Money, Sex and the American Couple

Money, I needn't remind you, is a potent, launch-on-warning aphrodisiac. Why d' you think men keep condoms in their wallet? A male can add one inch below for every extra $100,000 or so of income--I mean, it's called long green, isn't it? Playboy's exhaustive sex survey (March 1983) showed that "the more money a man makes, the more likely he is to have an affair." Hotel room, silver fox, fake mustache, prostate massage: All that offshore drilling is expensive. And from another installment of the survey (July 1983): Men who earn more are also more apt to manage at least one ménage à trois. I know I'm more attractive with a $100 bill stuck in each ear. The connection between cash power and sexual success has been understood since first that sentence "He gasped and spent himself on her body" was written. Those aren't sperm you ejaculate. Those are tiny nickels.

For women, too, money is a sap raiser. The survey (October 1983) uncovered this intriguing datum: "Almost three times as many of the women who always climax as those who never climax make $40,000 or more." Income can impart confidence--and, it would seem, a legally tenderer clitoris. Money relaxes women: Successful performance at the office will carry over into bed. There is more physical self-assurance, as well. Tulane psychiatry professor James A. Knight has said, "The drive to accumulate money is a special form of the need for possession. It is made possible by the social function of money. The need to accumulate money becomes an aspect of bodily narcissism, and fear of its loss is like fear of bodily injury."

I know this topless dancer, an otherwise respectable wife and mother, who has envelope after envelope, each filled with $1000, under her mattress. Sylvia spent $2500 for a silicone inflation, $1500 more on tooth bonding, more yet on plastic surgery. For her, cash is almost a prosthesis. "I'm going to get collagen implants if necessary. Then a face-and-neck lift. Whatever it takes. The money makes me feel secure. I want--I have--to be sexually alluring. Even when I'm 60. It turns me on. I'd go crazy if I lost that."

But what about couples? Well, for them there is no such thing as petty cash. Relationships, we find, are credited, debited, balanced or Chapter 11ed by the household spondulics. (Only sex, another form of, um, double-entry bookkeeping, is more critical.) And when you talk about couples, you mean Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz. They collaborated, of course, on a magisterial study--American Couples: Money, Work, Sex. I'll give you a statistical M60 burst. B. and S. got lengthy questionnaires back (12,000) from enough paired people (heterosexual, gay, lesbian) almost to repopulate Lawrence, Kansas, the day after. Then they interviewed another 300 or so in detail. For our purpose, I'll isolate the heterosexual material, though their gay-and-lesbian printout is also fascinating.

Heterosexual couples are--what else?--either married or cohabiting. B. and S. studied about 3600 of the former, 650 of the latter. They make one further distinction: They divide marriage into "institutional" and "voluntary." Institutional equals religious, child-rearing, sacramental. Voluntary equals an open-ended relationship (which, though legal, is closer to cohabitation) that doesn't necessarily presume till death do us part.

I'm into institutional marriage myself. If you count Mother, I've been wed 41.9 years out of 42. I've done time. But my two non-Oedipal marriages are probably quite indicative, as far as that troublesome male-female financial balance sheet is concerned. My first was, I thought, a benevolent patriarchy: Jo just happened to be on the dole--my dole. I have since understood what a squamous attitude I had. In my second marriage, to Laurie, I've been going Dutch: Our budget is pretty much copaid. As I read through the literature, I realize that my field trip from Sixties macho to Eighties splitto could be considered a useful synecdoche for our national progress.

Money can make us uncomfortable. Conversation about it, we sense, is as tasteless as a plastic souvenir from Graceland. (continued on page 149)Money and Sex(continued from page 74) Courtship might license intimate sexual confessions, but seldom will that intimacy extend to detailed income and disbursement information. Some think premarital sex is a good patch test for compatibility. I suspect that premarital joint checking might be more definitive. Strip-search me, thumb through my medicine chest or secret Polaroid collection, bug the phone--nothing has more personal resonance, more revelatory force than a checkbook or last year's itemized IRS form. What you spend is what you are.

