Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

`Perhaps once a week he has that.'

`But Lillian has feelings. God has feelings.'

`I know, and I think what you're doing to her is cruel.'

`That is true, and you and Dr. Rhinehart must stop doing that which is so clearly sinful and which must hurt her.'

`We're not doing anything, it's you that makes her suffer.'

`Dr. Rhinehart will be a better man.'

`Good. I hate to see her so upset with you: She gave the Sacred Tool a little friendly squeeze and then lowered her

head to his lap and sucked in the Spiritual Spaghetti.

`But Arlene!' He said. `Dr. Rhinehart's making love to you is fornication, is what might hurt her.'

The woman tempted Jesus further with her serpent's tongue, but producing no measurable effect, raised herself. Denied

her sinful pleasure she looked peevish.

`What are you talking about? What's fornication, another of your perversions?'

`Physical intercourse with Dr. Rhinehart is a sin.'

`Who's this Dr. Rhinehart you keep talking about? What's the matter with you today?'

`What you have been doing is cruel and selfish and against the word of God. Your affair might have disastrous effects

upon Lillian and the children.'

`How?'

'If they found out'

'She'd only divorce you.' Jesus stared at the woman.

`We are speaking of human beings and of the Sacred Institution of Marriage,' He said.

`I don't know what you're talking about' Jesus became wrathful and thrust the woman's hand away and zipped up the

Holy Fly.

`You are so buried in your sin you cannot see what you do.'

The woman was angry too.

`You've been enjoying yourself for three months and now all of a sudden you discover sin and that I'm a sinner.'

`Dr. Rhinehart is a sinner too.'

The woman poked back at the Crotch.

'Not much of a one today,' she said.

Jesus stared out through the windshield of the car at a small cruiser plodding across the bay. Two gulls which had

been following it swerved away and spiraled up about fifty feet and then spiraled down and over toward Him,

wheeling out of sight past the car. A signal? A Sign? Jesus realized humbly that of course he was being insane, By fucking Mrs. Ecstein with great gusto for months in the body of Dr. Rhinehart He had confused her. It was difficult for her to recognize him in the -body of someone she had knows playing the role of a sinner. Looking over at her, he saw her staring crossly out over the water, her hands clasping a half-finished almond bar in her lap. Her bare knees suddenly appeared to Him as those of a little child, her emotions those of a little girl. He remembered His injunction about children.

`I'm very very sorry Arlene. I'm insane. I recognize this. I'm not always myself. I frequently lose myself. To cast you off by suddenly talking about sin and Lil and Jake must seem cruel hypocrisy.'

When she turned to face Him. He saw tears brimming at her eyes.

`I love your cock and you love my breasts and that's not sin.'

Jesus considered these words. They did seem reasonable.

`It is good,' He said. `But there are greater goods.'

`I know that, but I like yours.'

They stared at each other: two alien spiritual worlds.

`I have to go now,' He said. `I may return. My insanity is sending me away. My insanity says I will not be able to make love to you for a while.'

Jesus started the car.

`Boy,' she said and took a healthy bite from the almond bar, `you ought to be seeing a psychiatrist yourself five times a week if you ask me.'

Jesus drove them back to the city.

Chapter Sixteen

Ego, my friends, ego. The more I sought to destroy it through the dice the greater it grew. Each tumble of a die chipped off another splinter of the old self to feed the growing tissues of the dice man ego. I was killing past pride in myself as analyst, as article writer, as good-looking male, as loving husband, but every corpse was fed to the cannibalistic ego of that superhuman creature I felt I was becoming. How proud I am of being the Dice Man! Whose primary purpose is supposedly to kill all sense of pride in self. The only options I never permitted were those which might challenge his power and glory. All values might be shat upon except that. Take away that identity from me and I am a trembling dread-filled clod, alone in an empty universe. With determination and dice, I am God.

Once I wrote down as an option (one chance in six) that I could (for a month) disobey any of the dice decisions if I felt like it and if I shook a subsequent odd number. I was frightened by the possibility. Only the realization that the act of `disobedience' would in fact be an act of obedience removed my panic. The dice neglected the option. Another time I thought of writing that from then on all dice decisions would be recommendations and not commands. In effect, I would be changing the-role of dice from commander-in-chief to advisory council. The threat of having `free will' again paralyzed me. I never wrote the option.

The dice continually humbled me. They ordered me to get drunk one Saturday: an act which I had found to be inconsistent with my dignity. Being drunk meant an absence of self-control which was inconsistent also with the detached, experimental creature I was becoming as the Dice Man. However, I enjoyed it. The letting go was not very different from the insanities I had been committing while sober. I spent the evening with Lil and the Ecsteins and at midnight began making paper airplanes out of the manuscript pages of my proposed book on sadism and flying them out the window onto 72nd Street. My drunken pawing of Arlene was interpreted as drunken pawing. The incident marked another piece of evidence of the slow disintegration of Lucius Rhinehart.

I provided my friends with plenty of other pieces of evidence. I rarely ate lunch with my colleagues anymore since I usually was sent by the dice to other places whenever I had free time. When I did lunch with them the dice often had dictated some eccentric role or action which seemed to unsettle them. One-day during a forty-eight hour total fast (except for water) which the die had dealt me, I felt weak and decided not to let the die send me anyplace: I would share my fast with Tim, Jake and Renata.

They talked, as they had for several months, primarily to each other. Whenever they directed a question or comment to me they did it warily, like animal trainers feeding a wounded lion. This particular afternoon they were talking about the hospital's policy of releasing patients conditionally, and I, staring hysterically at Jake's sirloin steak, was drunk with hunger. Dr. Mann was slobbering his scallops all over the table and his napkin, and Dr. Felloni was delicately escorting each separate tiny piece of lamb (Lamb!) to her mouth and I was insane. Jake as usual managed to talk and eat faster than both the others together.

`Got to keep 'em in,' he said. `Harmful to us, the hospital, society, everybody, if a patient is prematurely released. Read Bowerly.'

Silence. (Actually chewing [I heard every nibble], other restaurant voices, laughter, dishes clattering, sizzling [I heard every single bubble explosion] and a loud voice which said, `Never again.') `You're-absolutely right, Jake,' I uttered unexpectedly. They were my first words of the afternoon.

`Remember that Negro released on probation who killed his parents? We were idiots. What if he'd only wounded them?'

`He's right, Tim,' I said.

Dr. Mann didn't deign to interrupt his eating, but Jake shot me a second piercing squint.

`I'll bet,' he went on, `that two-thirds of the patients released from QSH - and the other state hospitals - are released far too early, that is, when they're still a menace to themselves and society.'

`That's true,' I said.

`I know that the professional opinion in vogue is that hospitalization is at best a necessary evil, but it's a stupid vogue. If we've got anything to offer our patients, then our hospitals do too. There are three times as many doctor-hours for a patient as he gets in the best out-patient treatment. Read Hegalson, Potter and Busch, their revised edition.'