A tear glistened at the corner of one.
'Who do I remind you of?' Dr. E asked.'
'Of only yourself. I have needed your love all my life.'
`But I'm a psychiatrist.'
'Please don't be a psychiatrist anymore. For one minute, no, for ten seconds, for only ten seconds, I beg of you, give
me love. I need so much, to feel your strong arms around me, to feel your love ..'
Marie was close to Dr. E, her beautifully formed bosom heaving with her passionate need to be loved, tears now
wetting both her cheeks . .. .
`Ten seconds?' Dr. Ecstein asked.
`Seven seconds. Five. Three seconds, just three seconds please oh please give me your love.'
Dr. Ecstein stood squat and tense and his facial muscles moiled and twitched. His face began to get red. Then,
gradually, the moiling stopped and, white-faced, he said:- 'Can't do it, Honesty, Trust. Don't know what love is.'
'Love me, please love me, please I'm-'
'The teacher pulled Marie away, and informed: her that there was a request for her presence in one of the love rooms
and she skipped off, leaving Dr.. E still unloving.
Since self-pity is the hardest emotion of all for emotionless people to feel, the teacher made no further efforts with the
basic emotions and took Dr: E to the marriage playroom.
`You, have been unfaithful to your-wife-' the teacher said.
`What for?' he asked.
`I was only suggesting options. Let us say then you have been faithful to her, but-'
The teacher was interrupted by a short, slightly-fat, middle-aged woman coming in and marching up to Dr. Ecstein
and screaming is his face 'You viper! You swine! You beast! You betrayed me!'
'- wait a minute,' Dr. E stammered. '
`You and that trollop! How could you?'
She hit Dr. E a vicious blow on the side of the faces, almost breaking his glasses.
`Are you sure?' he said, backing away. `Why are you so upset?'
'Upset? The wholetown talking about you and that cesspool behind my back.'
`But how can anyone know what never-'
`If I know about it, the whole world knows about it.' She hit Dr. E again less strenuously and collapsed on the couch in
tears.
`It's nothing to cry about,' Dr. E said, coming over to comfort her. `Infidelity is a minor matter, really nothing -'
`Ahhhhhggg!!!!' she erupted from the couch, plowed her head into Dr. E's stomach and sent him crashing over an easy
chair onto a telephone table and wastebasket.
'I'm sorry !' Dr. E. screamed. The woman on top of him was scratching at his face and he rolled desperately away.'
'You bastard!' the woman shouted. `Cold-hearted killer. You've never loved me.'
'Of course not,' Dr. E said, scrambling to his feet. `So -what's all the fuss about?' 'Ahhhhgggg!!' she screamed - and came at-
Later the teacher tried to suggest other possible option to Dr. E. `Your wife has been unfaithful, your best friend
betrayed you, your-'
'So what else is new?' Dr. Ecstein asked.
`Well, let's say your money has all been lost in foolish investment.'
`Never.'
`Never what?'
`I'd never lose all my money in any way.'
`Try to use your imagination, Jim. The-'
`The name is Jake Ecstein. Why use my imagination? If I'm in touch with reality, why leave it?'
`How, do you know it's reality?'
'How do you know it's not?' Dr. E asked.
`But if there's any doubt, then you should experiment with other realities.'
`No doubt in my mind.'
`I see.'
`Look, buddy, I'm here as an observer. I like Luke Rhinehart and want to look over his plant.'
'You can't understand CETRE without living it'
`Okay, I'm trying, but don't expect me to use my imagination.'
Later Dr. Ecstein was taken to the love rooms.
`What kind of love experiences would you like to have?'
`Huh? ?'
`What kind of sex experience would you like to have?'
`Oh,' Dr. Ecstein said. `Okay.'
`Okay, what?'
'Okay, I'll have a sex experience.'
`But what kinds interest you?'
`Any. Doesn't make any difference.'
The teacher handed Dr. E the basic list of thirty-six possible love roles.
`Are there any that particularly appeal to you or any that you would prefer not to have as possible options of the Die?'
he asked.