And it has gotten rather worse. B. and S., with laser-knife insight, remind you that we meet and woo now in places that are socially and economically impartial. A disco. The public library. A dating service. Moreover, we have become more geographically mobile than the latest strain of flu. Once, couples came together at their yacht, their tennis club. Or they were constrained by ethnic heritage and work to the church dance, union gathering, neighborhood social hall. There, certain assumptions about money--similar income, habit of saving or expenditure, dowry, even--were implicit. Today, men and women approach marriage or a new live-in as prepared for their financial future as your average sedan-chair bearer would be for the modern transportation industry.

No amazement, then, that one quarter to one third of couples list budget management under their most serious problem. It is pandemic. "Money establishes the balance of power in relationships except among lesbians." Is money important? Does Oscar de la Renta make Spanish flies? Men, it is noted, take this pragmatic attitude home with their work. Money talks, bullshit walks--men tend to say that a whole lot. Women pick it up at the breakfast table (or, since 52 percent of women work--and get paid less than men--they may have learned on their own by now). Yet, not only are we made irritable by his or her fiscal finagling, at home we are also and, nonetheless, very romantic. I'll buy you the moon, da-de, diamond rings and everything. We are demoralized afterward to be haggling with spouse like bail bondsmen over a minor felon. As if this weren't disorienting enough, B. and S. report more than 75 percent of wives still felt it important that Mr. Husband provide them with financial security.

And, back in 1964, I went right along. I made our not-exactly-enriched bread (about $125 per week take-home). That meant I didn't have to change diapers or turn up at a four-A.M. feeding. It was the era of specialization, right? I worked nine to five and wrote; she did everything else. And I ran the bank account. I kept her so ignorant, Jo thought a $20 bill had to clear before you could break it. But contemporary husbands did about the same: I can't today remember one working wife of our close acquaintance. Sure, I gave Jo what seemed to me a papal household allowance. But examine the word: I gave my children an allowance as well. Money control extended that father-daughter authority relationship she had just left. If you want extra cash, the Grand Dispenser will give you an audience, kiss his staff of office first. Really dehumanizing to beg money from your husband so you can, say, buy him some poor doodad for Christmas. Hey, Jo, if you read this--I was a first-rate asshole.

A very uppuckered one. Let me say--in some self-exoneration--gee, I was pushing the old panic bolt back then. Age 22; wife and infant; subsistence wage. And writing The Big Novel to bootstrap us out of a hopeless financial sitz bath. Our apartment was so small we slept in bunk beds: No other way the bedroom would fit my desk. If Jo came in (when writing, I didn't always let her; I was ruthless)--wonk! The doorknob would knock my glasses off. Roderick, our son, didn't have his own room; we sort of stored him in a pantry. To this day, I wonder he didn't grow eyestalks, like some lightless potato. But there I was, summa cum grad of Columbia, powerfully underachieving. And for males in 1984, it hasn't changed that much. B. and S. say, "Earning money is intimately bound up with a man's self-respect, and when he loses his self-respect, he begins to question how he feels about his life and his relationship." You know how much sympathy the line "Um, I'm writing a novel" will get you. Standard response is, "Oh, you are? I collect hubcaps myself." (Translation: Whyncha get a decent job, schlemiel?)

B. and S. do report that "married couples who feel they are doing well financially often see this as a joint accomplishment, proving they chose each other wisely." I was proud when Jo won her Danforth Fellowship. (Though, had she begun earning then, I admit it, I wouldn't have accepted a direct subsidy to the household. I dunno, it would've set precedents. Like a private college taking Federal aid: In no time, they'll make you teach Hindustani and build special ramps all over. Paranoid, maybe, but... .) And for remarriage, I chose a self-supporting Tony-nominated Broadway actress. Yet even though more than half of women (48 percent of women with children under six) work, the husband still has one unique financial surcharge. Hear this from B. and S.: "No matter how much or how little a wife earns, her income has much less impact on how each of them feels about the family income. It is up to the man to make the couple's mark in the world." Not so different from 1964 or 1864. Even if she has this billion-dollar plant-healing franchise, her entry-level-wage husband is some kind of vulgar parasite.

