I know that things have been silent here for  a week or so.  I’ve been thinking deep thoughts about Vermont’s very impressive gay marriage legislation and New Yorks attempts to follow suit.  Then came the Easter break.  More deep thinking about Passover and Easter and how Elijah manages to drink the wine and Jesus manages to do the rising trick and the Easter Bunny gets into my house without the dog barking.  But now I’m back to deep thoughts on gay marriage.  We spent Easter at my parents house and Dad and I were doing dishes one day.  We were having a nice discussion about the very topic of gay marriage.  And during this discussion, I realized that many gay people seeking marriage might not be aware of the Marital Point System.  The MPS.  It’s a complex system, far beyond reform of the US banking system, Earned Run Averages,  or even conversion from Celsius to Farenheit.  It is particularly complicated because it is a system with no clear rules or guidelines but a clear understanding by all who have chosen to do the marriage thing, be it City Hall, Las Vegas or somewhere decorated in ubiquitous white ribbons and baby’s breath.  It is like a secret handshake or x-ray vision glasses that only begin to work once the words “I Do” are uttered.  It seems to be universal in every language and culture although varying to some degree for instance in places like Afghanistan where women do not, in fact, get any points for anything and should consider themselves lucky not to have their husbands stone them to death for washing their white sox with a red burqa.  For some unknown and, as yet, unresearched reason, in Western culture, women seem to know the MPS scoring system before their spouses.  It may even begin with the engagement ring, an excellent way to garner early, premarital MPS points.  The spouses seem to become aware of the system much later, around eight to ten months into marriage, a change reflected by perplexed expressions and a slight look of fear in their eyes as if to say, “I don’t know what’s happening here, but it feels like this perfectly nice day has gone South rather quickly”.  After a couple of bouts of silent treatment or loud stomping through the house, most males figure it out.  The point system for males seems to be underdeveloped compared to their spouses but many males go through a slight improvement curve for the first year or two when they try, yes they really try.   After this period of effort male scores seem to plummet to be replaced by hostility and anger and female scores and sex drives become stagnant except  after weddings or any other occasions involving martinis.

Now, how, you ask, did I become so knowledgeable about the MPS system? Well, it really just started this past weekend with Dad.  As we stood by the sink, dad washing, me drying, the phone rang.  It was an old friend of my parents calling to report that the deathly illness that everyone was fearing for the friends husband was, thank god, NOT.  He was going to be fine and not die after all.  Great news.  Dad hung up, reported it joyously to me and returned happily to his dishpan.  “Dad”.  I queried.  “Aren’t you going to call mom and tell her?”  Mom was getting her hair done in the city. “Oh, she’ll be home in a while.” And he blissfully continued washing the dishes.  Now my father may be the Bernie Madoff of the Marital Point System.  The Bill Buckner of wedded bliss.  He looks good on the surface but once you scratch it, he’s one big Ponzi scam or missed opportunity.  I love him to bits but my siblings and I are still overcompensating for the fact that dad’s idea of a great Christmas present for his beloved is a knife sharpener or a wastebasket.  He’ll do dishes til he’s blue in the face but were mom ever to require major surgery with anesthesia, days of recovery, removed organs and the like, I’m quite certain, unless prompted, he might want her to drive herself.  He’d bring her home, of course, if she called to remind him.  I have tried to help him. My siblings have tried to help him and yet,  after fifty, yes, fifty years of marriage, he can’t score more marital points.  Here he was passing up a perfectly good way to generate a TON of points by simply thinking enough to call my mother and tell her that, yipee, their good friend was not, in fact, dying.    One of the all time champs of losing marital points was my husbands father who only remembered birthdays when it was too late to do anything about it.  On my mother in laws 45th birthday, he proudly showed up for birthday dinner with her only present.  A recently, try fifteen minutes before, purchased blueberry pie.  A BLUEBERRY PIE.  When she ran weeping from the table after it’s presentation,  he pleaded to her departing back “But Roberta, you LOVE blueberry pie.”  While many men struggle with the MPS system, not all are failures.  I have friends whose husbands are major league champs.  One neighbors husband does all the cooking, shopping and laundry and she trains to become a professional bike racer.  Another spouse stays home so that my friend can continue the work she loves.    I have insider knowledge, however, that he could earn substantially more points if he actually cleaned, shopped and kept the kids under control rather than treating their home like a zoo with the four walls serving as just a way to keep the kids from escaping. Sure it allows her to do the job she loves plus everything else.  Another friend found herself pregnant at 43 after three months of dating and her now husband said, “Okay, let’s give it a shot.”  They have one of the best marriages I know, more than a decade in. I think because the marital points in that decision will last forever.  There’s a husband I know who thought that you could rack up enough points by simply buying tremendous gifts for every occasion and being absent, literally and physically,  the rest of the time.  My god, were the gifts good but she eventually ran off with the plumber who doted on her every word and liked helping pick wallpaper.  Not to mention being able to plumb.  My spouse is quite good in the marital point category.  He, in fact, just hollered up the stairs to see if there’s anything he can do to help.  He made dinner last night and often buys me spectacular pieces of jewelry or great clothes that he picks out himself.  This counteracts the negative point factor of shrinking my expensive French thong underwear by putting them in the dryer along with my cashmere sweaters, or forgetting to bring something for work that means I have to drive two hours into the bowels of a run down city to deliver it to him because he can’t leave the job, or promising to stock the house when he’s home and we’re away and his idea of stocking is a small container of Half and Half and a black banana, and I bought the banana.  All in all, I am a lucky woman and our point score, from where I stand,  is good.

