I’m not sure where my urge for cleanliness started. I wasn’t particularly a neat child. In fact, my parents who have the obsessive-compulsive levels of the Rain Man himself would argue I wasn’t neat at all. I think my desire for the neat and tidy came about when I really had my own place. In college I couldn’t stand when my roommate would leave out dirty dishes for weeks. Though I loved her dearly, I’d get sick at the sight of her clutter or stray hairs on the counter. Once I moved out to California, I actually had to part ways with roommates who I considered messy. Coming home to dirty dishes in the sink and a stovetop that had to be scrubbed once again just wasn’t my idea of fun. Now that I’m in NYC, Sam says he thinks of me every time he cleans a toilet. How endearing.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say that I hoped I’d find a guy that was neat and clean. I’d say it was simply a requirement. I mean it’s not like I asked questions like, “How often do you clean your bathroom,” and “Do you do your dishes while you’re cooking” on a first date, but I’m sure that if a guy tuned out to be a pig, he’d be thrown out faster than day-old soup congealing on the stove.

Well along came Kevin and I guess you get what you wish for. He’s neat all right. He’s almost obsessive. I admit it’s difficult at times – not being ‘allowed’ to walk around the house barefoot, making sure that bags don’t touch the dirty ground, keeping everything except for my body off the bed … and I mean everything! I can appreciate his desire for a clean house and as we move to our new place in February I’ll be more than happy to break out my Suzie-homemaker face and start cleaning, decorating, organizing and cleaning some more. I’m not the best housekeeper just yet, but I’m pretty darn good. And I have to tell you, I love the smell of cleaning products. Call me crazy, but it’s a family trait – my cousin loves it too.

But all this clean talk gets me thinking because for the first time I’ve felt on the other end of the obsessiveness. As I walk with Kevin in the morning I find myself avoiding touching things. I used to do this – you know, not touch the doors in the bathrooms, wash my hands, turn the water off with the towel, kick the door open with my feet and quickly throw the towel away – what, you don’t do that? But anyway, I’m doing even more of that sort of thing now, and it makes me wonder - just how dirty is New York?

www.straphangers.org did a study called Subway Shmutz that surveyed NYC Subway passangers and claims that subway cars have gotten dirtier in the last years. There are no cotton swab- microscope studies done here though, so maybe the people just have higher standards. Riders on the E, M, G, L and 6 travel on the filthiest lines, according to the survey. Their surveyors found that six in 10 cars on the 7 line were clean or extraordinarily clean, while only 1% of E line cars--the worst in the survey--were rated clean or extraordinarily clean. The 7, B and R were the only lines with ratings indicating that more than 50% of the cars surveyed were clean or extraordinarily clean. Ironically, Kevin and I usually take the B line. It’s not clean.

Our bodies are designed to withstand a lot of, bluntly put, disgusting crap, and the things we do like obsessively washing our hands and using antibacterial and such are really unnecessary. Guess who taught me that – Kevin! But that doesn’t keep me from wanting to at least feel clean, and if Kevin wants our bed to be our disinfected, sanitized sanctuary then so be it. I’m happy to have found my neat-freak.