Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

Well, there was a good deal of cooperation. Actually, she enjoyed it more than I did. But the original idea was mine.

Mmm.

We've been seeing each other off and on now for about half a year.

Mmmm. I go to her place when her husband's away, or occasionally we meet in a room I rent in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Ahhh.

Sexually it's been rewarding. The woman seems totally without inhibitions. I've tried just about everything my

imagination can cook up and she seems to have more recipes than me.

I see. The husband doesn't seem to suspect a thing. He doesn't suspect a thing.

No. He seems completely wrapped up in his work. His wife says he pulls off a quick one about once every two weeks but with about as much passion or pleasure as when making an extended bowel movement. Mmmm. I once finished an orgasm in her while she was handing a towel in to her husband in the bathtub.

You what? I was pumping away from behind while she leaned into the bathroom and talked to her husband and handed him a towel.

Look here, Rhinehart, do you know what you're saying?

I thought I did.

How could you … How could you possibly…

What's the matter?

How could you possibly miss the significance of this affair?

I don't know. It seems just…

Free associate.

What?

I'll feed you words and you free associate.

Oh, okay.

Black.

White.

Moon.

Sun.

Father.

Mother.

Water. Ah. . . bathtub.

Road.

Roadway.

Green.

Yellow.

Fucking from rear.

- Ar . . . ah . . . ah . . . artificial.

Artificial?

Artificial.

How so? -How should I know? I'm just free associating.

Let's go on. Father.

Figure.

Lake.

Tahoe.

Thirst.

Water.

Love.

Women.

Mother.

Women.

Father.

Women.

White.

Women.

Black.

Negresses.

Well. That's enough. It was just as I expected.

What do you mean?

That was your father in the bathtub.

It was?

Obviously. Item number one: you associate father figure. You may consciously explain this as a result of the psychoanalytic phrase and it does refer to this, but the association also implies you associate a `figure' - naturally a female figure - with father.

Wow.

Item number two. You associate `fucking from rear' with artificial and you can blurt it out only after a significant

delay. I challenge you to tell me what first flashed through your mind.

Well …

Go ahead.

To be frank with you, I thought that the fucking was artificial, unnecessary, irrelevant. I was aiming to hurt someone

… someone bigger.

Precisely. Item number three: from the rear is obviously the position of sodomy, or male making love to male.

But Item number four: you associate lake with Tahoe. Tahoe, even if your conscious mind denies it, means in Cherokee `Big Father Chief.' Lake obviously means water and you associated water with bathtub. Ergo: Big Father Chief was in the bathtub.

Wow. Finally, although these are but trivial confirmations of what now is obvious to you, you associate with `thirst', `water.' You thirst not for women but for water, for bathtub, for your father. At the end, the free association seems to break

down as you associate both your mother and father with women, but in fact it is further confirmation of the whole significance of your extramarital affair and of this free association your incestuous, homosexual love for your father. That's incredible. That's absolutely … wham … [Long pause] . . But what… what does it all mean?

How so? I've told you.

I mean . . . what should I do about it? 'Ah so. Details. Your urge for this woman will probably evaporate now that you know the truth.

My father died when I was two.

Precisely. I need say no more.

He was six foot and blond. The husband is five feet eight and dark.

Displacement.

My father never took baths, only showers, or so my mother tells me.

Irrelevant.

When a woman is handing a towel in to her husband and chatting with him, it's inconvenient to penetrate her from the

front.

Nonsense.

I didn't know Tahoe meant Big Father Chief.

Repression.

I think I'm still going to enjoy making love to this woman.

I challenge you to examine your fantasies when you do.

I usually fantasize I'm doing it with my wife. ,

The hour's up.

Chapter Twenty-two

Days pass, Reader. So do weeks. Since I have a poor memory and kept no journal during these now-to-be-recorded days, the precise sequence of events is no clearer in my mind than it is in these pages. The dice didn't order me to write my autobiography until almost three years after my discovery, and the historic value of everything I did was not apparent to me at the time.

On the other hand, my selective defective memory presumably is hitting only the high points. Perhaps it is giving to my random life a pattern which total recall would blur. Let us assume, then, that what I forget is on a priori grounds insignificant, and what I remember is, in the same way, of great moment. It may not seem that way to either of us, but it makes a convenient theory of autobiography. Also, if the transitions from chapter to chapter or scene to scene seem particularly illogical, attribute it to either my arbitrary memory or the random fall of a die: it makes the trip more psychedelic.

In the evolution of the totally random man the next event worth noting is that on January 2, 1969 at 1 A.M. I determined to begin the new year (I'm a slow starter) by letting the dice determine my long-term fate.

I wrote with un-firm hand and dazed eyes the first option, for snake-eyes or double sixes: I would leave my wife and children and begin a separate life. I trembled (which is hard for a man with so much meat on him) and felt proud. Sooner or later the dice would roll a two or a twelve and the cast great test of the dice's ability to destroy the self would occur. If I left Lil there would be no turning back; it would be dice unto death.

But then I felt fatigued. The dice man seemed boring, unattractive, other. It seemed like too much work. Why not relax and enjoy everyday life, play around in minor ways with the dice as I had at the beginning, and forgo this senseless, theatrical challenge of killing the self? I had discovered an interesting tonic, more varied than alcohol, less dangerous that LSD, more challenging than stocks or sex. Why not accept it as tonic rather than try to make it a magic potion? I had but one life to lead, why sacrifice it to becoming locked in the cage of a rolling cube? For the first time in the six months since becoming the dice man, the thought of totally giving up -the dice appealed tome.

I wrote as the option for a 6, 7 or 8 that I return to a normal diceless life for six months. I felt pleased.

But immediately thereafter, my friends, I felt frightened, depressed. The realization that I might be without the dice produced precisely the same heavy depression, which the thought of being without Lil had produced. Erasing the 7 as a possibility for the option of giving up the dice, I felt a little better. I tore up the entire page and dropped it in the waste basket: I would abandon the whole conception of long-range dice decisions. I heaved myself up out of my chair and walked slowly off to the bathroom where I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I stared at myself in the mirror.

Clark Kent stared back at me, clean-cut and mediocre. Re moving my glasses helped, primarily because it blurred the image sufficiently so that my imagination was given leeway.

The blurred face was at first eyeless and mouthless; a faceless nobody. By concentrating I conjured up two gray slits and a toothless mouth; a death's head. With my glasses back on it was just me again. Luke Rhinehart, M.D., the Clark Kent of New York psychoanalysis. But where was Superman? Indeed, that was what this water-closet identity crisis was all about. Where indeed was Superman an if I went back to bed? Back at my desk I rewrote the first two options; leaving Lil and giving up the dice. I then gave one chance in five to the option that I decide at the beginning of each of the next seven months (until the birthday of D-day in mid-August) what each particular month was to be devoted to. I gave the same probability to the option that I try to write a novel for seven months. Slightly better odds went to the option that I spend three months touring Europe and the rest of the time traveling at the whim of the die. My last option was to turn my sex research with Dr. Felloni over to the imagination of the dice.