Way back in the day (we’re talking summer of 1975 here, folks) my nine year old self became obsessed with ALL MY CHILDREN. Oh even back then, my lil gay heart heart loved nothing more than a good old fashioned story of star crossed lovers who fought every obstacle to be together. The show’s original Romeo and Juliet were Phil Brent and Tara Martin, who married themselves one snowy night in a roadside church before Phil shipped off to Vietnam. Discovering she was pregnant with Phil’s baby just as word of his death was received, Tara turned to Phil’s buddy, super dreamy Dr. Chuck Tyler, for support and eventually married him. That’s when — you guessed it — Phil returned home alive after all!

Okay, that’s standard soap opera, no big. But in the summer of ‘75, head writer Agnes Nixon introduced a new character to the show, one based on an article she had read. A character unlike any other I had ever seen. One larger than life, and twice as glamorous to my pre-teen mind. A character who would have me glued to the screen for the next several years, unable to wait for the next thrilling twist to her story.

The character? Teen-age prostitute, Donna Beck.

From the moment she was wheeled into Pine Valley Hospital with a leg injury sustained when her pimp, Tyrone (played by Gordon from SESAME STREET, so I knew a pimp had to be a good guy), threw her from a moving car and on-the-rebound Dr. Chuck Tyler laid eyes on her, both he and I were smitten. Her huge teased cotton candy hair, the heavily rouged cheeks, the crimson lips were just gravy. She had us at hot pants and halter top.

As Donna healed, Tyrone returned to take her back to “the life” on Locust Street and I was enthralled to learn about things such as “the stroll” and “flash clothes” as well as meet Donna’s best friend Estelle La Tour and her pimp, Billy Clyde Tuggle.

I can’t say what about Donna fascinated me exactly, but I was unable to look away. I remember going over to a friend’s house to play and rushing home to watch my half hour window into her tres chic world. As her story became more and more prominent, I began to have more and more questions. Questions Ms. Nixon and her team of brilliant scribes just weren’t answering. So I went to my grandma.

“Grandma, what’s a prostitute?”

My grandma looked up from the green beans she was cutting the ends off of and replied, “Somebody with a lot of boyfriends. Here…snap these beans in half and hush.”

As I saw all the good looking “boyfriends” Donna had in addition to the sexy Dr. Chuck, I figured being a prostitute was a pretty good gig. Yep, I was sold. Of course, being a lil gay kid, I didn’t dare tell anyone how lucky I thought Donna was to have all those groovy fellas wanting to take her out, so I just lived through her (even riding my bike home for lunch every day from school to keep up with Donna. It was only two blocks and this was when child molesters just molested you and didn’t kill you out right so my school had no “on grounds meals” policy, plus the show was a half hour so I would only miss the first few minutes).

Of course, eventually Chuck saved Donna from Tyrone — who was sent back to SESAME STREET to jail, dammit! — and ended up marrying her. I grew a little bored with her when she quit her job, donned the Mary Tyler Moore fashions, and constantly whined “Tara is trying to steal my husband!” but then something else exciting happened!

Donna had a “hysterical pregnancy” and Chuck discovered Tyrone had had her tubes tied to prevent her from getting knocked up and having to pay for abortions. “The life” was still part of Donna’s story! Hallelujah!

Again, I had questions.

“Grandma, what does it mean that Donna got her tubes tied?”

My grandma looked up at me from the apples she was peeling and replied, “It’s a surgery that means she won’t ever get fat. Here…have some apple peel and hush.”

Wow. Great job, killer wardrobe, cute boyfriends, AND a nice figure. That Donna Beck bitch had it going ONNNNNN!!

Donna underwent surgery to reverse the tubal ligation but before she could conceive, Chuck cheated on her with that whore wannabe, Tara, sending Donna off the deep end. While driving with Estelle and sobbing hysterically, Donna’s car stalled on the tracks and she and Estelle were hit by a train. Of course it was a Friday and I was distraught all weekend. Would she die? Or worse yet, would it be one of those “scarred for life until we decide to give you that miracle surgery that leaves no scars and reunite you with your boyfriend” stories? I didn’t know if Donna could even get work if her face was all mangled and shit. It goes without saying I was pretty worried.

Thank God, the next episode found her alive and well, but suffering from the greatest thing ever: amnesia. Donna thought she was a prostitute again and went back to Locust Street to peddle her wares. Out came the wicked cool clothes and the tons of make-up. The men came out of the woodwork to see their favorite girl back on the stroll. And Chuck’s grandma paid Billy Clyde to make sure Donna went back to turning tricks, to keep her out of the wealthy Tyler clan. It was all very exciting with lots of prostitute lingo and scenes of Donna at all the seedy Locust Street dives. I took notes. I still have them.

And again, I was more convinced than ever that being a prostitute was the best job in the world. Even better than being an actor. And since it was on TV, it had to be a pretty good way to earn money, right? Well, you’d think so.

But you’d be wrong.

One day my mom’s Aunt Carrie came for a visit. Aunt Carrie was a judgemental old shrew who, like the rest of the family, took a very dim view of my mother’s decision to keep me and made no bones about rubbing my mother’s face in it every time. (Once when I was around 5, we went to visit her and she made my mother give me a bath in a huge metal tub on the back step instead of letting me use the shower. We went home the next day.)

So Aunt Carrie was sniffing around my grandma’s, finding lots of things not up to par with her high standards (my uncle called her “Sanitary Carrie” behind her back and to her face), and spotting me, she began asking me questions.

“How is school?”

“Are you studying hard?”

“Do you have any friends?”

And the clincher…”What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Always eager to please and maybe finally be treated like my cousin Robbie, I thought for a moment. I was only 11 and had never really given it much thought — I was too busy inflicting her 832nd miscarriage on my Supergirl action figure — so it was a pretty tough question. And then like a bolt from the blue, it came to me.

“I think I’d like to be a prostitute. But a boy one.”

Aunt Carrie nearly swallowed her teeth.

Yep. The illegitimate bastard boy had just unknowingly announced he wanted to sell his ass to men for money. And had seemed damn thrilled with his choice of vocations, too.

Aunt Carrie marched me right to my mother and told her what I had said, then launched into a huge speech about what was wrong with me and how everyone had tried to warn her. My mother came back at Carrie about her foster son, Gene, who stayed with his real mom for weeks at a time, only coming back to Carrie for money to go out “carousing” on. When the feud was over, my mother sat me down and asked me if I knew what a prostitute was.

Not really, I admitted, but told her it looked like fun on tv.

My mother told me that prostitutes were bad people who got diseases that made their parts down there fall off and then no one wanted anything to do with them after that. “Plus, part of their job is putting their mouth down there and then their teeth turn brown and fall out. Is that what you want?”

I shook my head.

“Then you better find a new line of work, pup.”

And so my dreams of being a man-whore were dashed before they ever had time to flourish. My man-gina would remained unsullied and unsold. My fortune in hot pants and silk shirts would never come to be. That legion of boyfriends? It too would go unrealized.

Sometimes when I’m standing before a mirror in my rubber hot pants, mesh tank top, cowboy hat and Howdy-Doody boots, I wonder how different my life might’ve been if I just kept my mouth shut that fateful day. Who knows…I might have been typing this as a doctor’s partner who suffered from periodic bouts of amnesia and fell back into the life.

Or, more likely, a genitalia free short order cook with no teeth.

Guess I’ll never know.