The Dice Man (48 page)

`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 manhandling 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.

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.

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 Thou grievest for one whom thou shouldst not grieve for, and yet thou speakest words about wisdom. Wise men do not grieve for the dead or the living.

Never was there a time when I was not, nor thou, nor these lords of men, nor will there ever be a time hereafter when we shall cease to be.

As the soul passes in this body through childhood, youth and age, even so it its taking on of another body. The sage is not perplexed by this.

Of the nonexistent there is no coming to be; of the existent there is no ceasing to be. Know thou that that by which all this is pervaded is indestructible. Of this immutable being, no one can bring about the destruction. Therefore, O Arjuna, thy duty shouldst be performed.

He who thinks that he slays and he who thinks that he is slain; both of them fail to perceive the truth; no one slays, nor is one slain. Therefore, O Arjuna, thy duty shouldst be performed.

He is never born, nor does he die at any time, nor having once come to be does he again cease to. be. He is unborn, eternal, permanent and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. Therefore, knowing him as such, thou shouldst not grieve and thy duty shouldst be performed. Pick up thy die, O Arjuna, and kill.

(Edited for The Book of the Die)

I hadn't heard of Frank Osterflood in close to a year, and I genuinely looked forward to seeing him again. He had responded pretty well for a while to dice therapy first with me and then in a group with Fred Boyd. When he experienced the need to rape someone - boy or girl - as an arbitrary decision of the dice, it freed him from the great burden of guilt, which had normally accompanied and magnified the act. And with the elimination of the guilt he discovered he had lost much of his desire to rape. I insisted, of course, that he had to try to carry through with any dice-dictated rape even though he didn't feel like it. He succeeded, found it a disgusting experience. I praised him for following the will of the Die, and he cut back drastically on the possibility of rape among his options and then eliminated it.

He enjoyed spending his money in random ways and then, much to my surprise, he married a woman as the result of a dice decision. Marriage turned out to be an apparent disaster. I had disappeared from the world at that time, but I heard from Fred Boyd that Frank had given up both his wife and the dicelife and was drifting again from job to job. Whether he was expressing his old aggressions in his old ways we didn't know.