His Purple Funkiness is always welcome here. For Christmas gloom, it’s also hard to beat “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.”

It being Christmas, I would like to give a shout-out to Prince, whose “Another Lonely Christmas” is ****ing terrific, emotional rather than sentimental, and enjoyable at any time of year.

-aec

As for “Baby it’s Cold Outside,” I don’t especially think of it as a Christmas tune per se – but I know what you mean. Think about the lyrics to Mark Cohn’s “True Companion” for a few seconds and it’ll creep you right the hell out in the same way – possibly even worse.

Ever since someone once pointed it out now every time I hear “Baby it’s Cold Outside,” it makes me think of date rape. Erg.

My “best” story: when I was 17, I worked as an apprentice pewtersmith with a business that performed (for lack of a better word) as 18th c. crafts persons at juried, period craft fairs.

I was CLUELESS about when I was being hit on most of the time. Usually, my boss or his wife would point it out afterward. It was usually harmless and didn’t bother me. At a craft fair in Ripley, WV, I started becoming very uncomfortable when this guy (he was late 30s-early 40s) kept asking for my address/phone number. When I replied that we were from out of state, his response was, “That’s okay, I’m a truck driver!” I willfully misunderstood what he was asking for and gave him a card for the business (which was located about a 3-hour drive away).

A week or so later, my boss calls me, saying that this guy, “Tim Smith,” had called him saying that he was in town and wanted to see me. I forget how the rest of the conversation went, but it comes out that he’s looking for a wife. My boss tells him, “Jackass! She’s 13!” (I was 17). Never heard from the guy again, but I was seriously weirded out for a good month after that. At subsequent shows, we would use the phrase “Tin Smith” as code to indicate feeling uncomfortable with a person at the counter.

I LOVE the idea of responding to “Smile!” with “Stand up straight!”

This thread made me think of this site: http://www.ihollaback.org/
It used to have more photos of men caught cat calling or being otherwise inappropriate. There is a Baltimore chapter, but no DC.

And you know, even if the creeped-out feeling stays low-grade in these individual interactions (which it doesn’t always, because the aggression is always just under the surface), they build on one another. At best, the idiot in a parking lot at the grocery store gets his head taken off with both cumulative barrels when he demands a smile; at worst, we stop going out.

For me, it’s a little of both: I carry practiced responses to the predictable and do not fear being a bitch (because saying no is going to put me in that category anyway, so I might as well answer the command to SMILE! with STAND UP STRAIGHT! BRUSH YOUR TEETH! WEAR A NICER SHIRT!) – and I hardly ever go out to clubs or bars, even though sometimes I’d like to. It’s just too grim.

With age comes invisibility (or mostly), so it’s not so much a daily occurrence – well, except for the lovely gents at the bus stop outside my parking lot at work, who REALLY want me to have a nice day.*

So. Um. Yeah. It’s a thing.

*Which only goes to show how you start to forget it right after it happens when it’s so pervasive.