•

Men who cohabit, however, don't get the same moral and financial alligator clip snapped on their softest part. Mind you, sociological data for cohabitants are about as conclusive as sociological data for Gin-su-knife owners. B. and S. pioneer here. It is just of late that we have acknowledged cohabitation, Lee Marvin et al., to be something more than a special disease vector. But cohab life, from your first cardboard carton and one-month sublet, is primarily economic in aspect: love as small business. Within the relationship, cash competition will forever be implicit, like two hookers in a price war. Women, of course, have gone for cohab, particularly since feminism became varnished truth. It may facilitate a career. Or help them sidestep housewifedom, which can turn the cerebrum to calf's-foot jelly. But for men, I think, the "vulgar parasite" syndrome has had great effect. In cohab existence, women are perceived to have made their own bed (made it on alternate days, ideally, I guess). That burden of couple success doesn't fall so heavily atop the male. And if he should default on his rent, well, she doesn't need to change names so that a creditor won't find her.

"The most provocative evidence we can offer on the link between power and money comes from the cohabiters... . For cohabiters, the male-provider image loses its importance and other values take precedence... . Cohabitation is a pay-as-you-go system and each partner's rights and privileges are based on what he or she contributes... . [Yet] we find that when the woman has greater influence over how money is spent (leisure activities and furniture buying) the couple faces more conflict. When the man has greater influence, or when the influence is equal, there is less turmoil. Thus cohabiters have to juggle both traditional and nontraditional pressures, making money problems difficult to solve. We have ample evidence to show this is quicksand for cohabiting couples."

I knew one cohab pair who came and went each through separate house doors: Holy Mother Mass card forbid that she should scrape up his mud. They also had, believe it, a red line painted down their living-room wall--his-- --hers. (Though, as tribute to love or aesthetics, the line did detour--zag, jag, zag--around one particularly fine heirloom portrait that belonged to her.) And you do catch some breath of this in most cohab home life: that--except maybe for the cold leftover chicken wing--each item has some distinctive (if invisible) monogram.

Cohabs are rather like persecuted ethnic folk expecting that big pogrom: They're set to pack and travel at the drop of a Cossack. Superpoliteness prevails. Both are in the guesthouse. Her cat won't even sleep on his clean shirt. When, for one year, I cohabited--hell, her housecoat hanging from a doorknob was the shroud of Turin. I'd put down towels when I sat on her family armchair (never can tell when incontinence will hit you). And she never put my bookshelf out of alphabetic-by-author order. It was great fun: the rough equivalent of living in a period restoration; Monticello, maybe. I went to the john pretty often. It, at least, was neutral.

Who, then, would you think hassle each other most about dough--married or cohab? Good try, but wrong again. Despite cutpurse rivalry ("male cohabiters," for instance, "are too competitive with their partners for the woman's success to enhance the relationship"), a cohab pair is more courteous or, if you will, dishonest. Married people fuss-budget more. B. and S. suggest a common-sense reason for this: Marriage--with its stronger institutional substructure--can withstand heavier chop breaking. In fact, compared with Mr. Cohab, the husband is also happier with his work: Earning for others is more pleasurable. By contrast, cohab people have a cordless grip on their relationship. To protect it, they swallow guff like Disposalls. They're scared that any argument about who should pay for her vaginal foam will crack them. Never mind an occasional palimony ruling, the law doesn't provide real schematics for cohab separation. It can be expensive. Women, in particular, are unprotected--no judge to decide who'll get custody of that Day-Glo black-light poster or the cat door.