For men, the point system seems to be based on a simpler equation.  Many, many points for any sexual act.  Even more points for the naughtier sexual acts.  Talking dirty or doing something completely unexpected while performing naughty sexual acts will almost guarantee a lifetime at the top of the MRS game.  And if you are willing to wear a nurses uniform while doing it all.  I don’t need to continue.  The only point reduction in the male world seems to be the result of any sort of irresponsible financial behavior, like, say, when you, just for instance, go to Starbucks for a cappuccino and then for a quick 15 dollar pedicure at the Korean nail place but you don’t check the balance in your checking account and so the four dollar Starbucks and the fifteen dollar pedicure have bank charges attached that result in a nineteen dollar series of small pleasures costing seventy five dollars.  It sounds crazy but it could happen.  Occasionally men subtract points in connection to a perceived betrayal usually involving sports.  One of my best friends got a big point reduction for purposely perpetrating an unbelieveable fraud by attending MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL GAMES pre-nuptially and pretending to actually like them.  I would have to say that the spouse should lose some points for ever believing this charade.   Once the ring was on, I daresay, she never went to a minor league field again.  Huge loss of points but completely recovered by performing a dirty sex act.  I have a dear friend who just had a horrible multi month ordeal of exhausting medical treatments.  On the back end she pointed out how truly incredible her spouse had been, how grateful she was and how much she feared the amount of time she was going to have to spend on either back or knees to repay him.  All about the points.  MPS.  Really, with men, all points can be covered under the MPS-SA scorecard.  Marital Points Score-Sexual Acts.  The more Sexual Acts, the higher your rating.  It’s that simple.  Nothing else you do really matters.

Now, I could go on with this lesson in statistics forever but I’m too tired.  I do hope that it helped you gay men and women out there contemplating that walk down the long and winding aisle.  Marriage is not a piece of cake. It is, in fact,  a highly complicated set of statistical problems that will vary from relationship to relationship and is really about who does what and when and who does it better.  And with more thought.  Or with better technique.  You know what I mean..  And just to wrap this up, Dad did call Mom and give her the good news about their friend.  Huge Points.  I know, however, that once Mom reads this blog, and she will, that she will know that dad didn’t have the idea on his own and the points will vanish faster than the money in the US Treasury.  But maybe Dad will have learned his lesson.  Cause, trust me, once mom reads this, there will be no naughty sex acts in his future.  Although that is too horrifying even to contemplate.

A joke from Kerri:

Best friend? 


This really works…try this experiment.

Put your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car

at the same time, for one hour.  When you open it, 

see which one is happy to see you?