Sexes: The Marriage Dialogues

Essential Services

39 Essential Services With two faucets feeding the same spigot, she blended and kept thinning hot with cold until she turned the water warm. “From reservoir to pump to pipe to kitchen sink,” she said. “And then it’s sewered back to river water to complete the cycle.” “Since you’re an engineer, explain just where we’d be without plumbers?” “Back to barreled rain and wells and chamber pots,” he answered. He kept perusing The Economist while she plucked out the plug and watched dishwater swivel down the drain. “Plumbers have a lot of power, John.” “What power?” “The kind that comes from overseeing the whole system.” “And they don’t come cheap,” he muttered. “They need to unionize.” “Why unionize?” “Because together they could strike worldwide and stop a war.” He tried to laugh her words away while something in him said a woman of conviction with a cause was undeterrable. She said, “We all use toilets, don’t we?” 40 “Who can deny that?” “What happens when they’re stuffed or broken?” “Nothing happens.” “Exactly, so if plumbers strike to stop a war by leaving everything unflushable—no war.” He had no answer, and she knew it. “Remember that play,” she said, “when all those wives in Greece got sick of sending sons and husbands off to battle?” “Lysistrata.” “Remember what they did . . .” “What Aristophanes assumed they did . . .” “Assumed or not, they said no sex until the killing stops.” “So what’s the point?” “It proves essential services are unignorable.” “Blackmail by sex?” “It stopped the war, didn’t it?” “Is that what sex and plumbing have in common?” “It stopped the war.” ...