Most disagreements, though, are less about income than about how it should be spent. Shall we buy new iron for his weight room or more sand for her raked Japanese garden? Resource pooling (like communism) is great in concept, if only it'd work. But humans are territorial. Moreover, everyone is hypersensitive about the Divorce Beast: Sheesh, 41 percent of all American men and women will at some time experience a household unraveling. With that ill-aspected send-off, it takes considerable gall to pool cash. Some bleak day, you may wake up and find that he or she has left--after playing dirty pool with your mutual fund.

I remember the night I decided to move out. How, I thought, can you give all this up--1500 books, my comfy office, 12 cats, those wonderful meals, someone to blame when I drop a glass in the kitchen or fall over the footstool? How can you take it all with you? So, I said, pack just what you need: complete Strip City. Guess what? I didn't even fill the back of my station wagon. Wow, I said, shows how little is really essential to life. And a mile down the road, I realized that I hadn't packed one single item of clothing. Socks, underwear, not even a tie clip. I dress so unchichi, even I didn't want custody of my wardrobe.

But I did wipe the savings account out. (It, ah, represented loan money from a friend... .) And the business can get bitter. One friend's wife took half his Encyclopaedia Britannica: A--C, E--G, I--K, etc. Don't ask him about anything beginning with D. Jo kept the first five years of my diary: Humph, she said, you might have written it, but it was about us. And, of course, children are the saddest hostages to fortune. What should you carry away--two arms and a torso? Indeed, you settle for their weekends, when they, if asked, would rather give you Wednesday and Tuesday, which are a dull time, anyhow.

But cohab, in my experience, is different. We argued. Enough, I said, I'm leaving. So, she said, go. I went before I went: By the time I had finished zipping up, all my belongings were neatly beside her elevator, in those very same boxes, suitcases and A&P paper bags they had come in. Simple: Even my drawer in her bureau was vacant. We hadn't had time to create joint property. And she pressed the down button for me.

Cohab people, as you might guess, pool less often than married. And fewer women advocate pooling, even though, with the disparity in male-female income, it would appear to favor them. B. and S. advance this simple axiom: "Men and women feel and act differently about money. To men it represents identity and power. To women it is security and autonomy." Yet, as they conclude, for all the resentment and conflict, financial symbiosis can be an important bond. Those who joint file, joint save, joint spend--and do it without garroting each other--are more likely to survive. Economic independence may liberate either individual, but it also tends to leave less of an emotional slush fund for the relationship.

•

Sex is, as you well know, negotiable stuff. It can be an IOU, promissory note, trade goods, investment capital, rubber check. The male sexual bank balance is often drawn on or fattened by his earning power. What you deposit this afternoon may well affect what you deposit tonight. Greg, one B.-and-S. case history, has a working wife. "I don't mind her success, but I need my own... . When I see myself as less masculine, I see her as more self-sufficient and more masculine, which isn't so great... . It affects my sexual interest and the way I feel about the relationship." This syndrome has long been noted about black men in a ghetto environment. Unable to reinforce their maleness through the job market, they feel inadequate and split. I understand that: A book advance check or handsome lecture fee can make my seminal works positively churn.

Women have, since the first neolithic sick headache, used sex to barter: tit for that and that and that. It was a kind of coupon clipping--worth the new dress, perm, dinner out, whatever. Women had their own black-market trade going on right at home. But female financial self-support has caused restructuring--and more frankness. First of all, she isn't home whenever he lusts after her. Even more than that, she doesn't need as much material property. Sex, as medium of exchange, has been devalued. During this past year, it isn't coincidental, surely, that I've heard about three wives who charge their men for a sexual preference--in particular, for the elusive blow job. Theresa told me, "I come home after work, the last thing I need is to get my jaw knocked out of line. Yet I know he needs it; he's feeling insecure. So once, he said, 'I'll give you ten bucks.' Hey, fine. He feels better about asking; I feel it's worth my time. And a semiprostitute situation turns us both on. Only thing is, I hate telling him, the price is going up to $15 after January first."

