The Dice Man (3 page)

`Honey, the children.'

The children in fact looked about as affected by our argument as elephants by two squabbling mosquitoes, but the ploy always worked to silence Lil.

After we'd all finished breakfast she led the children into their room to get dressed while I went to wash and shave.

Holding the lathered brush stiffly in my raised right hand like an Indian saying `How!', I stared glumly into the mirror. I always hated to shave a two-day growth of beard; with the dark shadows around my mouth I looked potentially at least like Don Giovanni, Faust, Mephistopheles, Charlton Heston, or Jesus. After shaving I knew I would look like a successful, boyishly handsome public relations man. Because I was a bourgeois psychiatrist and had to wear glasses to see myself in the mirror I had resisted the impulse to grow a beard. I let my sideburns grow, though, and it made me look a little less like a successful public relations man and a little more like an unsuccessful, out-of-work actor.

After I'd begun shaving and was concentrating particularly well on three small hairs at the tip of my chin Lil came, still wearing her modest, obscene nightgown, and leaned against the doorway.

'I'd divorce you if it wouldn't mean I'd be stuck with the 'kids,' she said, in a tone half-ironic and half-serious.

`Nnn.'

If you had them, they'd all turn into clownish Buddha-blobs.'

`Unnnn.'

'What I don't understand is that you're a psychiatrist, a supposedly good one, and you have no more insight into me or into yourself than the elevator man.'

`Ah, honey-'

`You don't! You think loving me up, apologizing before and-after every argument, buying me paints, leotards, guitars, records and new book clubs must make me happy. It's driving me crazy.'

'What can I do?'

`I don't know. You're the analyst. You should know. I'm bored I'm Emma Bovary in everything except that I have no romantic hopes.'

'That makes me a clod doctor, you know.'

'I know. I'm glad you noticed, It's no fun attacking unless you catch my allusions. Usually you know about as much about literature as the elevator man.'

`Say, just what is it between you and this elevator man?'

'I've given up my yoga exercises-'

'How come?'

'They just make me tense.'

'That's strange, they're supposed-' `I know! But they make me tense - I can't help it.'

I'd finished shaving, taken off my glasses; and was grooming my hair with what I fear may have been greasy kid stuff; Lil moved into the bathroom and sat on the wooden laundry basket. Crouching now quite a bit in order to see the top of my hair in the mirror, I noticed that my knee muscles were already aching. Moreover, without my glasses I looked old today, and in a blurred sort of way, badly dissipated. Since I didn't smoke or drink much, I wondered vaguely if excessive early morning petting were debilitating.

`Maybe I should become a hippie,' Lil went on absently.

"That's what a few of our patients try. They don't seem overly pleased with the result.'

`Or drugs.'

`Ah Lil sweet precious-'

`Don't touch me.'

`Ah-'

`No!'

Lil was backed up against the tub and shower curtain as if threatened by a stranger in a cheap melodrama, and I, slightly appalled by her apparent fear, backed meekly away.

`I've got a patient in half an hour, hon, I've got to go.'

`I'll try infidelity!' Lil shouted after me, 'Emma Bovary did it.'

I turned back again. She was standing with her arms folded over her chest, her two elbows pointing out sharply from her long slender body, and with a bleak, mousy, helpless look on her face; at the moment she seemed like a kind of female Don Quixote after having just been tossed in a blanket. I went to her, and took her in my anus.

`Poor little rich girl. Who would you have for adultery? The elevator man? [She sobbed.] Anyone else? Sixty-threeyear old Dr. Mann, and flashy, debonair Jake Ecstein [she detested Jake and he never noticed her]. Come on, come on. We'll go out to the farmhouse soon; it'll be the break you need. Now...'

Her head was still nestled into my chest, but her breathing was regular. She'd had just the one sob.

`Now . . . chin up . . . bust out . . . tummy in . . .'

I said. `Buttocks firm. . and you're ready to face life again. You can have an exciting morning: talking with Evie, discussing avant-garde art with Ma Kettle [our maid], reading Time, listening to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony: racy, thought-provoking experiences all.'

'You [she scratched her nose against my chest] ...should mention that I could do coloring with Larry when he gets home from school.'

