Meet the Bad Mums Club

Photo by istockphoto.com/CREATISTA

In the spring of 2010, my mum got a reality check when she saw a poster that said “Live, Love, Laugh, Forgiveness” and realised that she hardly ever laughed and had barely been living (at least a life she wanted). She became a mother at 19 and was a three-time divorcée with five kids at 48 – for 30 years, her life had been devoted to raising a family in the most boring, suburban way possible while ignoring the chaotic, joyous, eternal spring break that was happening all around her in Florida.

Last summer, she created the Bad Mums Club to change this. Now she goes to bars in South Beach and downtown Fort Lauderdale a few times a month to drink and dance with other single mothers. Like Destiny’s Child circa 1999, the club’s membership fluctuates, but two members have stayed consistent: my mother and her friend Barbie, a Cuban immigrant with the kind of booty rap songs are written about. Like my mom, Barbie married a baby daddy at a young age because she thought she was supposed to and then experienced an epiphany: at 38, she divorced her lawyer husband, drank alcohol for the first time, and took up multiple sex partners. “I had wasted my life,” Barbie told me. “Now I fuck black dick.”

Since Barbie is only really interested in NFL players, the club tends to meet mainly at dinners for Miami Dolphins football players and YOLO, a bar Barbie describes as “an upper-class place with a very nice atmosphere and great-looking dark men.”

“I like black men,” she said. “I like players. Those are the ones that are, like, ‘Yeah, I got this bitch. I got her good.’ But they don’t know that behind the scenes, I got him. That’s how I work. I play them. I make them think I’m some innocent 40-year-old.”

One night, Barbie texted her current NFL-player boyfriend from my mum’s phone. “Can I come to your house?” Barbie asked, pretending to be my mum. “I want to fuck you.” She sent the Dolphin’s player my mum’s nudes, and then he invited my mum over. My mum asked him for directions and then dropped Barbie off at his house.

“We fought in the parking lot. Of course I fucked him after,” Barbie said. “I love playing with men’s heads. It thrills me. It makes me come.”

My mum plays similar games with men who lust after her. After work one night, she sexted a business associate with no intention of screwing him. “I like doing that sexting shit,” she said. “I like fucking with perverts’ heads.”

The members of the Bad Mums Club hope their children will follow their lead and not compromise their carnal desires. “We’re not really bad mums,” Barbie said. “Bad Mums Club is about mums who don’t give a fuck what other people think. At times, women feel that because they’re mothers, they have to hide who they really are inside. Fuck that shit. Your child is going to do whatever the fuck they want to do. If my kids don’t judge me, who are you to fucking judge me? I’m enjoying the last years of my fucking life. I’m having fun. If you can’t handle that, then fuck you.”

More from our Spring Break issue:

Welcome to the Twin Zone

Blacking Out Is the Other Universal Language

In There Like Swimwear