Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

loomed over my husband like Mount Everest over a stunted shrub I must learn to spread myself supine before him. My

femininity must be given freedom. The dice man could never be complete until he was a woman.

`Can I buy you a drink?' the man asked, standing above me like Everest above a stunted shrub. It was the ex-

Cleveland Brown defensive tackle, and he looked down at me with world weary knowingness. And a smile.

Chapter Sixty-four

You must never question the wisdom of the Die. His ways are inscrutable. He leads you by the hand into an abyss and,

lo, it is a fertile plain. You stagger beneath the burden he places upon you and, behold, you soar. The Die never deviates from the Tao, nor do you. The desire to manipulate your surrender to the Die so that you may gain from it is futile. Such surrender never frees

you from the pains of the ego. You must give up all your struggling, all your purposes, values and goals, and then, only then, when you have given up the belief that you can use the Die to gain some ego end, will you discover liberation from your burdens and your life flow free.

There is no compromise: you must surrender everything. from The Book of the Die

Chapter Sixty-five

`I'm a virgin,' I said in a thin, delicate voice. `Please be gentle.'

Chapter Sixty-six

There are two paths: you use the Die, or you let the Die use you. from The Book of the Die Chapter

Sixty-seven

`Christ,' I said heavily, `am I going to be sore.'

Chapter Sixty-eight

Dear Dr. Rhinehart, I admire your work so much. My husband and I do our dice exercises every morning after breakfast and again before

bedtime and we feel years younger. When are you going to have your own TV show? Before we began playing with emotional roulette and Exercise K we almost never spoke to each other, but now we're always shouting or laughing even when we're not playing dice games. Could you please give us some advice as to how we might better bring up our daughter Ginny to serve the Die? She's a willful girl and doesn't say her prayers to It regular and is almost always the same sweet shy girl and frankly we're worried. We've tried to get her to do the dice exercises with us in the morning or by herself, but nothing seems to work. My husband beats her every now and then when the Die says to but it doesn't help much either. The only dicedoctor in these parts left for Antarctica three months ago so we have no one to turn to but you.

Yours by Chance, Mrs. A. J. Kempton, (Missouri)

Dear Dr. Rhinehart,

I discovered my sixteen-year-old daughter on our living room couch with the postman this afternoon, and she referred

me to you. What the hell is this all about? Sincerely Yours, John Rush

Chapter Sixty-nine

The birth of the first dicebaby in the world was I suppose, an event of some historical importance. It was just after

Christmas in 1969 that I got a phone call from Arlene announcing that she and Jake were rushing off to the hospital to have our dicebaby. They knew where I could be reached, since I'd stopped off two days before to give them each a Christmas present: Arlene a set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Jake a rakish bathing suit (Not my will, O Die, but Thy will be done).

When I arrived, Arlene was still in labor, and her private room was something of a messy jumble from two huge opened suitcases, filled, as far as I could see, entirely with baby clothes. I noticed at least thirty diapers with two green dice branded on each, and many of the pajamas, shirts, pants and tiny baby socks seemed to be similarly monogrammed. I found this to be in bad taste and told Arlene so while she was in the middle of a labor pain, but when she stopped groaning (she claimed it was mostly pleasurable), she assured me the Die had picked a one-in-three shot and ordered the monograms.

The three of us chatted about our hopes for the baby, with Arlene doing most of the talking. She told us that she had given 215 chances in 216 that she practice natural childbirth and breast-feed the child and that much to her delight the Die had chosen that she should do both. But most of her talk was about when the child should be potty trained and when it should be dicetrained.

`We've got to start early,' Arlene kept saying. `I don't want our baby corrupted by society the way I was for thirty-five

years.'

'Still, Arlene,' I said, `for the first two or three years I think the child can develop randomly without using the dice.'

`No, Luke, it wouldn't be fair to him,' she replied: `It would be like keeping candy away from him.'

`But a child tends to express all his minority impulses - at least until he gets to school. They may batten down the

hatches there.'

`Perhaps, Lukie,' she said, `but he'll see me casting dice to see which breast he gets or whether we go for a walk or

whether he naps, and he'll feel left out. What I'd like to do .is …'

But she went into such a long labor pain and it came so soon after the previous one that Jake buzzed for the nurse and

they wheeled her off to the delivery room. Jake and I trailed after her down the hall.

`I don't know, Luke,' Jake said after a while, squinting up at hopefully. `I think this dice business may be getting out of

hand.'

`I think so too,' I said.

`The dice may be good for us uptight adults, but I'm not sure about two-year-olds.'

`I agree.'

`She could confuse the poor kid before he developed any patterns to break.'

`Right.'

`It's possible the kid might grow up to be something of a weirdie.'

`True. Or worse yet, he might end up rebelling against diceliving and opt for permanent conformity to the dominant

social norm.'

`Hey, that's a possibility. You think he might?'

`Sure,' I said. `Boys always rebel against their mothers.'

Jake paused in his pacing and I stopped beside him and looked down; he was staring at the floor.

`I suppose a little dice-throwing won't hurt him,' he said slowly.

`And in any case, who cares?'

Jake looked sharply up at me.

`Aren't you concerned about your baby?' he asked.

`Now, remember. Jake, it's our baby, not mine. Just because the dice told Arlene to tell you that I'm the father doesn't

mean necessarily that I am.'

`Hey, that's right.'

`You may actually be the father but the dice told Arlene to lie.'

`That's a good point, Luke.'

`Or she may have been sleeping with dozens of guys that month and not know who the actual father is.' He looked

down at the floor again.

`Thanks for the reassurance,' he said.

`So let's just call it our baby.'

`Let's just call it hers.'

Chapter Seventy

Dear Dr. Rhinehart I have been a fan of yours ever since I read that interview in Playboy. I-have been trying to

practice the dicelife now for almost a year but have run into several problems which I hoped you might be able to help me with. First, I was wondering if it were really necessary or important to follow the Die no matter what it says. I mean sometimes it vetoes something I really want to do or chooses the most absurd of the options I've created for it. I've found that disobeying the Die in such cases makes me feel real good, as if I were getting something for free. I find the Die most helpful in doing the things I want to do, mostly making girls. It's a big help there, since I never feel guilty when I try something that doesn't work since the die told me to do it. And I don't feel guilty when it does work since if the girl gets knocked up, it was the Die that did it. But why do you keep saying one should always follow the Die? And why bother to expand the areas it makes decisions in? I've got a good thing going and find a lot of your stuff distracts me from my end if you know what I mean.