Dr. E looked over the list: 'You wish to be loved slavishly by a . `You-wish to love slavishly a ' `You wish to be courted sweetly by a . . : 'You wish to court sweetly…' `'You wish to be raped by a . . : 'You wish to rape a : . : 'You wish to watch pornographic films,' 'You wish to watch
other people's sexual activities,' 'You wish to striptease,' `To watch a striptease,' 'You wish to be someone's mistress, a
prostitute, a stud, a call girl, a male prostitute, happily married to Most of the options gave the choice of alternatives
for performing the sexual role with: a young woman, an older woman, a young man, an older man, a man and a
woman, two men or two women.
`What's all this?' Dr. Ecstein asked.
`Simply choose those you are willing to play, make a list and let the dice choose one for you to play.'
`Better scratch the "rape" and the "be raped." Had enough of those in the marriage room.'
`All right. Any others, Phil?'
`Stop calling me names.'
`Sorry, Roger.'
`Better throw out the homosexual stuff. Might hurt my reputation outside.'
`But no one in here knows who you are or ever will know.'
`I'm Jake Ecstein, damn it! I've said that six times.'
`I know that, Elijah, but there are five other Jake Ecsteins in here this week as well, so I don't see what difference it
makes.
'Five others!' `Certainly. Would you like to meet some before you try your first random sex experience?'
`You're Goddam-right.'
The teacher took Dr. E into a room named Cocktail Party where a crowd milled and drinks were served. The teacher
took a portly gentleman by the elbow and said to him `Jake, I'd like you to meet Roger. Roger, Jake Ecstein.'
'Goddam it,' Dr. Ecstein said, `I'm Jake Ecstein!'
`Oh are you really?' the portly gentleman said. `I am too. How nice. I'm very pleased to meet you, Jake.'
Dr. E permitted himself to shake hands.
`Have you met the tall thin Jake Ecstein yet?' the portly one asked. `Awfully pleasant chap.'
`No, I haven't. And I don't want to.'
`Well, he is a bit dull, but not a young-man-with-the-muscles Jake. Him you must meet, Jake.'
`Yeah, maybe. But I'm the real Jake Ecstein.'
`How extraordinary. I am too.'
`I mean in the outside world.'
`But that's what I mean too. And so does the tall thin Jake and the young muscled Jake and the lovely young girl Jakie
Ecstein. All of them.'
'But I'm really the real Jake Ecstein.'
`How extraordinary! I too am really…'
Jake passed up a love experience and got rid of his teacher and decided he needed to have a good dinner. He had read
the center's Game Rules and knew as he ate in the cafeteria that the waiters might not be real waiters, that the guy
slinging hash behind the counter might be a bank president, that the cashier might be a famous actress, that the woman
sitting opposite him might be a writer of children's stories although she was apparently pretending, despite weighing
close to two hundred founds, to be Marlene Dietrich.
`You bore me, dahling,' she was saying, her chubby mouth manhandlin
g a cigarette.
`You're not exactly dynamite yourself, baby,' he replied eating rapidly.
`Where are all the men in this place,' she drawled. `I seem to meet only fruits.'
`And I meet only vegetables. So?' Jake answered.
`I beg your pardon. Who are you?'
`I'm Cassius Clay and I'll slug you in the teeth if you don't let me eat in peace.'
Marlene Dietrich relapsed into silence and Jake ate on, enjoying himself for the first time since his arrival. Suddenly he
saw his wife enter the cafeteria, followed by a teenage boy.
'Arlene!' he cried, half-standing.
`George?' she cried back.
Marlene Dietrich left the table and Dr. E waited for Arlene to join him, but instead she sat down at a corner table with
the teenage boy. Annoyed, he got up when he'd finished and went over to their table.
`Well what do you think of it so far?' he asked her.
`George, I'd like you to meet my son, John. John, this is George Fleiss, a very successful used-car salesman.'
`How do you do,' the boy said, sticking out a thin hand. `Pleased to meet you.'
