Dating : The Recipe

A Simple Story about Hemorrhoid Cream

Meth was the best thing to happen to homemade hemorrhoid cream since hemorrhoids were invented, Aunt T’d proclaim time and again as she crushed tiny, red pills with her pestle. Meth and Kim K.

Before meth, that real pseudo-ephedrine was easy to come by. But no one could get the fake kind — the kind that doesn’t do nothing for your cold, but does make hemorrhoids shrink faster than a bull’s balls in a blizzard. Aunt T’s cream, she called it Blue Ridge Gold, relied on that fake kind.

Before Kim K, people who used Aunt T’s cream just used it for their hemorrhoids. A few knew that weird beauty trick, but in the hills here not many folks cared much about appearances; mostly, ‘round here, people wanted to find food, or work, or meth, or all three.

But, since Kim K, beyond the borders of our little redneck mountainside haven, everyone was clamoring for Aunt T’s Blue Ridge Gold. I got her sellin’ it on Amazon — in three years, it got 357 reviews and 4.5 stars.

The cream’s been in her family for generations; her momma gave her the recipe which had been given to her momma by her momma and so on and so on. It was a secret kind of concoction. So secret, even after decades of bein’ a-back of her while she mixed it up, I only figured out a couple of the ingredients.

For a good while, she’d talked about teaching me the recipe. She didn’t have any of her own kids anymore — one died blowing his skinny ass up cooking meth; the other…well, she’d run off with some dealer some time ago. We’d heard from a bunch of unreliable sources that she and the dealer were out in L.A. living in a car or under a bridge. Didn’t matter — Aunt T’d done written that child off years before anyway, and she held no grief about her son ‘cuz he was nothing more than an “egg-sucking dog.” Her words, not mine.

Used to be, before the meth and the Kim K video, Aunt T made the hemorrhoid cream as her momma taught her. Wild chamomile and winterbloom were the only two ingredients I knew for sure were in there, cuz, back then, she’d paid me a penny for each blossom I brought home.

Don’t get me wrong, she never stopped using chamomile and winterbloom. She said they kept the the FDA off her back and the aging Gen Xers, feel-good earthy types, and those “selfie-addled hussies” coming back. But, a few years back, she did go and fiddle with the recipe. She gave it a “power boost,” she said, by using the over-the-counter sinus meds that came available once everyone figured out that whole sudafed/meth recipe.

“Shit may not work on your nose,” she’d say, “but they sure as fire work where I need ’em to.”

Like back in the day, when you could get those pseudo-ephedrine pills in bulk at Sam’s, we were bulk ordering phenylephrine every week. No one seemed to care. Ain’t nothing to use those pills for, anyway, aside from her cream, I reckoned.

There weren’t much to the cream operation. Just me helping to jar the stuff and ship it out after Aunt T finished cooking it and testing it. “So clean,” she’d always yell, “she could eat it.” And she did. Every batch she made, she took a taste of before trying a bit on her own hemorrhoids — quality control, she called it.

I never did have hemorrhoids, but I couldn’t very well set up to learn about making the cream without tryin’ it. So after taking a taste like Aunt T, I did like Kim K’s make-up artist did in that YouTube video — the one that got Aunt T making real money — and dang if it weren’t the workingest cream I ever did try.

Sunset the night before she got ready to show me what she did to make the cream, she sat me down and got out the good whiskey. She poured a glass for herself and gave me about two fingers worth. She pulled out a pen knife and told me to drink fast and give her my hand.

We’re already blood so I couldn’t’a said that I was for certain expecting this, but I knew she was gonna cut me for some reason. And she did — right along my life line. I hollered, I don’t mind saying, and I swore up one side of the house and down the other. Aunt T just laughed, drank her glass of whiskey, and cut her own palm. Then she stopped laughing and told me to hush, grabbed my cut hand with her cut hand and squeezed. And, as she did that, her brown eyes bore into mine so fiery and fierce for a tick of a second I figured she was about to put me down.

“There ain’t no one in this god forsaken hill community that I trust other’an you,” she said. “You swear on your skin this recipe will not leave your lips till you are plumb give out or fixin’ to die, you get me, girl?”

At this, and the throbbing burn my hand was feeling, I could only say “Yes’m.”

Aunt T gave me one last eyeful, squeezed my hand till it nearly split, and then let go. Her chair squawked as she leaned back and picked up the bottle of whiskey. She filled my glass to the top, bless her heart, then her own, lifted it to clink with mine, and started to chuckle.

“What ya’ll tickled ‘bout?” I asked before I clinked her glass.

“Girl, you looked so wearied pert-near no chance you ain’t gonna need that cream for yer ass now.”

Aunt T took a gulp from her glass and then laughed so hard she near fell off her chair.

Next day, she taught me the recipe. Then, that night, she said, was the first night since before she’d had that fool of a husband a hers that she didn’t need the cream for herself. But me, couldn’t say if it were from crushing all those tiny red pills or from the burden of knowing the recipe was in my hands, but I was tore up, and, that night, I sure as hellfire used that cream as nature intended.