The Accidental Cougar

I didn't mean to court younger men. They just found me irresistible.

(Illustration by Kim Rosen)

When my roommate called me a cougar, my first reaction was, "I'm too young to be a cougar. I don't even own a car." It wasn't an appealing term, and it reminded me of my unmarried, busty third-grade math teacher, who wore wrap dresses and Emeraude perfume. But as I hurtle toward 40, I find myself irresistible to younger men. While I used to be focused on 30- to 40-something mid-career professionals in Dockers, I find that in my pursuit of these "safe bets," I'm tripping over young Zac Efron look-alikes who are falling to their knees. I have become an Accidental Cougar.

There was a time when I dated men my own age, but at some point in my 30s, it seemed that all the guys my age went missing. I thought that perhaps all the 30- to 40-something men had been roped together and imprisoned in a cave, like in some Indiana Jones sequel. In this theory, married men would have been spared, which explained why I saw one on every corner pushing a stroller.

I fell into Cougardom by accident two years ago while visiting my parents. I was at a chain restaurant with my sister and my dad, who was slurping an apple martini and telling us how much he loved us. He motioned to a gentleman who had salt-and-pepper hair and a salmon-colored sweater vest, like my grandfather, Papa Dick.

"Why don't you ever bring someone like him home?" he asked. My sister is seven years younger and has secured a fiance and is therefore excused from this line of questioning.

"Because he's old," I responded.

When our dad left, a 26-year-old Cougar Snack approached me. I expected him to say something like, "Ma'am, can I offer you my seat?" Instead, we sent my sister packing and ended the night listening to Johnny Cash and making out in his car in my parents' driveway, despite the beams of light threatening from behind the blinds of Papa Dick's in-law apartment. It was like being a junior in high school again, but with self-esteem.

This initiation into Cougardom seemed to be karmically placed to resuscitate my love life. But after a few more dates with younger men, I became worried. I knew a 55-year-old dishwasher named John who smoked generic cigarettes and still went on spring break to Cancun. I did not want this to be me. I realized that somewhere between dishwasher John and Susan Sarandon there was a line, and I didn't want to cross it.

The trend continued. I turned down a date with an 18-year-old jumbo-flashlight dealer, went salsa dancing with a 23-year-old doorman, and got locked in a playground with a rugby player. During this year and a half, I dated a handful of interesting guys all seven to 14 years my junior and was only once approached by a guy in my age range. I went out with him the same weekend I had a date with a 27-year-old, winding up at a string quartet one night and "Beerfest" the next. I fell asleep at one of these events, but I'm too embarrassed to say which one.

I had a Flashdance sweat shirt older than some of these guys, but that didn't deter me. Occasionally, I'd get into an embarrassing situation, like when a grad student brought me to a dorm party. Roaming through the odyssey of plastic cups, I hoped the smoke pollution would obscure the fact that I could have been someone's mom, or maybe a narc. I thought to myself, "This is what The Fonz must have felt like," until I did the math and realized that when The Fonz was chasing poodle skirts, he was a good decade younger than I.

But stepping away from the "age appropriate" paradigm allows me to discover a more pervasive sense of freedom in other areas of my life. I travel, have changed my career, and have taken up hip-hop dancing. Age does not define the experiences I want to have. Settling down is important to me, but I've given up the frantic search, in hopes that someday someone unexpected will show up in my life - just as soon as he's off his shift at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Erika Cann is a freelance writer. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.