`And that, and that. You've absolutely no end of home entertainments. Don't forget to call in the elevator man for a quick one when Evie is having her rest time.'

My right arm around her, I walked us into our bedroom. While I finished dressing, she watched quietly, standing next to tile big bed with arms folded and elbows out. She saw me to the door and after we had exchanged a farewell kiss of less than great passion she said quietly with a bemused, almost interested expression on her face. I don't even have my yoga anymore.'

I shared my office on 57th Street with Dr. Jacob Ecstein, young (thirty-three), dynamic (two books published), intelligent (he and I usually agreed), personable (everyone liked him), unattractive (no one loved him), anal (he plays the stock market compulsively), oral (he smokes heavily), non-genital (doesn't seem to notice women), and Jewish (he knows two Yiddish slang words). Our mutual secretary was a Miss Reingold, Mary Jane Reingold, old (thirty-six), undynamic (she worked for us), unintelligent (she prefers Ecstein to me), personable (everyone felt sorry for her), unattractive (tall, skinny, glasses, no one loved her), anal (obsessively neat), oral (always eating), genital (trying hard), and non-Jewish (finds use of two Yiddish slang words very intellectual). Miss Reingold greeted me efficiently.

`Mr. Jenkins is waiting in your office, Dr. Rhinehart.'

`Thank you, Miss Reingold. Any calls for me yesterday?'

`Dr. Mann wanted to check about lunch this afternoon. I said yes".'

`Good.'

Before I moved off to my patient, Jake Ecstein came briskly out of his office, shot off a cheerful `Hi, Luke baby, how's the book?' the way most men might ask about a friend's wife, and asked Miss Reingold for a couple of case records.

I've described Jake's character; his body was short, rotund, chubby: his visage was round, alert, cheerful with hornrimmed glasses and a piercing, I-am-able-to-see-through-you stare; his social front was used-car salesman, and he kept his shoes shined with a finish so bright that I sometimes suspected he cheated with a phosphorescent shoe polish.

`My book's moribund,' I answered as Jake accepted a fistful of papers from a somewhat flustered Miss Reingold.

`Great,' he said. `Just got a review of my Analysis: End and Means from the AP Journal. They say it's great.'

He began glancing slowly through the papers, placing one of them every now and then back onto his secretary's desk.

`I'm glad to hear it, Jake. You seem to be hitting the jackpot with this one.'

`People are seeing the light-'

'Er... Dr. Ecstein,' Miss Reingold said.

'They'll like it - I may convert a few analysts.'

`Are you going to be able to make lunch today?' I asked. 'When are you leaving for-Philadelphia?'

'Damn right. Want to show Mann my review. Plane leaves two. I'll miss your poker party tonight.'

'Er . . . Dr. Ecstein.'

'You read any more of my book?' Jake went on and gave me one of his piercing, squinting glances, which, had I been a patient, would have led me to repress for a decade all that was on my mind at that instant.

'No. No, I haven't. I must still have a psychological block: professional jealousy and all that.' `Er . . . Dr. Ecstein?'

'Hmmmm. Yeh. In Philly I'm gonna see that anal optometrist. I've been telling you about. Think we're about at a break through. Cured of his voyeurism, but still has visual blackouts. It's only been three months though. I'll bust him. Bust him right back to twenty-twenty.' He grinned.

`Dr. Ecstein, sir,' said Miss Reingold, now standing.

`Seeya Luke. Send in Mr. Klopper, Miss R.'

As Jake, still carrying a handful of forms, exited briskly into his inner office, I asked Miss Reingold to check with Queensborough State Hospital about my afternoon appointments. 'Yes, Dr. Rhinehart,' she said.

'And what did you wish to communicate to Dr. Ecstein?'

'Oh, Doctor,' she smiled doubtfully. `Dr. Ecstein asked for the case notes on Miss Riffe and Mr. Klopper and I gave him by mistake the record sheets of our last year's budget.'

`Don't worry, Miss Reingold,' I replied firmly. `This may another breakthrough.'

It was 9.07 when I finally settled into my chair behind the outstretched form of Reginald Jenkins on my couch. Normally nothing upsets a patient more than a late analyst, 'but Jenkins was a masochist: I could count on him assuming that he deserved it.

