THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609180047
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 125 lines
SOME OF THEM BLAME it on staying tuned in after the noon news. Others say it's their mother's fault.
Who knows how they really got started. Point is, men are hooked on soap operas, too.
Ask 'em. They know why Kevin held Lucy at knife-point, how Austin and Sami lost their baby, if Josie lived, why Dani is jealous, and how Blair got in Patrick's bed.
``There's a lot of action, a lot of sex,'' says Buddy Matthews, a soap fan of 20-plus years and the owner of a lawn maintenance business in Virginia Beach. ``The women are beautiful, sometimes scantily clad. Hey, let's get some more negligees in there.''
Just as exciting as a Super Bowl game, and far sexier. Guys love daytime TV. Some of them will even admit it.
``Soaps have this image that the housewife sits down for an hour in the middle of her chores to watch,'' says Eric Turnquist, a Norfolk college student with a soap habit at least 10 years old. ``It's just a terrible stereotype. People think it's somehow less than manly to watch them, and guys don't want other people to know.''
That's right, says Matthews, who watches his taped soap at night when his lawns are done. He opens a beer and lets Sophie, his Shih Tzu, sit next to him on the sofa.
He used to watch three soaps but cut back. It just took too much time.
``I think there are a lot of closet soap opera guys out there who won't admit they're watching, but you can figure it out because they know what's going on,'' he says.
For 21 years Ernest Vick has known. Retired from the Army infantry, he works as a security guard at the Coast Guard station in Elizabeth City. Vick, who is 53, watches his soaps while he's putting on his uniform, his badge and gun and getting ready for the 3-11 shift.
Then he picks up the phone and tortures his wife.
``He'll call me at work and try to tell me what happened,'' complains Magdalene Vick. Or worse, her husband lies next to her in bed on Saturday morning as she's watching the tape of Friday afternoon shows and tries to give away the plot.
Vick's wife says her husband is such a faithful soap fan that he'll dial his wife's brother-in-law long distance to get an advance scoop.
``They have a satellite dish antenna so they find out a day ahead what's going on,'' she says.
Vick says his wife got him hooked on soaps.
Eric McCoy, a TV salesman, blames his interest in current events.
``I started watching it at home after the news went off,'' confesses McCoy, who is 27 and a fan of ``The Young and The Restless.''
The soaps just reel a person in, he says. ``You watch the news and then it goes off and you say, ``Hey, lemme watch this.''
When the Chesapeake resident is at work, he hits soap opera paydirt. On the sales floor at Luskin's in Virginia Beach, he can watch all 70 television screens, all color, all tuned in to the drama of the moment.
There, on a $6,000 70-inch projection screen TV, is where McCoy's bigger-than-life hero, the slick and powerful Victor Newman, wheels, deals and manipulates people in Genoa.
``Now, people think we watch a lot of TV in here, but not really,'' says McCoy. He might glance up now and then to keep track of the plot while he's restocking shelves or pricing items.
``It's more of a woman-type thing,'' says McCoy.
Oh, really?
Luskin's management knows better. Male soap junkies lurk all over their sales floors, especially during that dead time in the early afternoon when noontime shoppers are back at work and moms are home with the kids.
``It's funny how many of our sales people have gotten hooked. And these are guys who've never watched soaps before,'' says Kathleen Rollins, regional manager of Luskin's Inc. ``They'll come into this business, and all of a sudden they're working in the video department right around soap time. Sometimes I'll catch them. They'll be telling someone, `You should have seen Erica do this.' And I'll say, `Erica who?'
``They're funny. They're sly. They won't talk about it unless they know they're talking to another soap fan.''
McCoy denies being an addict. Says he never tapes his soap.
``No, no, nothing like that,'' he says. ``But there's more guys watching it than you might think.''
Like Turnquist, the Old Dominion University student, and his two brothers.
Turnquist is a pre-law major and a soap fan from way, way back.
``I was addicted at an early age,'' admits Turnquist. ``I used to watch several soaps, and now I'm down to one.''
For the past 10 years he's stayed true to ``All My Children,'' a habit he inherited from his mother and grandmother.
He swears he doesn't plan his class schedule around his one o'clock soap - ``That's just too sick!'' - but since astronomy class interferes with events in Pine Valley, he uses his VCR.
``That way I can fast forward through the boring parts, characters I'm not interested in, characters I don't like or actors that are less than talented,'' he says. A resident assistant in the university's Gresham Hall, Turnquist plays his soap back in the evenings. Women in the dorm have heard he tapes the show, so they drop in to watch.
``They do think I'm strange,'' he muses. ``But that's OK. And, hey, I've got their soap on tape.'' He's even got a back-up if the VCR fails. He E-mails one of his brothers on their college campuses for the day's scoop.
True soap fans, like Matthews, the lawn guy, develop weaknesses for favorite characters.
``Now Lauren, she was my soap babe, but she left and went to another show. You gotta live with it. They come and they go, just like in real life,'' says Matthews, a fan of ``The Young and The Restless.''
Turnquist has a soft spot for ``All My Children's'' Susan Lucci, no matter how often she's been nominated then stiffed for daytime TV's Best Actress award.
While he's never succumbed to the temptation to buy a soap opera magazine, Turnquist admits to leafing through them in the grocery checkout line. Besides his grandma is a regular reader and shares the advance scoops.
``My grandmother sends me clippings with a little note - ``Guess who's leaving the show,'' he says.
This male soap fan wonders why people find it so peculiar that some men choose soaps over CNN.
``Nobody ever asks if people are `Primetime Live' addicts. We're even better off than most people since we don't have reruns,'' he says. ``And most people who say they don't like them have never watched one.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Eric McCoy, a TV salesman at Luskin's in Virginia Beach, pauses to
peek at ``The Young and the Restless.'' ``The soaps just reel a
person in,'' he says.
Photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Eric Turnquist, an ODU student, watches a taped copy of the day's
``All My Children'' episode. by CNB