When midlife goes wild

Here’s what my life has been lately: cigarette smoking, drinking, freak dancing, boyfriends sneaking in through the window, sexually provocative outfits, nooners in the back seats of cars during lunch break, sex on the couch while the rest of the house is sleeping.


Of course I am the mother of a teen and these things are to be expected, but ... I’m not talking about him! I’m talking about my fortysomething girlfriends and me.


I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but all I know is this: The kids are acting like kids and the adults are acting, well, like kids, too. I’m thinking it must be hormones — puberty for the kids and perimenopause for us. Plus throw in the Seasoned Woman and MILF factors, and the fact that we boomers refuse to age the way our parents did, and you’ve got all the makings of a mini-sexual rebellion. And it’s all happening behind our kids’ backs.


Of course, there’s an established pattern of sneakiness. When I was a teenager, I told my parents just enough so that I didn’t arouse suspicion, that fine line between telling them enough to assure them that I was a normal teen getting into a little bit of trouble but not the kind they’d have to bail out of jail. Now that I’m on this side, I realize parents — well, at least my fortysomething divorced friends — do the same. I’ve always thought parenting was mostly honesty with a bit of deception, manipulation and bribery thrown in. I didn’t realize how amped up it gets when you’re a single parent.


The first among us to cross the line was Mia, who met a slightly younger hottie at the cheese section of Trader Joe’s. There were sparks from the beginning, but there was that matter of her teenager. Fortunately, his bedroom was upstairs and hers was downstairs — perfect for sneaking her lover in and out, which she did for months until she was ready to introduce the two of them.


And even though my kid knows Sean — the single dad I see from time to time — I’m pretty sure Trent doesn’t want to acknowledge that Sean and I might know each other in that way.


After a recent party at which we’d had a drink or two, the plan was that Sean would spend the night; Trent would be asleep by the time we got home, and Sean would sneak out of my room before Trent woke up. So I was more than a bit miffed when we arrived home and a bleary-eyed Trent was still up, mindlessly watching bad late-night TV. What could I do? I tried to conceal my scowl as I made a “bed” on the couch, sent Trent to his room and started to get myself ready for bed.


Of course, I slipped out later and spent the night on the couch (my bedroom being too close to Trent’s) and snuck back into my room in the morning.


“Was last night weird for you?” I asked Trent the next day after we’d all shared breakfast and Sean left, praying that Trent hadn’t heard or seen anything.


“Well, it would have been if he, like, slept in your room or something,” he said.


I felt a bit smug that I hadn’t been busted, and amused that it didn’t even occur to his 14-year-old brain that we could just as easily have wild sex on the couch as in my bed.


Score: Mom, 1; kid, 0.


But even with all this randiness, there’s always something that brings you back down to reality and into your middle-aged place. Like the time Mia, Cindi and I headed into San Francisco for a night of clubbing in the Mission. Vinyl was playing at the Elbo Room. We were ready to dance.


“What are you doing?” I asked in shock as Cindi took a suspicious-looking slim white thing and a lighter out from her purse as I parked.


“I’m lighting up. Wanna hit?”

“Um, is that a joint?”

“No, silly. It’s a Camel. Want one?”


This is Midlife Gone Wild, I suppose. A cigarette is about as edgy as we’re going to get. I only had a moment’s hesitation. “Sure.”

So there we were, the three of us, two cigarettes among us, in my aging Ford Astrovan parked on a Mission District side street. (“What in the world did you do in here?” Trent demanded when I drove him to school two days later. “It reeks!”)


I hadn’t smoked in decades, and ... I got a nicotine high.


We giddily walked in the club. Vinyl was already on stage, and the place was packed. So was the upstairs bar, and we were parched.

“I’ll get us some drinks downstairs,” I told them as I took their drink orders. There was a crowd there, too, but eventually, vodkas and gins in hand, I made my way back upstairs ... only to run into a frantic Cindi.


“Mia’s fainted! She hit her head. Come quick.”


And there was Mia (who hadn’t eaten since breakfast and suffers from low blood pressure) still sprawled on the floor but slowly coming to, a big bloody bruise over her brow — and dozens of twenty- and thirtysomethings hovering over her. Mia’s pain was real; mine was just the pain of embarrassment.


I put our untouched drinks down, and, grabbing her left side while Cindi took the right, we walked her down the stairs and out of the club past the stares of even more young hipsters, feeling very much like the out-of-place fortysomethings that we are.


It was enough to keep me out of clubs for a while.


But the truth is, although I embrace being a responsible adult and dedicated mother, I don’t really want to fully grow up yet, despite the numbers that rack up as my birthdays come and go. I want to stay spontaneous and randy, provocative and experimentive, sassy and sexy. And I want others to see me that way, too. I don’t think there has to be an age limit to that.


Call me what you want: a rejuvenile, kidult, adultescent, middlescent, a grup — all newish terms to describe adults who want to recapture the rebellion and free-spiritedness of their childhood. I’ll embrace it.


But I’m definitely going to stay away from those damn cigarettes!