Sarah, who works for AT&T, picked right up on that reference to prostitution. "It's a spin-off from feminism. Remember when Kate Millett was trying to 'save' prostitutes from exploitation? Well, she got the predictable defensive response from the hookers: that wives were prostituting themselves just as much. So were secretaries, for that matter. My husband is aroused anyhow by pickup, wanna-good-time, Eighth Avenue fantasies. Money has always liberated men from performance responsibility. Now, though, there is an even more salient factor--namely, men want sex more often than women do. We both work. We try to split everything fairly. But how do we split his need for five quick sessions a week and my need for two nice, slow, lazy ones? Early on, he started paying me. Twenty dollars, for any sex where I didn't come, too. Quickies, you know. To be fair, if he cooks an extra meal during the week, he makes up a check and leaves it on the table. It's kind of fun. Spaghetti marinara comes out equaling a shot over the hassock. I come out ahead, though. I can go without eating longer than he can go without my body."

I'll be candid. There are nights when I miss my seigneurial first-marriage self. Being sole support does bring a certain privilege, and the wife is hard put to escape it. That third one when she has already been asleep for half an hour. Or those somewhat inconvenient times (when she was on the phone or repairing my car muffler). You see, I had a childish allowance then, too. Now, of course, I'm more ... mature. Sex in an even-up financial marriage is requisitioned, you might say. Joint stock decisions have to be made. It is almost as if desire and stamina came with a double-signature passbook. I've got to finish this paragraph tonight. Tomorrow she has both a matinee and an evening performance. It is hard, under the best circumstance, to synchronize passion. But when we do meet, well, B. and S. are right about pooling your funds. It is splendid collusion. Contrails are made. Animals gather their young around them in fear. People for a mile around call the 24th Precinct to ask what that sound was. And there are no debts outstanding.

Housework is another matter, though. If it were up to me, a formal table setting would include plastic knife and fork, paper plate, Duracell-powered romantic candle and one pair of scissors at each chair--so you could easily cut open the individual gourmet frozen-food bag. Laurie and I agree that I should pay in full for occasional maid service. She still does too much by far. (And I speak as one who, not so long ago, thought a suffragette was the female M in some S/M duo.) I see no reason why career people, male or female, should ever Electrolux. B. and S. will bear my male bias out. "Married men's aversion to housework is so intense it can sour their relationship. The more housework they do, for whatever reason, the more they fight about it. If this pattern continues into the future, it will be a major barrier to the reorganization of husbands' and wives' roles."

Mr. Mom is dead. Already. Women, even employed women, still do the housework. Oh, I did supervise my two young sons when Jo began her Ph.D. matriculation at Columbia. But that consisted mostly of opening my office door once each day to yell, "Clean this goddamn house up, take the garbage out and make me a sandwich." Now and then, they did. B. and S. continue: "There has been some recent interest by the media in men who voluntarily choose to stay home and take care of their house and family while their wives work. Try as we might, however, we could not find a significant number of men who fit the description of 'househusband.'"

Here I blow my whistle for interference. Where are our progeny? Note that work is just about the only heading under which B. and S. even bother to mention children. At this juncture, I perceive a misemphasis in their survey: Worse, they miss the population for the people. You read, say, that money is less irksome in "institutional" marriages than in "voluntary" marriages. But this voluntarism is already a thunderous departure. Even three decades ago, I'd guess, 97 percent of men and women married to have or to legitimize offspring. The title of B. and S.' study is indicative enough: In 1960, they would have called it American Families. This concept of sterile pairing off--gay or cohab or volunteer--is the most terrific and comprehensive sexual trend in our century.

And, if I may say so, it seems quite, well, un-American. After all, the national paradigm had been one of generational progress. A nonroyal succession was implicit: Immigrant parents worked to ensure lower-middle-class stature for their children. And those children, in turn, would guarantee some third- or fourth-generation heir law school, medical school--even, if they could, social standing. The sterile pair, though, is time-bound by a single generation. I might name (and advocate) several legal, religious, civil or economic motives for institutional marriage, yet there can be only one compelling, conclusive reason for it: the nurture of children. Divorce, in even a most cordial form, will belabor children. Single parenting, at best, is lopsided. True adulthood, I imagine, must be measured in contrast to some childhood. People who extend themselves through blood are responsible: I use that adjective in both the simply legal and the honorific sense. Abortion, birth control, sure--yet, under that mechanical apparatus, the couples' desire for independence from parental obligation (and mystery and risk) has changed America most of all. Since 1607 or whenever, we have been a future-oriented, optimistic people. Now, more and more, we are only of the dull and circumscribing present.

