We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,14

see us.

Imagine five terrified fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls sitting in a waiting room, hugging our backpacks. There was a basket of condoms on a little side table by the door. As we waited for Julie, I was eyeing those condoms. And sitting in a Planned Parenthood waiting for my friend’s abortion to be over, I was still afraid of what the people working there would think if they saw me taking a condom.

Julie came out and we all hugged her. She didn’t cry, she just wanted to get on with her life. She led the way out the door, walking fast and with her eyes focused forward. I trailed behind, and in one fell swoop I dumped the entire basket of condoms into my bag.

No one called shotgun. We let Julie sit in the passenger seat. As soon as the car doors closed, I opened my bag to show everyone the condoms.

“Everyone take some,” I ordered.

They wouldn’t. Everyone was afraid of getting caught by their parents with condoms.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll hold them. But come to me, okay?”

That’s how it went. I became the condom dispensary, bringing them to school and to parties whenever I got the heads-up. Adults weren’t looking out for us. They assumed that we knew we could get pregnant and wouldn’t risk it by actually having sex. But even when you know better, it doesn’t mean you’re going to do better. That’s a lie parents tell themselves so they don’t have to admit their kids have sex. And they do. They will either live with fear and baggies and abortions, or live with knowledge and condoms.

My dad found my stash, of course, and flipped out.

“They’re for my friends,” I screamed. That didn’t help. I used the “What were you doing snooping in my room?” tactic, which actually worked for once. I think he was terrified.

These days, kids are mostly just honest with adults, which is just weird. I recently met a young woman in a teen empowerment seminar. “I told him I wanted to suck his dick so I sucked his dick,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”

Um, yeah . . . No?

Now, when I try to talk to our boys or I talk to young girls, here’s what I say:

“Are you ready to own your sexuality in a way that you can experience pleasure as well as give it? And be truly grown-up about it?”

But what kids are doing now, the way they process it and act on it, is so different. They would probably read Forever and it would be so pedestrian to them. “What kind of baby-book bullshit is this?”

But I see their “raw honesty” and I raise them.

“If you’re such good friends that you gave him a blow job,” I asked that one girl, “did he eat your pussy?”

“No,” she said, looking at her friends.

“Well, make sure he does that next time.”

“Okay.”

“And then have him eat your ass,” I said, “and see where that goes.”

“Whoa.”

“It’s called reciprocation. Otherwise, it’s a very unequal friendship. And I wouldn’t want that kind of friendship. If you’re gonna do it, then shit, really do it.”

I WANT PEOPLE TO MAKE INFORMED, JOYFUL CHOICES ABOUT SEX. Because I love sex. In the heyday of my twenties and thirties, I loved the variety. Now that I am married, I am in a monogamous relationship. But I used to think monogamy was for suckers who didn’t have options. “Some choose monogamy,” I would say, “but most people have it foisted upon them.”

I just didn’t see the point back then. I did, however, see the point in publicly declaring oneself to be in a monogamous relationship. It was never lost on me that society thinks a woman should be allotted one dick to use and she should be happy with it for the rest of her life. But I always saw sex as something to be enjoyed. Repeatedly. With as many different partners as possible.

In interviews I am often asked what sage advice I have to offer young women. I admit the advice I give in Redbook is different than what I tell people over drinks. There is a gorgeous, perfect, talented young actress who I talked to at a party a few weeks ago.

“Look, you can’t take your pussy with you,” I said. “Use it. Enjoy it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, until you run out of dicks. Travel to other countries and have sex. Explore the full range of everything, and feel zero shame. Don’t let society’s narrow scope about what