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I had a dream last night that soap operas were now showing nudity. Not just nudity, but, like, Spice Channel nudity. In the one scene I caught, this couple had just professed their mad love for each other in a soap operaly way -- high drama, background music, close-ups of dreamy eyes and quivering lips -- and then the woman stuck his cock in her mouth and they showed it.

I was completely horrified. I hadn't watched a soap since high school and I couldn't believe that this was what they had come to. Also, it didn't make any sense to me. School kids who are home during the summer months can now watch soaps in the afternoon that are totally pornographic. Not that they don't see that stuff anyway, but we're talking about your classic daily soap operas on the three major networks. How do you go from watching Susan Lucci getting her taco licked to Oprah Winfrey interviewing "Growing Pains" and post-anorexia poster child Tracey Gold about how to keep your child from drowning in your backyard swimming pool?

I watched soaps in junior high and during the first couple of years of high school. Most days I'd get home at 2:30, just in time for "As the World Turns" followed by "Guiding Light." All of my friends were "Days of Our Lives" and "General Hospital" fans, but Days didn't have ATWT's Marcy and Kirk or Steve and Craig and Betsy. GH didn't have GL's Beth and Phillip or Tony and Annabelle or Darcy and Lujack. Lujack. He was the token bad boy. When we were first introduced to him he was a high school dropout squatting in his gang's headquarters with his strangely Brooklyn-accented runaway girlfriend Darcy. He wore "A Leather". Then he got a recording contract thanks to Jackson Freemont, a British music biz guy, and he covered Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" and made a video for it and became famous and had a love affair with Beth who'd been with Phillip since high school and who was recovering from sexual abuse by her stepfather and then Lujack died in a plane crash. I think he came back, though.

There was zero nudity in soap operas when I was growing up. There was barely even the suggestion of it. I'm not saying that made them any better or worse. I mean, soaps are what they are. I should try watching my old soaps now just to see what they're like. See if I can actually stomach them. It could be fun. And funny. It could be a total joy. I could lie on the couch and smoke cigarettes and eat ice cream, cat curled up on my stomach. I could get totally caught up in the storylines and be completely gotten when the GL hour ends with a close-up cliffhanging unanswered question and fade-to-black. Maybe I'd have to take a week off from work. Or maybe I'll get Tivo. I just want to see if there's any porn.