A L S O++T O D A Y

Sensuous film moments for the sleepy
By the Salon staff
A guide to fast-forwarding to the most sensuous moments on film

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T A B L E++T A L K

Circumcision: Are you foreskin or against it? Join the debate in Table Talk's Mothers

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R E C E N T L Y

The price of eggs in America
By Cynthia Joyce
Which comes first, the donor or the egg?
(03/05/98)

Second Thoughts
By Sallie Tisdale
High school doesn't need to be fixed; it needs to be reinvented
(03/04/98)

Sexual harassment law: Relax and try to enjoy it
By Laura Green
Despite its occasional excesses, sexual harassment law has improved the workplace
(03/03/98)

The silence is deafening
By Jonathan Broder
Anne Northup asks why her Democratic sisters are letting President Clinton off the hook
(03/03/98)

Giving experts the Big Slammu
By Beth Levine
No rest for the expert weary
(03/02/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

BY KATE MOSES | My name is Kate and I have a problem.

I can't return videos on time. Not only that, but I usually don't even watch them. Sometimes I rent two or three at a time, thinking, Sure, this time I'll watch them, I can lick this thing, I'll watch 'em all and then I'll swing by the video store on the way back from the dry cleaner or from picking up the kids from ballet. But something happens to me: I start feeling so sleepy, and I know I want to watch "Rebecca" again or finally see "Jerry Maguire," but I get so scared that I'll start and I just won't be able to stop, and then the baby will wake up an hour later and the next day my head will be pounding and I'll barely be able to function. Or I think, I'm going to get halfway through "The Return of Martin Guerre" and I'm going to fall asleep and I'll never find out who he was. So I bring the videos home because I just can't stop myself, but I never open the boxes and I can't bear to take them back unwatched.

It wasn't always like this. My husband and I -- we had a happy marriage. Went to a lot of movies, had a VCR in the bedroom and another in the living room. It was fine before the baby was born. Sometimes we'd watch movies back to back. I remember once we rented "Fanny and Alexander" and "Giant," and we took the tapes back the next morning and picked up "Lawrence of Arabia"! And now? My husband doesn't have a problem. He can stay awake through two, three movies, but to help me out he quit renting movies cold turkey. He's asked me so many times to stop.

"Please," he pleads, "we have cable. You never stay awake anyway. If you do it again, I don't know what I'll do." I can hear the desperation in his voice, and I feel so ashamed. Sometimes I'll even see the videos I rented stacked by the front door, snapped into their dark plastic cases where my husband left them so I wouldn't forget to take them back, and I just walk right on by.

"Here," he says, another time, "I bought you your favorite movies. Here's 'The Piano.' Here's 'Blue.' Here's something with Judy Davis in it. Here's that French one with the dead baby." He piles the video boxes on top of each other, barely containing his frustration. "You can watch these over and over. You can fall asleep in the middle and it won't matter, because they're yours now. No. More. Late. Fees." He looks at me, trying to get me to make eye contact. I try, I really try.

The crisis came after he found the "Gumby for President" tape hidden under the mattress in Zachary's room. "What's this?" he bellowed, pounding down the hall, holding the tape box almost over his head. Tucked into the box's plastic sleeve was a crinkled yellow paper -- an ancient receipt from a video store across town, a store he didn't even know I had a membership for.

"It was bad enough when it was just you," he nearly sobbed, slumped in a dining room chair, his head in his hands. "But now you've involved the children ..."

And that's why I'm here. Because I know the only way out of this hell hole I've dug for myself is to admit I have no control over this ... disease. Maybe it's chemical, maybe it was my crummy childhood -- I don't know, but I do know I can't watch a whole movie no matter how much I want to. I have to take this one scene at a time. So they might as well be good ones.
SALON | March 6, 1998