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Posted
Monday, November 24, 2008 2:30 PM
| By
Melinda Henneberger
True Love Waits (and waits and waits) was also the theme of my favorite show as a kid: Dark Shadows, starring the tortured, sorta good-guy vampire Barnabas Collins, who loved eyeliner, juggled relationships, and mostly kept his baser instincts in check. His girlfriends included trashy fellow bloodsucker Angelique—see what giving in got her?—and Josette, the love of his 18th-century life, who had only one dress and it was white; get it? Though long dead, Josette did sometimes walk out of her portrait to hang out with Barnabas. He was also much taken with, but never put the bite on, her modern-day doppelganger, Victoria WInters, the governess at Collinwood—played by Alexandra Isles, for whom I named my dolly in the first grade. (Sadly, Alexandra's later career included a real-life stint as Klaus von Bulow's mistress; Victoria would have known better.) Did the True Love Waits abstinence movement really fail, though, Hanna? Or is it more like AA, which doesn't work all that reliably but is still the best option we've got? Not saying sexuality is a medical condition, but if these programs help kids wait even a while, until they're maybe not ready but readier, isn't that a good thing?
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