Gordon Basichis

January 1, 1970

I am not the only one who has noticed single women are more aggressive come the holiday season. Friends of mine have also commented that the coy and subtle practice is transformed into an overt expression of desire. Just walk through the department stores or a hip supermarket in a singles neighborhood and you will find women staring harder and longer. Even their body language is different; they mostly stand and face you, inviting and awaiting your approach. They pull it back only when men show no sign of interest.

The single women at the cosmetics and beauty counters all but pounce on you as you go walking past. They wave skin conditioners and colognes you will never buy just so you will stop and talk. Even more reserved women will flirt openly and what they take for suggestively. Attractive women start conversations on the elevator, nervous their charms won’t work before you reach your floor.

I suppose nobody wants to be alone during the holiday season. Perhaps the Christmas spirit stirs up sexual desires coupled with the distaste for loneliness. For sure, few of us want to sit by ourselves on New Year’s Eve and watch Dick Clark or MTV bring in the New Year from distant places. All those candles, the incense, the eggnog, and the fireplace would seem to go to waste without someone to share them with you. Friends and family can only provide so much comfort, before you grab your coat and head back out into the cold, snowy weather or like us to the empty streets of West LA.

The holiday season works its charms on nearly all of us. We want to be intimate and it is a real let down when there is no one to be intimate with. I wouldn’t go as far to say that come holiday season most of us are desperate for companionship. But I would say this is the season when we are most vulnerable. If a soppy commercial can compel us to buy some sentimental piece of junk, we are just as capable of investing our emotions, given the right approach even from a less than perfect stranger.

You can’t change the world, and you sure can’t change what affects you during the holiday season. While we hold high our standards and wish for lofty ideals like World Peace, both this time of year, and during the Miss America Contest, perhaps we should be hoping for something a little more personal, a little more down to earth. We could wish that women were this aggressive, not just during the holiday season, but all year around. Now there's a blessing.