'I'm sorry about being here,' he said, `but your secretary insisted I come in and lie down.'

'That's quite all right Mr. Jenkins. I'm sorry I'm late. Let's both relax and you can go right ahead.'

Now the curious reader will want to know what kind of an analyst I was. It so happens that I practiced non-directive therapy. For those not familiar with it, the analyst is passive, compassionate, non-interpretive, non-directing. More precisely, he resembles a redundant moron. For example, a session with a patient like Jenkins might go like this

JENKINS: `I feel that no matter how hard I try I'm always going to fail; that some kind of internal mechanism always acts to screw up what I'm trying to do.'

[Pause] ANALYST: `You feel that some part of you always forces you to fail.'

JENKINS: `Yes. For example, that time when I had that date with that nice woman, really attractive - the librarian, you remember - and all I talked about at dinner and all evening was the New York Jets and what a great defensive secondary they have. I knew I should be talking books or asking her questions but I couldn't stop myself.'

ANALYST: `You feel that some part of you consciously ruined the potential relationship with that girl:

JENKINS: `And that job with Wessen, Wessen and Woof. I could have had it. But I took a month's vacation in Jamaica when I know they'd be wanting an interview! 'I see.'

`What do you make of it all, Doctor? I suppose it's masochistic.'

`You think it might be masochistic! 'I don't know. What do you think?'

'You aren't certain if it's masochistic but you do know that you often do things which are self-destructive.'

`That's right. That's right. And yet I don't have any suicidal tendencies. Except in those dreams. Throwing myself under a herd of hippopotamuses. Or 'potami. Setting myself on fire in front of Wessen, Wessen and Woof. But I keep goofing up real opportunities.'

`Although you never consciously think of suicide you have dreamed about it.'

`Yes. But that's normal. Everybody does crazy things in dreams.'

`You feel that your dreaming of self-destructive acts s normal because...'

The intelligent reader gets the picture. The effect of non-directive therapy is to encourage the patient to speak more and more frankly, to gain total confidence in the non-threatening, totally accepting clod who's curing him, and eventually to diagnose and resolve his own conflicts, with old thirty-five dollars-an-hour echoing away through it all behind the couch.

And it works. It works precisely as well as every other tested form of psychotherapy. It works sometimes and fails at others, and its success and failures are identical with other analysts' successes and failures. Of course at times the dialogue resembles a comedy routine. My patient the second hour, that morning was a hulking heir to a small fortune who had the build of a professional wrestler and the mentality of a professional wrestler.

Frank Osterflood was the most depressing case I'd had in five years of practice. In the first two months of analysis he had seemed a rather nice empty socialite, worried half-heartedly about his inability to concentrate on anything. He tended to drift from job to job averaging two or three a year. He talked great deal about his jobs and about a mousy father and two disgusting brothers with families, but all with such cocktail party patter that I knew we must be a long way from what was really bothering him. If anything was bothering him. The only clue I had to indicate that he was anything but a vacuous muscle was his occasional spitting hissing remarks - usually of a general nature - about women. When I asked one morning about his relations with women he hesitated and then said he found them boring. When I asked him how he found fulfillment for his sexual needs, he answered neutrally, `Prostitutes.'

Two or three times in later sessions he described in detail how he liked to humiliate the call girls he hired, but he would never make any effort to analyze his behavior; he seemed to feel in his casual man-of-the-world way that humiliating women was good, normal, all American behavior. He found it more interesting to analyze why he left his last job; the office he worked in `smelled funny.'

About halfway through the session that August day he interpreted his seemingly pleasant recollections of having single-handedly destroyed an East Side bar by sitting up on the couch and looking intensely but in my professional opinion, dumbly, at the floor. Even his face seemed bulging with muscles. He sat there in the same position for several minutes, grunting quietly to himself with a sound like a noisy refrigerator. Finally he said:

'I get so tied up inside I just have to . . . to do something or I'll explode,' he said.

'I understand.'

[pause]

`Do something. . , sexually or I'll explode.'

`You get so tense you feel you must express yourself sexually.

`Yes.'

[Pause] `Don't you want to know how!' he asked.

`If you'd like to tell me.' `Do you want to know? Don't you need to know to help me?'