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 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?”
“That,” I said, peering down at my 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.