Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

and began filling it. He took one of the silver dice and shook it in one hand and dropped it on his desk. He frowned.

'I'm going to tell you how a God was born: the birth of the Dice Man.'

Dr. Rhinehart then narrated the story, slightly edited, of his discovery of the dice and his initial rape of Mrs. Ecstein.

He concluded "had I not given a small part of myself a chance to be chosen by the die we wouldn't be sitting here

right now.'

`You only gave it one chance in six?'

'Yes. The point is that I gave a minority self a chance to be heard.'

'Only one chance in six?'

`We can never be full human beings until we develop all important aspects of ourselves.'

`Only one-sixth of you wanted me?'

'Arlene, that was an historical accident. We're talking theory. Don't you see how yielding to the dice opens whole new

areas of life?'

`I feel used.'

`If I seduced you out of cold-blooded lust you would feel pleased. Because I let chance intervene you feel used.'

'Don't you feel anything strongly enough so that you don't want to use the dice?'

`Of course, but I try to overcome it.'

Dr. Rhinehart and Mrs. Ecstein looked at each other for a full minute, Dr. Rhinehart smiling self-consciously and Mrs.

Ecstein looked awed. At last she pronounced judgment.

`You're insane,' she said.

`Absolutely. Look, I'll show you how it works. I write down two, say three options. A one or a two means we'll

continue his conversation, a three or a four means we'll end the hour right now and each let the dice decide something

else for us to do for the next forty minutes. A five and . .'

`And a five or a six means we'll fuck.'

`All right, yes.'

Dr. Rhinehart handed a die to Mrs. Ecstein and after shaking it vigorously in both hands for a few seconds she asked,

`Shouldn't I be mumbling some mumbo-jumbo as I do this?'

`You may say simply: "Not my will, Die, but Thy will be done.,, '

'Fuck us up good; Die,' she said and dropped it on the desk. It was a five.

`I don't feel like fucking anymore,' she said, but when she saw the frown on Dr. Rhinehart's face she smiled and felt

she was beginning to see the merits of a dicelife. But before she could begin to let the large part of herself go to work,

Dr. Rhinehart spoke.

`We may now toss the dice to determine how we will make love.'

She hesitated.

`What?' she said.

`There are innumerable ways to engage in sexual congress; parts of us are attracted to each of these ways. We must let

the dice decide.'

'I see.'

`First of all, which of us shall be the sexual aggressor, I or you? If the dice say odd '

`Wait a minute. I'm beginning to understand this game. I want to play too.'

`Go ahead.'

Mrs. Ecstein picked up both dice and said `A one means we'll make love that funny way you seem to like.'

`Fine.'

`A two means I'll lie down and you use your hands, mouth, and Johnny Appleseed over every part of my body until I

can't stand it and demand something else. A three-'

`Or rather we flip the die again.'

`A three …-let's see: you play with my breasts for five minutes.'

`Go on.'

Mrs. Ecstein hesitated and then a slow smile began to brighten her face.

`We must always let the dice decide, huh?' she asked.

`That's right.'

'But we control the options.'

'Very good.'

She was smiling happily as if she were a child who has just learned how to read.

`If the die is a four or a five or a six it means we have to try to make a baby.'

`Ahh,' said Dr. Rhinehart.

`I've removed that rubber sort of plug Jake had a doctor put in me and I think I've just ovulated. I read a book and it's

told me the two best positions to make a baby.'

`I see. Arlene, I-'

`Shall I toss?'

`Just a minute.'

`What for?'

`I - I'm thinking.'

`Hand me the die.'

`I believe that you have loaded the odds a bit,' said Dr. Rhinehart with his accustomed professional coolness. `Let's say

if it's a six we'll try one sexual position after another as determined from a list of six we will give it. Two minutes on

each. Let the orgasms come where they may.'

`But the four and five still mean we make a baby?'

`Yes.'

`Okay. Do I flip?'

`All right.'

Mrs. Ecstein dropped the die. It read four.

`Ahh,' said Dr. Rhinehart.

`Yippee,' said Mrs. Ecstein.

`Precisely what are these two medically recommended fucks?' Dr. Rhinehart asked a trifle irritably.

`I'll show you. And whoever has the most orgasms wins.'

`Wins what?'

`I don't know. Wins a free pair of dice.'

`I see.'

`Why didn't we begin this therapy a long time ago?' Mrs. Ecstein asked. She was rapidly undressing.

`You understand,' the doctor said, slowly preparing himself for the operation, `that after we have made love once, we

must consult the die again.'

`Sure, sure, come here,' said Mrs. Ecstein and she was soon hard at work with Dr. Rhinehart in concentrated dice therapy. At 11 A.M. Dr. Rhinehart buzzed his secretary to announce that because he was probing particularly deeply that morning and because his work might bear long-range fruit, it would be necessary to cancel the hour with Mr. Jenkins so that he and Mrs. Ecstein might continue.

At noon, Mrs. Ecstein, glowing, left the doctor's office. The history of dice therapy had begun.

Chapter Thirty-one

Professor Orville Boggles of Yale tried it; Arlene Ecstein found it productive; Terry Tracy rediscovered God through it; patient Joseph Spezio of QSH thought it was a plot to drive him insane: dice therapy slowly but surely, and unbeknownst to my wife and colleagues, grew; but the Great Columbia Copulation Caper climaxed and was spent.

Two Bernard College girls who had been instructed separately to enter into Lesbian relations with each other complained to their dean of women, who promptly began investigating. Although I assured her that Dr. Felloni and I were bona fide professionals, members of the American Medical Association, registered Republicans and in only moderato opposition to the war is Vietnam, she still fund the experiment to be `suspiciously outrageous' and I ended it.

Actually all our scheduled appointments had already been completed. Less than sixty percent had taken place as set up, and two graduate students and I were busy for weeks afterward flying to collect the manila folders with the completed questionnaires and trying to interview our lab assistants; but the experiment was finished. When I published an article on our work in the fall (Dr. Felloni. declined to be associated with the article or the experiment), it created a mild stir and was one of the pieces of evidence used by my enemies to have me exiled from the AMA.

Although most of our subjects seem to have derived pleasure from their participation in the study, a few were traumatized. About ten days after my own pas de trots my office received a request that I treat one of Dr. Felloni's subjects in our joint experiment. This Miss Vigliota maintained that she had become neurotic because of her participation in our experiment and she was requesting therapy. The appointment was set up and the next day I was seated in my office at the scheduled hour elaborating in writing upon new dice exercises I had been creating. My office door opened and closed, a small girl entered, and when I looked at her, she staggered forward and collapsed on the couch.

It was Terry `Tracy' Vigliota. It took me twenty minutes to assure her that I was really Dr. Rhinehart, a psychiatrist, and that nay participation with her in the experiment had been a perfectly natural extension of my data-gathering role. When she had become calm, she told me why she had come requesting therapy. She sat on the edge of the couch with her short legs dangling many inches from the floor. Dressed in a conservative grayish suit with short skirt, she seemed, as she discussed her problems, more slight, nervous and intense than she had less than two weeks before. I noticed as she talked and in subsequent sessions that she found it difficult to look at me and always entered or left the office with her soft brown eyes on the floor, as if absorbed in thought.