Okay, I’m going to let you in on a deeply personal secret about my marriage. My wife Lisa is turned on by a clean toilet.

I’m not a romantic person, and I realize that my fumbling attempts at gifts these past 22 years have been mostly awkward. Oh, Lisa is appreciative, but, as she keeps track of the money, I know what she’s really thinking is “did he take the money for this thing out of our checking account, or put it on that maxed-out credit card?”  I know that look.

Fortunately, I’m realizing that what really turns her on doesn’t cost anything.

We try to share the housework, but as I work some long hours at the radio station (and before that, in the yogurt store) it’s Lisa who gets stuck with most of the work.

At first I thought this was her joke. If I’d mop the floor or clean a window, she’d say “You know, that really turns me on!” Okay, ha ha, I get it. But then she kept saying it every time she saw me cleaning something. In fact, I’ve realized that there’s a turn-on ranking in our house for different cleaning jobs. Washing the dishes isn’t worth much, and I do that every day, anyway. Doing a couple loads of laundry is a good one, and vacuuming is even better. But the KING of all turn-ons is toilet cleaning. I think the ranking is all about seeing me doing the jobs she detests the most.

I even tried this experiment, and I swear to Mr. Clean I really did this. I just told her about how I was going to clean the toilets, using my lowest, slowest, Barry White impersonation: “Oooooh, yeah. I’m gonna clean alllll the toilets today, baby. I’m gonna clean the bowls, and all around the outsides. I’m gonna clean back behind, and the floors all around them.” “Go on!” she gulped. “Then I’m going to clean the bathroom walls and the shower and the sinks too, baby” Well, without going into detail, let’s just say I followed through, and it was a very good day. Lesson learned: clean toilet=happy marriage.