`Yeah, well, look, I'm really Cassius Clay,' he said.
`Oh I am sorry,' Arlene answered.
`You've gotten out of shape,' the boy said indifferently.
Dr. E sat down with them, feeling glum. He did so want to be recognized as Jake Ecstein, psychiatrist. He tried a new
tack.
`What's your name?' he asked his wife.
`Maria,' she answered with a smile. `And this is my boy, John.'
`Where's Edgarina?'
`My daughter is at home.'
`And your husband?' Arlene frowned.
`Unfortunately, he has passed away,' she said.
`Oh great,' said Dr. E.
I beg your pardon!' said she, standing abruptly.
`Oh, ah, sorry. I was overcome with disturbance,' Dr. E said, motioning his wife to sit, `Look,' he went on, `I like you.
I like you very much. Perhaps we could stay together a while.'
`I'm sorry,' Arlene said softly, `I'm afraid people would talk.'
`People would talk? How?'
`You are a colored man and I am white,' she said.
Dr. Ecstein let his mouth hang open and for the first time in his last nineteen years experienced something which ha
realized later may have been self-pity.
Chapter Seventy-six
Being an American born and bred, it was in my bones to kill. Most of my adult life I had carried around like an
instantaneously inflatable balloon a free-floating aggression which kept an imaginative array of murders, wars and plagues parading across my mind whenever my life got difficult: a cabbie tried to overcharge me, Lil criticized me, Jake published another brilliant article. In the year before I discovered the dice, Lil was killed by a steamroller, an airplane crash, a rare virus, cancer of the throat, a flash fire in her bed, under the wheels of the Lexington Avenue Express and by an inadvertent drinking of arsenic. Jake had succumbed to driving into the East River in a taxi, a brain tumor, a stock-market-crash-induced suicide and an insane attack with a samurai's sword by one of his former cured patients. Dr. Mann succumbed to a heart attack, appendicitis, acute indigestion and a Negro rapist. The whole world itself had suffered at least a dozen full-scale nuclear wars, three plagues of unknown origin but universal effectiveness and an invasion from outer space by superior creatures who invisibleized everyone except a few geniuses. I had, of course, beaten to a bloody pulp President Nixon, six cab drivers, four pedestrians, six rival psychiatrists and several miscellaneous women. My mother had been buried in an avalanche and may still be alive there for all I know.
Being an American I had to kill. No self-respecting Dice Man could honestly write down options day after day without including a murder or a real rape. I did, in fact, begin to include as a long shot the rape of some randomly selected female, but the dice ignored it. Reluctantly, timidly, with my old friend dread reborn and moiling in my guts, I
also created a long-shot option of `murdering someone.'
I gave it only one chance in thirty-six (snake eyes) and three, four times spread out over a year the Die ignored it, but
then, one lovely Indian Summer day, with the birds twittering outside in the bushes of my newly rented Catskill
farmhouse, the autumn leaves blowing and blinding in the sun and a little beagle puppy I'd just been given wagging
his tail at my feet, the Die, given ten different options of varying probabilities dropped double ones snake eyes: `I will
try to murder someone.'
I felt acute anxiety and excitement combined, but not the doubt in the world that I would do it. Leaving Lil had been
hard (although I sneer at my anxieties now), but killing 'someone' seemed no more difficult than holding up a drugstore
or robbing a bank. There was a bit of anxiety because my life was being put in jeopardy; there was the excitement of
the chase; and there was curiosity: what person shall I kill? The great advantage of being brought up in a culture of
violence is that it doesn't really matter who you kill: Negroes, Vietnamese or your mother - as long as you can make a
reason for it, the killing will feel good. As the Dice Man, however, I felt obligated to let the Die choose the victim. I
flipped a die saying `odd' I would murder someone I knew, `even' it would be a stranger. I assumed for some reason
that the Die would prefer a stranger, but the die showed a `one'; odd - someone I knew.
