Gabrielle Union opened her eyes, having trained herself to wake the instant the sun crept over the horizon. She stretched across her linen-wrapped divan and looked over at Marcus Aurelius, who had returned from the dead in order to read to her while she ate breakfast.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” she had asked when he appeared carrying her perfectly poached eggs and six roasted asparagus spears last March.
“Please,” he said, raising his hand dismissively. “It was nothing. I would cross more than the river Styx to watch you get ready in the morning.”
Gabrielle Union laughed a low, musical laugh, and a group of snow-white storks stopped in the middle of their migration to Norway to build a nest atop her chimney in the hope of hearing that laugh again.
“What do you want to do today, Gabby?” Marcus asked. “Cure something? Develop an all-female version of Julius Caesar for the Pasadena Playhouse? Check on your polar bear-red panda hybrids in the Arctic Greenhouse Pods? Watch Being Mary Jane with the sound off and do funny voices for all the characters who aren’t you?”
Gabrielle Union pursed her lips decisively, and somewhere cosmetologist Bobbi Brown felt ice enter her heart before falling to the ground. “No,” she said firmly. “Today I want to invent a wine.”
“But, Gabby –” Marcus began. Gabrielle held up her hand.
“Marcus, today I invent wine.”
He inclined his head gently. “What kind of wine will you invent.”
She unfolded her perfect limbs from the divan and paced around the room. “Chardonnay. Pear Chardonnay. And I want women to drink it while wearing those long sweater things, you know, the thick cashmere kind that are sort of cut flatteringly against the hips and you can wear them over leggings or even like a shift, you know what I mean…”
“Sweater dresses?”
“Right. Sweater dresses. I want women to wear sweater dresses and sit on ivory couches and drink it out of incredibly clean fishbowls and I want it to taste like a meteor that’s been snatched out of the coldness of space and cracked open to reveal its pure, sweet, molten heart that’s been untouched by light or by heat since its birth in a star.”
“…birth…in a star,” Marcus muttered, trying to take notes as quickly as Gabrielle was talking. “And what shall people call this wine of yours?”
“Vanilla Puddin.”
“Vanilla Pudding?”
“Puddin. No G.”
“Puddin’ with an apostrophe?”
“No. No apostrophe. It’s not “pudding” with a g dropped from the end, it’s Puddin. It’s its own word. Puddin. People will get it.”
Gabrielle looked out the window, and her eyes were as cold and as old as a mountain of granite. “People will get it.”
[Image via Essence]
Tags: friend fiction, gabrielle union, perfect women, please go buy gabrielle union’s new wine and tell me if you like it, wine inventors
Words cannot express the gladness that swelled in my heart when this appeared in my timeline among a bunch of people arguing about Buzzfeed, like a beacon of hope in a world torn asunder by 140-character attempts at nuance.
Wait is this real? I ask because I was burned by the bitcoin model train article (I fall asleep at night, crying and clutching the title photo of that man riding his train set) and I am weirdly interested in drinking this wine and don’t want to be laughed at when I ask for it at the liquor store.
Oh god the google tells me it is real. I’m still pretty sure I’ll be laughed at though, not that it will stop me.
REAL AND PERFECT
I am going to get a sweater dress to match hers, and drink it while lounging on my couch
I’d give up sobriety for the “taste like a meteor that’s been snatched out of the coldness of space and cracked open to reveal its pure, sweet, molten heart that’s been untouched by light or by heat since its birth in a star.”
This sentence feels like the beginning of an alternate medieval fantasy novel.
Delightful! How does she not age?
I thought it was Neutrogena
I choose to believe that if I am a good person and live a pure, honest life, Gabrielle Union will appear to me someday in a blaze of glory and take me away to her house where we’ll wear sweater dresses and drink wine in enormous pristine glasses forever.
“Rejoice, oh highly favored daughter!”
My soul shall laud and magnify Gabrielle Union,
And my spirit shall rejoice in her, my goddess.
For she has regarded the lowliness of her handmaiden;
For behold, from henceforth; all generations shall call me blessedly drunk.
For she that is Gabrielle
has done wonderful things for me;
and glorious is her name.
(Showing mercy to generations, scattering the proud, pulling down the mighty from their seat with the strength of her right hand, etc, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat)
But now I just want a bottle of wine to be filled with real actual vanilla pudding. Or tapioca, I don’t know. Pudding in a bottle needs to happen now.
In Holland it comes in milk cartons!
Check on your polar bear-red panda hybrids in the Arctic Greenhouse Pods?
OMG OMG OMG
red pandas are the cutest things that have ever
It’s kind of a 5 year goal of mine to go to a zoo where I can pay at least $100 to feed one. There’s one in the UK and another in NZ.
This was delightful.
But pear chardonnay. Holy Shit Gabrielle, that is gross.
I’d genuinely rather be sober than drink a wine that is in any way associated with the phrase “vanilla puddin.'”
i bet it smells good but tastes like nail polish remover
I will try it if it retails under $15. I SHALL KEEP MY EYE OUT.
I will try it if it retails under $15. I SHALL KEEP MY EYE OUT.
It’s got to be better than Qream at least
I can guarantee this is true and I haven’t even tried the wine yet.
I can guarantee this is true and I haven't even tried the wine yet.