the sheer emotion on the face of another human make me turn away in the same way that a puke scene would? Well, it's never happened until this film, during which I found my own head buried in my sofa pillows. I can only assume this is the case because the idea of forcing a kid out of my own body engenders no small amount of anxiety in my person-- as foretold by my scary dream.

For all you girls who've done it? Good god. You're all my heroes-- though I'm still not sure if I'll ever wanna be you.