We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,68
these Twizzlers,” I said, scanning the candy display in case I had any other last-minute sugar needs.
“Are you . . .” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “How are you?”
“Do you want a bag?”
“No,” I said. “I’m good.”
Back in my car, I called a girlfriend on the West Coast. She always had an answer for everything. “Listen, I need to figure out a home remedy for a yeast infection.”
“Cranberry juice,” she said, not missing a beat. Dr. Quinn, Beverly Hills Medicine Woman. “Like, a boatload.”
“On it,” I replied. I waltzed right back into that CVS, waving hi to my register friend, as I pointed to the refrigerated section as if I had suddenly become parched. There were fifteen-ounce and sixty-four-ounce bottles of Cran-Apple, which I thought of as Regular and Maximum Strength. “Go big or go home,” I said to myself, grabbing the sixty-four with one hand.
“Thirsty,” I said to my register friend.
I drove back to B1’s house, guzzling the cranberry juice the whole way. I still felt that now familiar and becoming-more-intense-by-the-minute burning, so I called my Dr. Quinn again.
“911, what’s your emergency?” she said.
“When will it work?” I asked.
“You got a low-sugar one, right?”
“I got Cran-Apple.”
“Gab, that’s pure sugar. It will only make it worse!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I yelled. “I just drank a half gallon of the shit.” Malpractice!
“I think we need to try yogurt,” she said. “You got to get some yogurt up in there. It will help.”
“Stay with me,” I said. I ran to B1’s fridge and scanned the paltry bachelor contents.
“Okay!” I yelled, grabbing a Dannon vanilla. The flower of the vanilla plant beckoned me back to feminine health. “Doctor, I’ll call you back,” I said.
I wiggled out of my jeans and laid paper towels on the kitchen floor. Here goes nothing, I thought. I did my best, slathering the cold yogurt all around my vagina, but I couldn’t quite get it inside to where the action needed to be.
Still lying on the floor, I reached again for the phone.
“I can’t get it in,” I nearly screamed. “It’s too thick.” The irony of saying this in the home of big-dicked B1 was not lost on me.
“You can’t, like, spoon it in there?”
“No,” I said. “And I can’t make a syringe out of a ballpoint pen. I’m not freaking MacGyver.”
She paused, as if she were consulting her witchy book of spells. “You need to make a tampon kind of thing,” she said. “Suck the yogurt into a straw, insert it in like a tampon, and you can squeeze the yogurt up in there.”
I went through every drawer in the kitchen. “What grown-up keeps straws?” I asked.
“I don’t know your life,” she said.
“You now know more than most.”
“Well, go get one,” she said. “A big, wide one. Like the ones at McDonald’s.”
I now took my yogurt-covered vagina to the McDonald’s by the Delano that was open all night. Inside, there was a long line of the drunk people who weren’t at CVS, the ones who had consumed enough alcohol at 2:30 A.M. to give up on their diets and give in to their cravings for French fries. The Girl Scout in me felt like I had to wait in line and at least buy a drink, but soon enough people started to recognize me.
So I jumped off the line and went right to the straw dispenser. I ripped the paper off and held it to my eye like a pirate with a telescope. “That should do it,” I said aloud turning to see an employee stopping the work of sweeping to stare at me.
“Hi,” I said, a little too loudly, grabbing a second one to ensure the sterility of this new medical tool. “You have a nice night.”
While driving, I tried to calm my frayed nerves by imagining what that woman would tell her friends the next day. “Gabrielle Union was in here high as a kite looking for a coke straw!” Miraculously, this line of thinking did little to calm my frayed nerves.
Back at B1’s, I learned that sucking yogurt through a straw is a little tougher than you’d think. But I did it. And once again I lay on the floor to squeeze the yogurt in. Whether it was psychosomatic or just psycho, I immediately felt like it was working. I hit redial.
“Is this the Dannon help line?” I asked.
“Dannon?” she said. “I hope you used plain.”
“Shit, he only had vanilla.”
“Christ,” she said, laughing, “what is wrong with you?”