“How did that change your life?” Coach asked me after my performance.
“Excuse me?”
“Did you get her guy?” she asked. “Did you get her job? Is your house bigger now?”
I looked down at the ground, completely called out.
“What positive happened in your life because you tore this woman down?” she asked. “And, by the way, you showed exactly how much power she has over you because you spent an hour talking about her to a roomful of people.”
I realized what I had been doing. When you’re in a place where you don’t know what makes you happy, it’s really easy to be an asshole. I put other people’s pain on my Happy List.
I went home that night, and sure enough, my house was not bigger for tearing that woman down. Bubba came to greet me and we sat in the living room.
“I’m trying, Bubba,” I said. “You weren’t always perfect, either.”
Bubba was in fact a terror until he was two and a half, a whirling dervish of energy. My husband and I were with him in the park when we realized we needed to have him trained. A little boy was calling to him, so Bubba ran down an incline at full speed. His legs got away from him and he rolled into the kid like a bowling ball. The kid’s mom thought it was funny, thank God, but then, as the boy was on the ground, Bubba sniffed him and then peed on him.
The first time we worked with a dog trainer, he bit the trainer. Which was a blessing, because that led me to trainers at a ranch that bills itself as the Disneyland of dog parks. They helped Bubba become the best dog in the history of dogs.
He changed. So could I.
AFTER MY ESSENCE SPEECH, THE MEDIA LATCHED ON TO THE MEAN-GIRL narrative of what I was saying. They missed the point, because it’s not like I was some kid slamming people into lockers or spreading rumors about a sophomore. I was talking about being a woman. It’s not like you age out of bullshit. It just sort of shape-shifts.
Because I was a mean woman, I can spot them. Game recognizes game, right? You encounter them every day if you work with other people, period. Whether you’re a teacher, a lawyer in a large firm, or a stay-at-home mom. There is an epidemic now of people “being real” when they’re being anything but. It’s the person who loves being “someone” who notices every little thing wrong with what you say, do, wear, or think, and has to point it out. Those mean women, and mean men, affect people’s opportunities and experiences, at work or with their children.
When I see negative comments about me online, if I have time I will go down the rabbit hole of social media to see how great the life of the troll really is. Because you never know, maybe they’re right. Maybe they have something to teach me or for me to aspire to. I’ve done it countless times, Instastalking, Twitter stalking. Never once have I learned something from someone who talked shit. If anything, it’s “Baby, you really don’t want to put a bull’s-eye on your back.” But so many people really love the attention they get by trolling. It’s a temporary cure for their invisibility.
The problem is, there’s always an audience for negativity. There could be someone with a bullhorn screaming, “I’ve got a beautiful script here that gives a deeper insight into the human experience.” And few in a crowd would pause. And then someone says “I’ve got Jennifer Lawrence’s nudes,” and a line will form. Negativity and the exploitation of other people’s pain drive so much of our culture and conversation.
I know that, but I can still get caught up in my feelings. Recently I had an absolute complete meltdown over something said about me online. It was a castoff of a line, a joke the woman posted to get “oh the shade” likes and eyeballs. But I became fixated on it, imagining what I would say to her if she said it to my face, and knowing she never ever would.
I was with a friend when I saw it and held up my phone for her to see the post. I was full of “get this bitch” bravado, but she took my forearm and gently lowered it. Looking me in the eye, she said: “An empress does not concern herself with the antics of fools.”
She smiled, so I smiled. That kindness, one empress to another, one woman to another, released me from the bullshit.
BUBBA DESERVES A CODA, BECAUSE HE’S THE ONE WHO GOT 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.