We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,69
yogurt vagina, “is a very fair question.”
The absurdity of the whole night washed over me and I finally laughed. I was so scared of being judged for being a woman with a yeast infection that I was willing to put myself through any number of humiliations. I waltzed into a CVS, twice, and never left with what I needed. I stole a straw from McDonald’s in the middle of the night! All to avoid my register friend knowing. I resolved that that would be the last night I found myself lying on some guy’s kitchen floor shoving yogurt up my hoohah. I would live a more authentic life.
To a point. B1 rolled up the next morning, and he greeted me with a kiss.
“I ate your yogurt,” I blurted out, trying very hard to seem not at all suspicious.
“Okaaaay,” he said.
“I ate it,” I said. “Just ate it.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. Which I was. I mean, what else does one do with yogurt?
fourteen
GROWN-ASS-WOMAN BLUES
We are the ladies who lunch.
I have two girlfriends around my age, Michelle and Gwen, who I meet every few months or so for lunch when I am in Los Angeles. We are grown-ass women, and we are the only ones who understand each other’s grown-ass problems.
“I apologize in advance for looking like a robot,” I said when I came to the table at our last gathering. “I threw my neck out dancing.”
“How?” asked Gwen.
“I tried to whip my hair back.”
You see? Grown-ass problems.
“At least you’re having fun,” Michelle said, with Gwen silently nodding. They are both single, Gwen newly so after a twelve-year marriage. Michelle is awesome, but she never found anyone. That’s the word she uses: “Anyone.” Not even “the right guy.” She is fun, and smart, and pretty, and she told me she feels invisible when she goes out. She sees what happens to the women her age who fight against invisibility to try to stand out. The ones who raid their daughters’ closets or the ones who try so hard to lead a boisterous Real Housewives camera-ready life with a steady supply of booze. They at least draw attention, if fleeting, but Michelle doesn’t want that. She’s stuck, because if she does what comes natural to her and keeps it low key, guys won’t even notice her. But if she shows she wants a relationship, men will flee.
“I have to act like I don’t want it,” she told me, “and then act surprised when it doesn’t happen.”
Meanwhile, Gwen is hot as hell and knows it. She got out of her marriage and went right to the bars. But that doesn’t mean the puzzle isn’t complicated for her as well.
“The men our age won’t look at me,” she said. “And I’m this weird science experiment for younger guys, chasing older pussy.”
Single or partnered, successful or striving, we grown-ass women of the world share the feeling that we’re all in an experiment that no one is particularly interested in watching except us. I see us all grasping at the straws of staying present in our lives and families and careers. Who knows how we will fare? I can only speak to my experience, so that is what I will do. To wit: Can an actress age in Hollywood and continue to work? All previous research has shown the answer to be a hearty NO, but it seems for my peers that so far, we are working way more than then we did in our twenties. But it’s the opposite for my nonactor friends as they get older. Their competition for new jobs is younger people who make less and don’t have families that they have to take off for. Oh shit, they say, we’re those people that we pushed out. Women are told to “lean in.” Yeah, right. “Lean in so I can push you over.”
At lunch, Michelle told us about “the new black” at her company. “She’s young and dope,” she said. “And she’s talking to me about dating. I’m like, ‘Fuck you and your dating problems. You’re me twenty years ago when I used to get dick.’”
We all nodded, except me, on account of my neck. I kind of moved forward.
“I have no patience for her,” she said.
“That’s because even though there are all these things that are supposed to be marked against her,” said Gwen, “her skin color, the fact that she’s a woman—none of that matters next to the fact that you’re older. She gets your spot.”