OK, I am waaaaay behind the times, so many of you lieblings probably already know about the gay teen character, Luke, who featured prominently on As The World Turns around about 2007.  If I’m slow on the uptake, I promise it is NOT because I live in a closet (so to speak), but rather because I don’t have a lot of time to catch up on the daytime sterrrries.  When I were a baby gay on my grandma’s knee, we used to watch General Hospital together–but let me tell you, General Hospital never had nothin’ like this, m’kay!

For those of you who are new to all of this, here’s a recap of the storyline, which in its brevity may accentuate some of the absurdities of the soap opera plot twists–but in truth, it’s all pretty seriously improbable even as it unfolds in real time.

Luke is a gay teen with a penchant for falling in love with straight guys (and don’t we all know how THAT feels).  Along comes Noah, whom he meets while they’re interning on a local access TV show they’re making called Invisible Woman.  Noah is dating Luke’s best friend Maddie (a girl).  Luke, predictably, falls for straight Noah but then they develop kind of a bromance and it becomes obvious that straight Noah is not, in fact, straight.  This is made more complicated by the presence of Noah’s disapproving Army father, who has never been more delighted to discover that his obviously-faggot son has a girlfriend, Maddie.  Meanwhile, there’s some behind-the-scenes office romance and Noah kisses Luke, then pretends that he did it as a joke, then admits that it wasn’t a joke, then says it doesn’t matter because he’s moving in with Maddie and he’s going to become the son his father always wanted.  Maddie gets wind of these shenanigans, confronts Noah, Noah admits that he likes Luke, Maddie dumps him, after a lot of sturm-und-drang he makes his way back to Luke, and finally comes out to his bigot Army father, who pretends to be OK with it, but is actually just psychotic and devious.  You see, he lied to his son when he was only 3 and told him that his mother was dead, but in fact his mother wasn’t dead but his father didn’t like her anymore, which drove her into prostitution, but apparently this still wasn’t enough to ensure that she stayed away from Noah, so while Noah and Luke were getting their panties in a twist, Noah’s father shoots Noah’s ex-prostitute mother and then also shoots Dusty, an ex-con who is also secretly Luke’s mother’s lover with the plan of framing him for the murder.  Then, Noah’s father, the Colonel, pretends to be OK with his son being gay so that he can lure Luke into the woods on a fishing trip and shoot him.  But luckily Dusty is one tough S.O.B. and manages to drag his shot ass out to Luke’s house at which time he warns Luke’s mother that the Colonel is one crazy ass motherfucker.  Everyone except Dusty dashes out into the woods and a skirmish ensues, but unfortunately the Colonel is a mean shot even in a tussle and caps Luke, who doesn’t die but is paralyzed from the waist down.

Did you get all that?

Afterwards, Noah feels serious guilty and won’t even go to the hospital to see Luke because he thinks Luke will hate him but as it turns out, THEIR GAY LOVE IS THE ONLY FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO RESTORE LUKE’S LEGS AND NETHER REGIONS TO PROPER WORKING ORDER!!!!!!!

Yes, Lord.

Check out the following clip in which the power of Noah’s and Luke’s gay love confronts Noah’s evil bigot colonel father and results in the spontaneous and miraculous healing of Luke’s nether regions (of yeah, and his legs, too):

Now, this is some seriously wholesome stuff, folks.  I have never seen horny teens so apparently uninterested in macking on each other–the libido-cooling power of nether regions paralysis aside.  Everyone dresses in American Eagle (OK, so it’s not only wholesome, it’s middle America), and the boyos kiss about four times total.  When their romance first begins, Luke and Noah actually get off a few lusty kisses on-screen, but as their story progresses, the camera always manages to pan away before anything happens–which makes me wonder if As The World Turns was forced to back off the sexiness because of network feedback or pressure from advertisers.  Compare, for example, the differences in these two scenes.  The first is their first kiss; the second is the sweet Christmas episode during which Luke reveals that Noah’s gay love has healed his nether regions and legs and Noah writes Luke a card in which he says he loves him–then they presumably kiss under the mistletoe but all we get to see is a pan-up and fadeout.

Now granted, As The World Turns has presented a compelling coming out story which, in its details, will be recognizable to most of us: a psychotic father who attempts to murder our lover on an evil fishing expedition; an ex-con substitute father figure who, after surviving a gunshot wound inflicted by our real father, begrudgingly encourages us to be supportive of our paralyzed “friend”; and a prostitute mother, also murdered by our real father, who sends letters from the grave encouraging us, better late than never, to accept ourselves for who we truly are.  I think we’ve all been through this, and so its good to see daytime television telling our real stories so that people can see we’re just like them.

On the other hand, why is it still the case that all of our gay love has to take place off-screen?  Murder, mayhem, adultery, incest, shoulder pads, insane perms–sure, bring them on.  Two boys gettin’ some booty?  It’d be the end of civilization as we know it!