This is the time of year she hears pros and cons (mostly cons) of Baby It’s Cold Outside, so she decided to watch the video once more. The message she remembers getting from this since she was a young child was “DON’T TRUST MEN!” She learned that if you go home for a nightcap at a man’s home or hotel room or whatever room he borrowed for a night was, do NOT trust him. You must keep your drink of soda in your hand ALWAYS even if you have to go to the washroom…like her mom always said, “Keep your drink within your sights at ALL time because your drink could be spiked with drugs.”

Isn’t that intersesting that in the 1960’s her mom was warning her about getting raped but we did not say that word in those days. When an older man, creepy drunk uncle, granddad or dad was too touchy feely, you were told to just squirm away politely. Yep, none of this was discussed openly. Why not? Why did we not just call things as they were? A lot of girls and young women may have skirted sexual assault, incest and RAPE. You know that 4-letter word that describes NO CONSENT!

Yeah, this really irks her thinking back how things were swept under the rug.

She remembers in the late 90’, newly single in her 40’s. She did not know much about dating. What does one know about dating when one is engaged at 16? She remembers going to a dance club with her girlfriends and at 02:45 (15 mins before closing time) the vultures checking their prey from the mezzanine would come down to pick a gift to take home…or hope to take home. A freebie, no doubt since they were too cheap to even buy a lady a drink. The music got louder the last hour before closing and the beat sounded like jungle music. Really!! And that is when she started smoking again so she could sit at the bar and give an excuse she had to finish her cigarette to NOT accept to dance with any of the losers fellas there. She liked dancing with her girl friends but when men tried to join them, she felt it an intrusion of their free spirited fun. It was sad to see how some people (men and women) hoped to meet the person of their dreams at a meat market dance club.

What is that about? Looking to score with a drunk woman was their goal. How pathetic is that? The remorse the next morning and that was not guilty feelings from the hunter but the prey turned victim turned guilt ridden blaming herself that she should not have dressed like that, should not have drunk so much, should not have gone out to that dance club…period!

And so she watches the video a third time in one sitting and tears run down her cheek as a memory of something- something flashes by her eyes…a memory she had buried so far away, she never had time to process. And now the song Baby It’s Cold Outside plays for a third time and she mourns her innocence of long ago, she grieves her loss of makebelieve where peole do not take advantage of other people. She mourns the thought that doctors, priests, dentists, ministers, teachers and other professionals are to be trusted, that fathers all over the world only love and respect their daughters, that dirty old men are only those dressed in dirty ragged clothes.

Now that song takes on a whole new meaning. The song makes her sad, then angry and she is disgruntled on her way to work and impatient with people sitting too close to her on the bus and she mourns her innocence because innocence used to be oh, so bliss.

big eyes
gazing admiringly
when she was six

big eyes
laughing with GrandPapa
watching her hero

gazing admiringly
resilience and honour
GrandMaman

when she was six
heros began to fall
GrandPapa died

© Tournesol ‘ 18 /12/21

I love this artist that I discovered in the movie made for her and walking along the rainy streets of San Francisco two years ago, she found her gallery. It was like a child walking into a candy store.