But even in this most liberated season, I sense a rare hesitance. Attitudes are strangely irresolute. Men and women no longer feel so self-approving. Betty Friedan, who is ahead, first annotated it in her 1981 book, The Second Stage. Women of our first feminist generation, she said, were experiencing a new distress. Intimate Strangers (1983), by Lillian B. Rubin, was also alert to it. The Cost of Loving (1984), by Megan Marshall, is pretty much devoted to this phenomenon. Women are discovering what men have known before, that even acceptance and legal equality can't assure human fulfillment. That a prepotent career may just anesthetize deep emotional dissatisfaction. Marshall calls it The Myth of Independence. And her corresponding statistical backup isn't auspicious: "Only four of ten women still single at age 30 were likely to find mates. For women with an advanced degree or a high salary, the odds were worst. She would find that most of the men in her income bracket were already married." And, perhaps even more important for female wholeness, you can't--as one interviewee put it with regret--"freeze dry" children until your career is at full thrust. Rubin made an enlightening verbal experiment. She asked both men and women what the key word independence meant. "Not one man I spoke with had any negative association with the word, while most women did. By and large, men associate independence with such words as freedom, control, power, self-sufficiency, happiness. Women's thoughts turn to worries about being alone, not close to anyone, unnurtured."

•

We are in a strong period of consolidation now. Our revolutionary time is, for this long moment, on hold. We are taking evidence again. Gay and feminist leaders have begun to reorganize or protect the salient they drove forward. Sexual permissiveness, a useful beast after all, is getting domesticated. It appears now more often on the conjugal-bed cover than on the Time-magazine cover. That, I think, is especially positive: Between mate and mate, nothing should be taboo. Women, I think, will be bearing more children, with men they meet earlier in life. The career can stand some postponing; relationship and parenthood will gain prestige. Marriage of the "institutional" kind should make a comeback. Divorce figures, no doubt, will remain grim. But there may be less resistance to alimony and child support. Sex and money cannot be set apart from each other. Some unattractive pragmatism will forever intrude on our best passion. But by 2000 A.D., B. and S. might feel comfortable conducting instead a survey of American Families.

By then, I predict, an irresistible force will resync the American Zeitgeist. I indulge in neither flipness nor cynicism here. It is a force that no government or ideological program has ever been able completely to repress. Socialism and communism haven't managed. Nor the worst dictatorship, nor the most permissive human ambience. And those good, if dislocating, intellectual and social events of 1960-1980--feminism, sexual liberation, consciousness--will not resist it wholly, either. I mean The Free Market. We were, you recall, talking about Sex and Money. Let us get on down and examine the male/female relationship in terms of cash, self-interest, marketing and, yes, commodity value.

Take out your note pad. There will be a test later. I now unload on you D. Keith Mano's Special Point System for Prejudging the Success or Failure of Any Male/Female Relationship. It is infallible. Or, at least, as infallible as Pope John Paul I was when he was.

OK, run it up on your credit-card calculator. A Redford-looking, brilliant, rich, famous, congenial man of no particular age would rate my Perfect 37. And a Welch-looking, brilliant, rich, famous, congenial woman of 21 or 24 would also ring up 37. You note certain discrepancies in the scoring? A certain double standard? Fine; leave us discuss it.

