We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,67
ME HERE. He remained a good judge of character to the end. When Dwyane first came around, Bubba was apprehensive. One day, two full years into our relationship, the three of us were in the park and Bubba jumped up on the table where D was sitting. Bubba looked D in the eye, just like he’d done to me that morning under the bed. Then Bubba leaned in to nuzzle him. He was saying, “I like this guy.”
From where I’m writing this, I can see Bubba’s giant paw print in plaster. Yes, I really am that dog person. When he was twelve, he was given a year to live. By the grace of modern medicine and my pocketbook, we were able to keep him alive until he was thirteen. At one point we were thinking about getting him a new kidney. You had to agree to adopt the kidney-donor dog and commit to flying your sick dog up to UC Davis. Like I said, I’m that dog person. But we decided Bubba was old and it would all be too much to put two dogs through. When he finally passed, my whole circle went into mourning. If you knew Bubba, you loved Bubba.
When I call upon my ancestors and people who’ve passed to get me through something, I talk to him, too.
He saw me at my worst and my meanest, and he loved me anyway.
thirteen
WARNING: FAMOUS VAGINAS GET ITCHY, TOO
Dwyane and I are alone in the car outside the Walgreens in Miami.
“Just go in there,” I say.
“Nope.”
“You know what I use,” I say. “You’re in and out.”
“You do it.”
The subject is, of course, tampons, which I do not want to buy. Whenever I am in the feminine care section of any pharmacy, no matter how incognito I go, it’s like an alert goes out. “Attention customers, Gabrielle Union has her period. Go say hi!”
Because if he goes in, yeah, he gets swarmed, but the response is “What a catch! He buys his wife tampons!” If I go in, whether it’s a light day or it seems like I’ve been shot in my vagina, that intimate knowledge is sought out. Having knowledge about someone tending to her vagina is like sneaking a Playboy. “I saw Gabrielle Union buying tampons!” I’m a bleeding spectacle.
So you can imagine how unprepared I was when I suspected I had a yeast infection. ’Cause you know how loaded that is. Women aren’t allowed to just get yeast infections as, say, part of the body’s natural defense mechanism. We have to have caused it in some way—by wearing our underwear too tight, not changing our tampons often enough. Men can have jock itch for days and never once have to explain why.
I felt the first twinge while I was on a late-night flight to visit a guy I was dating before I married D. Let’s call him Bachelor 1. B1 was extremely hung, and at the time he was sharing a beach house with his huge penis in Miami. The plan was that I would get to his place Friday night and he would arrive the next morning. This is also a guy who didn’t believe women pooped, so a “Hey, shucks, I have a yeast infection” conversation was out of the question.
“Get thee to a CVS,” I told myself upon landing.
It was about 1:00 A.M. by the time I stashed my bags at his place and set out for the 24-7 drugstore on Miami Beach. Here’s what’s great about a pharmacy by the beach in the middle of the night: nothing. It is teeming. Full. You think you are going to find it hopping with horny teens buying condoms, but it’s a drunk in every aisle, white boys trying to figure out which cold medicines will make them higher, and, here and there, a crying girl hobbling along on one heel, looking for flip-flops. And in this particular outpost, one Gabrielle Union, trying to score some Monistat under cover of night.
I marched in, determined to be a grown woman seeing to her over-the-counter vaginal cream needs. I was about three steps in when, I swear, every head in the place turned. My eyes darted to a display by the register.
“Twizzlers!” I said, striding over and picking up that bag like it was just the thing I was after and I couldn’t believe my luck.
The guy at the register was a heavyset twenty-something who the managers probably thought looked intimidating enough to work the night shift. “Just