After the Divorce - Rediscovering Sex

This is my second article about The Posse, a trio of hip, funny, attractive divorced moms living on the North Shore. To read my first post introducing them, click here.

Sex with their husbands had been bad for a long time, the Posse told me. It ranged from infrequent to icky. At the end, the women were merely going through the motions, not participating mentally or emotionally. They felt detached from the act, cut off from their bodies. With the divorce, all that changed.

"I was dead, dead, dead for years." said Regina. "Coming out of my marriage was like coming out of the desert." Bunny and Grace nodded and grinned in agreement. I signaled the waitress to bring us another round.

Fresh from the trauma of ending a marriage, the last thing the Posse chicks wanted was a serious relationship. They wanted to have a little fun, they wanted to feel alive again. Hell, they wanted to get laid.

And there were plenty of willing partners.

Bunny slept with her process server on the night he was supposed to deliver the final divorce papers to her husband. Grace hooked up with a hot parking valet who chauffeured her to her car at a friend's country club. Regina did the bump and grind with not one, but two 23 year-old guys (separately, not at the same time.)

These encounters made the newly single women feel reawakened, rediscovered, liberated! After years of sexual drought, this wasn't love, honey, this was therapy. The Posse women laugh when they tell these stories. They laugh at their audacious naughtiness, the unexpected thrills, and their newfound right to screw whoever they want, damn it, just to please themselves.

But the Posse isn't only out for casual sex, as refreshing as it was initially. These gals spend most of their time as hardworking single moms, not sex kittens, and they need meaningful adult relationships to sustain them. That's why Bunny, Regina and Grace all agree that the first fix-up a newly divorced woman needs is with other women in the same situation. To hang with, to laugh with, to support one another.

Next up - the suburban & single bar scene. Where to go, what to expect.

“Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover?” - Stevie Nicks

  One of the  cool things I've been doing since I turned 40 has been singing in a band. Our band plays classic rock songs from the 60s, 70s, and 80s; as a result, I've become enamored with groundbreaking rock chicks like Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, and Stevie Nicks.  Back in the day, these talented women had to make tough choices to succeed in a music industry dominated by men.

For Stevie Nicks, this meant taking a pass on motherhood.  "I made a conscious decision that I was not going to have children. I didn't want others raising them, and looking after them myself would get in the way of being a musician and writer."

Whoa - Stevie Nicks clearly viewed committed relationships as roadblocks to reaching her full potential. Isn't this kind of anti-feminist? Come on, Stevie, I know you're pushing 60, but even in your day, women could be both mothers and artists, lovers and writers. It just takes hard work, resourcefulness, and a little compromise.

But Stevie Nicks didn't want to make compromises - instead, she made a choice. The radical thing about her choice was that she put the highest value on her own creativity and self-expression.

Not all the early rockers made the same decision. Chrissie Hynde has two daughters; even the the androgynous Patti Smith has a couple kids. Did their art suffer by becoming mothers? Well...maybe. Patti Smith was quoted as saying, "If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer."

Stevie wouldn't change a thing. Recently, when asked if she regretted not having children, she answered, "Would I really want to give up all those years of singing? Would I just have been not that great a mom and not that great a singer because I tried to do both?"

I put my career on  hold to stay home with my kids, so I definitely didn't follow Stevie Nick's path. Still, I admire (and maybe even envy) her for prioritizing her life as an artist and being brave enough to live on her own terms.