In The Free Market, Looks are, I estimate, twice as valuable to women as to men. Intelligence, however, doesn't necessarily make a woman more prepossessing--she can be overqualified for love, you might say. This is similarly true with Money/Power and Success/Prestige. Some men enjoy clout in a woman; most, though, feel inferior and uncomfortable with a high achiever (especially if she is achieving more highly than he). Charm will enhance both in about equal measure. Which leaves Age--easily the most controversial (and unfortunate and true) factor in my system. Put it this way: Age doesn't affect a man's Free Market worth (if anything, it can help; I'm twice as attractive at 42 as I was at 21). Age, on the other hand, is a terrible discriminator for woman. No clause of the E.R.A, no affirmative action can neutralize it.

For the first time, though, liberal and feminist women are acknowledging The Free Market. I quote Rubin: "The solace and protection of marriage, for example, are more readily available to a man than to a woman, especially after youth has passed. Like a fine wine, aging in a man is thought to add to his complexity and finesse; the 'attractive older man' can make the heart of a 20-year-old skip a beat. With a woman, it's quite another matter. Even in youth she doesn't have the same social value as a man, isn't such a highly prized 'commodity.' As she ages, her situation worsens... ."

Or I quote the female manager of a computer dating service: "Below the age of 25, there's, like, three men to two women. Sometimes two to one. Between 25 and 35, it tends to even out: one to one. Above 35, it tends to slide over: Women become the predominant group. We can't do much at all for the woman who is over 45--though, of course, we'd like to."

Now, it is my contention that you can toe tag and say so long to any relationship in which male and female are more than three points apart by the Mano Special Point System. Try it with your mate. Remember, though, the numbers are subjective. She may be fork-nosed and built like a pit pony--but if you think she's worth eight, then, in that relational context, give her eight. He may be a flesh-pressing, influential politician, yet she--into art and Gauguinish romance--may downgrade him to two or three under Success/Prestige. The ineluctable dynamic is there. If a man progresses reasonably in life--raising his Money and Success counts--he will tend to pass an early partner on the way up. Her age value and, often, physical attractiveness depreciate. Sure, it isn't fair; it is, simply the Market situation. Don't ask me why people buy Smurf dolls or, ugh, a packaged mixed cocktail, either.

Fear not, I have made provision for the Intangible. Love--chemical, senseless, low-budget--rates a full ten. After you've done your addition, if there is that dangerous three-plus discrepancy, give ten to whichever spouse or cohab has scored lower (and then reduce this Love Factor by one for each three months of the relationship). There is also an important Inertia Factor--but it will favor only institutional marriage. Here you add one point to the lower score for each three years your couple has been together. (Inertia will include children, in particular; clean underwear; sexual compatibility; fear of alimony; etc.) As you can see, my Point System will favor institutional marriage. In fact, I think institutional marriage was invented--by whomever it is that invents this sort of thing--to protect women (and their children) from those very disruptive Free Market forces I've been analyzing.

Mind you, we'd all rather eat Dippity-Do than contemplate a Victorian or Renaissance Florentine marriage. Match-making without consent--for financial, dynastic or class reasons--is considered about as cold and undemocratic as intravenous sex would be. Yet we place a prix fixe on each other. And judge relationships by monthly statement. A recent check-out-counter tabloid had this head: "Housewives are worth $888 per week." Well, hell, I can't afford one at that rate; maybe she could just come in on Monday and do the cat box. But any wife who takes that figure to heart (and it may be accurate; I dunno) has priced herself out of business. Marriage, despite all we've said, isn't just a pair of comakers and one promissory note. There must be some intangible that doesn't translate into pure pelf.

Recently, I attended this self-help class held by Joanna Steichen, author of Marrying Up, an American Dream and Reality. There we were, three dozen men and women, eager to sell our virtue for one step up the social salmon ladder. Steichen looked at us and said, "Who here would marry just anyone, sight unseen, for $10,000,000?" Pause. Moral abacus clicking. Hesitation. Yet no hand went up. Although not one of us, I daresay, had met man or woman who was $10,000,000 ugly or gross or bent, we cherished that last romantic shred. It wasn't easy, but we held out.

And the rest of you had better, too.

"I kept her so ignorant, Jo thought a $20 bill had to clear before you could break it."