I decided that in all fairness one of the people I might kill was myself and that my name should take its chances with
the rest. Although I `knew' hundreds of people, I didn't think the Die intended me to spend days trying to remember all
my friends so that I wouldn't deny any of them the option of being murdered. I created six lists each with six places for
the names of people I knew, I put Lil, Larry, Evie, Jake, my mother and myself at the top of each of the six different
lists. For second names on each list I added Arlene, Fred Boyd, Terry Tracy, Joseph Fineman, Elaine Wright (a new
friend of that period) and Dr. Mann. For number threes: Linda Reichman, Professor Boggles, Dr. Krum, Miss
Reingold, Jim Frisby (my new landlord in the Catskills) and Frank Osterflood. And so on. I won't give you the whole
thirty-six, but to show I tried my best to include everyone, I should note that for the last six on each list I made six
general categories: a business acquaintance, someone I had met first at a party, someone I knew only through letters or
through reading (e.g. famous people), someone I haven't seen in at least five years, a CETRE student or staff member
not previously listed and someone wealthy enough to justify robbing and killing.
I then casually cast a die to see from which of the six lists the die would choose a victim. The die chose list number
two: Larry, Fred Boyd, Frank Osterflood, Miss Welish, H. J. Wipple (philanthropic benefactor of the Dice Centers) or
someone I had first met at a party.
Anxiety flushed through my system like a poison, primarily at the thought of killing my son. I had only seen him once
since leaving so suddenly fifteen months before and he had been distant and embarrassed after a first leap into my
arms of genuine affection. He was also the first dice-boy in world history and it would be a shame .. . No, no, not
Larry. Or at least let's hope not. And Fred Boyd, my right arm, one of the leading practitioners and advocates of dice
therapy and a man I liked very much. His in-and-out relationship with Lil made the murder of either him or Larry
particularly unpleasant; to murder Fred seemed motivated and was thus doubly disturbing.
Anxiety is a difficult emotion to describe. The colorful leaves outside the window no longer
seemed vibrant; they
seemed glossy as if being revealed in an overexposed Technicolor film. The twitter of the birds sounded like a radio
commercial. My new beagle puppy snored in a corner as if she were a debauched old bitch. The day seemed overcast
even as the sun reflecting off a white tablecloth in the dining room blinded my eyes.
Still, there was a Die to be served. I prayed
`Oh Holy Die,
Thy hand is raised to fall and I thy simple sword.
Wield me.
Your Way is beyond our comprehension.
If I must sacrifice my son in thy Name, my son shall die:
lesser Gods than Thee have demanded thus of their followers.
If I must cut off my right arm to show the
Greatness of Thy Accidental Power, my arm shall fall.
You have made me great by thy commands, you have made me joyful and free. You have chosen that I kill, I shall
kill.
Great Creator Cube, help me to kill.
Choose thy victim that I may strike.
Point the way that I thy sword may enter.
He who is chosen will die smiling in the fulfillment of thy Whim.
Amen.'
I dropped a die to the floor quickly, as if it were a snake. A three: it was my duty to try to kill Frank Osterflood.
Chapter Seventy-seven
From the Bhagavad-Gita To Arjuna, who was thus overcome by pity, whose eyes were filled with tears and who was
troubled and much depressed in mind, the Lord Krishna said Whence has come to thee this dejection of spirit in this
hour of crisis? It is unknown to men of noble mind; it does not lead to heaven; on earth it causes disgrace, O Arjuna.
Yield not to this unmanliness, O Arjuna, for it does not become thee. Cast off this petty faintheartedness and arise, O
Oppressor of the foes.
Arjuna said How can I strike, O Krishna, O slayer of foes? It is better to live in this world by begging than to slay
another … My very being 'is stricken with pity. With my mind bewildered about my duty, I ask Thee to tell me that
which I should do.
Having thus addressed the Lord Krishna, the mighty Arjuna said to Krishna: `I will not kill,' and become silent.
To him thus depressed in the midst of two paths, Krishna, smiling as it were, spoke this word. The Blessed Lord said
The Diceman Page 38
