COMMITMENTS : THE HUMAN CONDITION : Guilty Pleasures

Hon, I’m zipping out to the video store. Back in a few.”

But in your dark heart, you know you don’t need the video. Alone now, scarf on head, tote in hand, you’re ready to commit the deed: Sneaking.

You’re sneaking out to indulge that part of yourself you hide from friends, family or neighbors because . . . because, well, you’d just die if they found out.

Maybe you’re sneaking out for a little after-dinner pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Maybe it’s the pack of Camels three years after you publicly quit (again) for good. Or the Lisa Marie-Jacko bonus edition of the National Enquirer carefully wrapped in the Wall Street Journal.

“It’s the secret world of people,” says USC psychologist Barbara Cadow, who treats bulimics engaged in elaborate food-sneaking schemes. “We’ve all been through it.”

Who sneaks these days?

Nearly everyone. But does that mean we sneakers are just bad seeds, programmed to crawl the shadowy depths of duplicity? Or is the culprit American culture--a society that expects us to live fat-free, fur-free, smoke-free, Geraldo-free and culturally attuned to everyone else’s feelings?

Could our high aspirations for living up to it all be turning us into a nation of sneaks?

“One thing we’re seeing is a reflection of baby-boomer indulgence,” says USC consumer psychologist David Stewart. “They’re getting older, they’re very much concerned with health, nutrition and looks--but they’d like to occasionally indulge themselves. We know it’s not healthy, but we love that chocolate cake.”

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Of course, there’s no fine print in the Ten Commandments saying Thou Shalt Not Sneak to the 7-Eleven for a Box of Hostess Ding Dongs and a Couple of Lottery Tickets. It’s not a crime to hit the out-of-town beauty parlor, pay with cookie-jar cash, and pray that your PC spouse and his trash-recycling buddies won’t find out about your bourgeoise, superficial, unecological hair-coloring ways.

So if it’s not a sin, not a crime, why do we feel so guilty?

“I drive across town to a store I never go to, buy some eggs we don’t need and a carton of milk we won’t drink,” says a high-profile Bay Area woman whose peccadillo is trash reading. “When I get to the checkout stand, I say, ‘Oh--I almost forgot. My mother-in-law wanted me to get her that magazine, uh, what’s it called?’ I have this fear that the woman who leads my book group will pop up in line right behind me. It’s like being afraid someone will look through your window and catch you doing something that in your non-sneaking life, you’d totally disapprove of.”

Some signs of the guilty times:

* In a New Yorker cartoon, a middle-aged man peeks out the window and says, “It’s the kids! Quick! The cigs!”

* In a TV ad for a sugar-packed breakfast cereal, a grown man, face obscured, admits he slinks around to the stock entrance to get his stuff so no one will know he eats kiddie cereal.

* In a commercial for a popular candy bar, a woman eats her chocolate in the shower as her husband drives home. (The message: You don’t have to hide it any more because now, it’s low fat.)

Serious sneakers, of course, are caught in a double bind. If their scheme is discovered, they’re guilty twice: Once for indulging, and again for trying to hide it.

“No one likes to be called a sneak,” says University of California, San Francisco psychologist Paul Ekman, an expert on lying. “It’s derogatory--but also slightly amusing. When people show their human foibles, they slip down a notch. We scorn those who can’t live up to the standards they set for themselves.”

Just how do we scorn? It depends on the tolerance level of the sneaked upon--or the imagination of the sneaker.

“I lived in terror that my kids would get kicked off the soccer team if anyone at the school knew I smoked,” says a Piedmont mother, school volunteer and jogger who, as far as the world knew, quit 10 years ago.

“It was an image thing. Once some soccer parents came over for drinks and I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the house. I’d say, ‘I think we need some hamburger buns.’ Someone would say, ‘But I brought the buns.’ It got ridiculous. Finally, I went upstairs to the bathroom, wrapped a towel around my head, opened the window, leaned out and had four big drags. I wrapped the butt in tissue and threw it down the toilet. I brushed my teeth, put on a clean shirt and perfume, and went down stairs and tried to pretend nothing had happened.”

Guilty.

Thirty years ago, it was slinking behind the school and parking during biology class. Today, it’s hiding the stash in the Gucci jogging pouch.

“There’s definitely a social context involved in sneaking,” says psychologist Harriet Lerner, best-selling author of “The Dance of Deception: Pretending and Truth-Telling in Women’s Lives” (HarperCollins, 1993).

The more a culture stigmatizes or misunderstands a behavior, the more the sneaker sneaks. And then, the greater the stigma and shame. You’re caught in a sneaky cycle.

“Women sneak around about their ages all the time,” Lerner says. “The culture forces them to conceal. If they’re sneaking out to get their hair dyed or their face lifted, you have to ask: Would it happen if we lived in a society that didn’t shame women for getting older?”

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Like addiction, experts say, sneaking can start out small and end up big. Occasionally, the sneaker gets a thrill from the act of sneaking itself.

“It’s prominent in adolescence,” says Ekman, the expert on lying. “The greatest power you have over someone is controlling the information you give out about yourself.”

If left unchecked, could that furtive Hostess Ding Dong one day lead to . . . lying before Congress? Maybe. Whether the deed is truly dangerous or simply quirky depends on what’s at stake between sneaker and sneakee. The more intimate the relationship, the higher the cost.

“How would (the sneaked upon) feel?” Ekman says. “Slightly amused? Understanding? Then it’s probably OK. But if they’d feel seriously betrayed, it could be damaging.”

In all this, experts say, lies a caveat for cake eater and health nut, aluminum recycler and can-tosser, smoker and nico-cop alike. The final question, as we’ve heard so often, is simply, can’t we all get along? Can’t we all have our Ding Dongs and our dignity too?

“The picture of health is never having to hide what you’re doing,” psychologist Cadow says. “It’s someone who can say, I’m doing this because I want to, because it makes me feel good--because this is who I am.”