Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

When Jake visited me on June 22 in the early evening I apologized to him immediately for any of my actions in the past which might have hurt him. It so fell that I was in the first day of The Old Pre-D-Day Luke Rhinehart Week - a role I found very hard to play. I told him that by all conventional standards what I had done in seducing his wife was unforgivable, but that I hoped he understood my philosophical aims in following the dice.

`Yeah, Luke,' he said, sitting down in a chair opposite my bod and in front of a lovely barred window overlooking a wall. `But you're a strange one, got to admit. Tough nut to crack, so to speak.'

He took out a small note pad and a pen. `Like to know more about this dice man life of yours'

`You're sure, Jake,' I said, `that there's no, well, no resentment over any of the ways which I may have betrayed you, lied to you or humiliated you?'

`Can't humiliate me, Luke; a man's mind should be above emotion.'

He was looking down at his pad and writing. `Tell me about this dice man stuff.'

I was sitting up in my bed and I leaned back comfortably into the four pillows I had had piled behind me and prepared to tell Jake what I had learned.

`It's really amazing, Jake. It's shown me emotions in myself I never knew existed.' I paused. `I think I've stumbled onto something important, something psychotherapy has been looking for for centuries. Arlene told you I've got a small group of students in dice therapy. There are other doctors trying it as well. It's … well, maybe I'd better give you the whole background theory and history…'

'You want I should cheer?'

With much dignity, praise and detail, I summarized in about half an hour the Dice Man in theory and practice. I thought a lot of what I had to say was quite funny, but Jake never smiled, except professionally: to give me confidence to go on.

Finally I concluded: `And thus my eccentricities, inconsistencies, absurdities, and breakdowns of the last year have all been the logical consequences of a highly original but highly rational approach to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'

There was a silence.

`I realize that in developing dice theory I have done things which have caused suffering to others as well as myself, but in so far as all was necessary to bring me to my present spiritual state, it may be justified.'

Again there was a silence until at last Jake raised his head.

`Well?' I asked. With my arms folded on my chest I awaited with incredible tension Jake's evaluation of my theory and my life.

`So?' he said.

`So?' I replied.

`But why not? I . .. aren't I developing a facet of man too long impressed in the jail of personality?'

`You've just described to me in great detail the classic symptoms of schizophrenia: multiple selves, detachment, elation

depression: you want I should cheer?'

`But the schizophrenic becomes split and multiple against his will; he longs for unity. I have consciously created

schizophrenia.'

'You show a total inability to relate to anyone personally.'

`But if the dice tell me to I can.'

`If it can be turned on and off it's not normal human relatedness.'

He was looking at me calmly and without expression, whereas I was getting excited.

`But how do you know that normal, uncontrollable human relatedness is more desirable than my switch-button variety?

'

He didn't answer. After a while he said: `Did the dice tell you to tell me?'

`They told Arlene.'

`Did they tell you both to throw some lies in too?'

'No, that was our personal contribution.'

'The dice are wrecking your career.'

`I suppose so.'

'They've ruined your marriage.'

`Naturally.'

`They make it impossible for me or anyone else to rely on anything you say or do from now on.'

'True.'

'They mean that anything you begin may be abandoned right at the point of fruition by a whim of a die.'

`Yes.'

`Including the investigations of the dice man.'

`Ah, Jake, you understand perfectly.'

`I think I do.'

`Why don't you try it too?' I asked warmly. `It's possible.'

`We could become the Dynamic Dice Duo, dealing dreams and destruction to the pattern-plagued world of modern

man.'

`Yes, that's interesting.'

`You're about the only one I know intelligent enough to understand what the Dice Man is really all about.'

`I suppose I am.'

`Well?'

`Have to think it over, Luke. It's a big step.'

`Sure, I understand.'

`It's got to be Oedipal; that damn father of yours.'

`Wha - what?'

'That time when you were three and your mother-'

`Jake! What are you talking about?' I asked loudly and with irritation. `I've just unfolded the most imaginative new life

system in the history of man and you start talking old Freudian mythology.'

'Huh? Oh, I'm sorry,' he said, smiling his professional smile. `Go ahead.'

But I laughed, bitterly I'm afraid. `No, never mind. I'm tired of talking today,' I said. Jake leaned forward and stared at

me intently.

'I'll cure you,' he said. I'll tie you back into the old Luke or my name isn't Jake Ecstein. Don't you worry.'

I sighed and felt sad. 'Yeah,' I said dully. I won't worry.'

Chapter Forty-five

The pre-D-Day Luke Rhinehart created by the dice for the week of June 22 appeared so conventional, so rational, so

ambitious and so interested in psychology that Doctors Ecstein and Mann decided to take a chance and permit me to defend myself at the meeting of the executive committee of PANY on June 30. Jake, while not yet convinced of the soundness of my theory, was increasingly enjoying certain dice exercises to which Arlene was introducing him and wished to be generous. Dr. Mann, not having been informed of the radical nature of my dicelife, was vaguely hopeful that the rational, conventional, ambitious man he talked to during the week of June 22 would still exist on the thirtieth. The executive committee had agreed to my presence because they could find nothing in their bylaws which forbade it.

The charges against me were simple - my theories and practice of dice therapy were incompetent, ridiculous, unethical

and of no `lasting medical value.' Consequently, I should be expelled from PANY and a letter should be sent to the president of the AMA urging that I be forbidden to practice medicine anywhere in the United States or Canada (the southern part of the hemisphere being considered beyond salvation). I looked forward to the meeting as a welcome break from the confinement of the Kolb Clinic. Then occurred one of those unfortunate accidents which flaw even the most well-ordered dicelife: I absentmindedly gave the dice a foolish option and the Die chose it. When considering what to do about the PANY indictment - to which my residual self was indifferent the old Luke Rhinehart I was being that week created as an option that if the committee voted to expel me I would cease dice therapy and dice living for one year. I gaily toppled a die onto my hospital bed and lost my gaiety: the Die chose that option.

In so far as anything is certain in this Die-dictated universe, it was certain that the executive committee would find me guilty. Not one of the five members of the committee was likely to be sympathetic. Dr. Weinburger, the chairman, was an ambitious, successful, conventional genius who hated everything that took time away from his glory-producing activities at his Institute for the Study of Hypochondria in the Dying.

He had never heard of me before his brief brush with me at the Krum party and it was clear he would hope never to hear of me again.

Old Dr. Cobblestone was a fair, rational, open-minded and just man who would thus naturally vote against me. Although Dr. Mann had been trying to get the fellow members of the committee to agree to force me to resign quietly from PANY, after he failed in this effort he would naturally vote to condemn everything he detested. Namely me.