Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

I retrieved the scissors from the floor and with stealth and delicacy snipped the heavier material at the neck of her nightgown and with a swift yank tore it from top to bottom. Lil twisted upwards screaming and clawing.

The further details, while perhaps of anthropological value, would read something like the dry documentation of some invasion of a Japanese Pacific island during the Second World War: circling movements; advance of right thigh to position `V'; repulse of fingernail attack on left flank; main artillery piece to attack position; main artillery piece forced to withdraw when caught in classic pincers movement by two enemy ranks, etc.

Forced carnal knowledge, whatever else it may be, is good physical exercise and represents meaningful variation on normal marital relations. As pleasure, however, it has its Limitations. For myself, I was so distracted that night by scratches, bites and screams, and by wondering whether one could be arrested for violating one's wife (was pinching a felony or a misdemeanor?), that I must warn male readers that although desirable as tactic, as pleasure might better employ a quiet night alone with pornography.

The next morning my ears, neck, shoulders and back looked as if I'd spent the night wrestling with thirty-three kittens in a briar patch crisscrossed with barbed wire during a hailstorm. I was bloody and Lil was unbowed. But though she was cold and distant, she listened to my long, scientific report during the bus ride and plane flight back to New York and although she seemed unimpressed with my claims of innocence with Arlene, a part of her believed the rest. I told her nothing about my use of the dice, keeping it all a matter of some vague, temporary psychological testing having to do with responses to eccentric patterns. How much of her believed me isn't clear, but her majority self announced unequivocally that if I did not cease my experiments - whatever they might be - and cease them forthwith, she and the children would leave me forever.

`No, more, Luke,' she said as I left for work the first day back in Manhattan. `No more. From now on you're normal,

eccentric, boring Dr. Rhinehart, or I'm done.'

`Yes, dear,' I said (the die had fallen a two), and left.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Dr. Rhinehart should have known when Mrs. Ecstein summoned him to her living room couch that Wednesday that

there was trouble. They hadn't met in her apartment since she had begun therapy with him. After letting him in she

seated herself sedately on the couch, folded her hands and looked the floor. Her mannish gray suit, her glasses and her

hair tied back severely in a bun, made her look strikingly like a door-to-door purveyor of Baptist religious tracts.

`I'm going to have a baby,' she said quietly.

Dr. Rhinehart sat down at the opposite end of the couch, leaned back and mechanically crossed his legs. He looked

blankly at the wall opposite him, on which hung an ancient lithograph of Queen Victoria.

`I'm happy for you, Arlene,' he said.

'This is now the second straight month I've missed my period.'

'I'm happy.'

`I asked the Die what I should name it and gave it thirty-six options and the Die named it Edgar.'

`Edgar.'

`Edgar Ecstein.'

They sat there quietly not looking at each other.

`I gave ten chances to Lucius but the dice chose Edgar.'

'Ahh.'

Silence.

`What if it's a girl?'

Dr. Rhinehart asked after a while.

`Edgarina: `Edgarina Ecstein.'

Silence.

`Are you happy about it, Arlene?'

`Yes.'

Silence.

`It hasn't been decided yet who the father is,' Mrs. Ecstein said.

`You don't know who the father is?' asked Dr. Rhinehart, sitting up.

`Oh I know,' she said and turned smiling to Dr. Rhinehart.

`I'm happy for you, Arlene,' he said and collapsed slowly back in a heap against the couch, his blank eyes swiveling

automatically to the blank wall opposite, on which hung only the ancient lithograph of Queen Victoria. Smiling.

`But, I haven't let the dice decide who I should say is the father.'

`I see.'

`I thought I'd give you two chances out of three of being the father.'

Ahh.

`Jake, of course, will get one chance in six.'

`Uhhuh.'

`And I thought I'd let "someone you don't know" have one chance in six.'

Silence.

`The dice will decide then who you tell Jake is the father?'

`Yes.'

'What about abortion? You're only in the second month, did you let the dice consider abortion?'

`Of, of course,' she said again smiling. `I gave abortion one chance in two hundred and sixteen.'

Ahh.

`The dice said no.'

Mm.'

Silence.

`So in seven months you're going to have a baby.'

`Yes I am. Isn't it wonderful?'

'I'm happy for you,' said Dr. Rhinehart.

`And after I find out who the father is I'll have to let the dice decide whether I should leave Jake to be true to the

father.'

`Uhh.'

`And then let the dice decide whether I'm to have more children.'

`Um, 'But before that they'll have to tell me whether I should tell Lil I'm having a baby.'

Ahh.

`And whether I should tell Lil who the father is.'

'Uh.'

`It's all so wonderfully exciting.'

Silence.

Dr. Rhinehart took from his suit-jacket pocket a die and after rubbing it between his hands dropped it on the couch between himself and Mrs. Ecstein. It was a two. Dr. Rhinehart sighed.

`I'm happy for you, Arlene,' he said and collapsed slowly back in a heap against the couch, his blank eyes swiveling automatically to the blank wall opposite, on which hung only the ancient lithograph of Queen Victoria. Smiling.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Unfortunately for normal old Luke Rhinehart and his friends and admirers, the dice kept rolling and rolling, June turned out to be National Role-Playing Month and a bit too much. I was ordered to consult the Die regularly about varying the person I was from hour to hour, or day to day or week to week. I was expected to expand my role playing, perhaps even to test the limits of the malleability of the human soul.

Could there exist a Totally Random Man? Could a single human so develop his capabilities that he might vary his soul from hour to hour at whim? Might a man be an infinitely multiple personality? Or rather, like the universe according to some theorists, a steadily expanding multiple personality, one only to be contracted at death? And then, even then, who knows? At dawn of the second day I gave the dice six optional persons, one of whom I would try to be during the whole day. I was trying to create only simple, non socially upsetting options. The six were: Molly Bloom, Sigmund Freud, Henry Miller, Jake Ecstein, a child of seven and the old pre-diceman Dr. Lucius Rhinehart.

The dice first chose Freud, but by the end of the day I had come to feel that being Sigmund Freud must have been something of a bore. I was aware of many unconscious sources of motivation where I usually overlooked them, but having seen them I didn't feel I had gained too much. I tried to examine my unconscious resistances to being Freud and uncovered the sort of thing Jake was good at in analysis: rivalry with the Father, fear of unconscious aggression being revealed: but I didn't find my insights convincing, or rather I didn't find them relevant. I might have an `oral personality' but this knowledge didn't help me change myself as much as did a single flip of the die.

On the other hand, when I read of a man who killed himself by slashing his wrists I immediately noted the sexual symbolism of the cutting of the limbs. I began thinking of other modes of suicide: throwing oneself into the sea; putting a pistol in one's mouth and pulling the trigger; crawling into an oven and turning on the gas; throwing oneself under a train All seemed to have obvious sexual symbolism and be necessarily connected with the psychosexual development of the patient. I created the excellent aphorism: Tell me the manner in which a patient commits suicide and I'll tell you how he can be cured.