Side Effects

somebody yells, 'Everybody up, it's morning,' it's very hard to find your slippers.

(The executioner arrives with a cup of hemlock. He bears a close facial resemblance to the Irish comedian Spike Milligan.)

Executioner: Ah-here we are. Who gets the poison?

Agathon: (Pointing to me) He does.

Allen: Gee, it's a big cup. Should it be smoking like that?

Executioner: Yes. And drink it all because a lot of tunes the poison's at the bottom.

Allen: (Usually here my behavior is totally different from Socrates' and I am told I scream in my sleep.) No-I won't! I don't want to die! Help! No! Please!

(He hands me the bubbling brew amidst my disgusting pleading and all seems lost. Then because of some innate survival instinct the dream always takes an upturn and a messenger arrives.)

Messenger: Hold everything! The senate has re-voted! The charges are dropped. Your value has been reassessed and it is decided you should be honored instead.

Allen: At last! At last! They came to their senses! I'm a free man! Free! And to be honored yet! Quick, Agathon and Simmias, get my bags. I must be going. Praxiteles will want to get an early start on my bust. But before I leave, I give a little parable.

Simmias: Gee, that really was a sharp reversal. I wonder if they know what they're doing?

Allen: A group of men live in a dark cave. They are unaware that outside the sun shines. The only light they know is the flickering flame of a few small candles which they use to move around.

Agathon: Where'd they get the candles?

Allen: Well, let's just say they have them.

Agathon: They live in a cave and have candles? It doesn't ring true.

Allen: Can't you just buy it for now?

Agathon: O.K., O.K., but get to the point.

Allen: And then one day, one of the cave dwellers wanders out of the cave and sees the outside world.

Simmias: In all its clarity.

Allen: Precisely. In all its clarity.

Agathon: When he tries to tell the others they don't believe him.

Allen: Well, no. He doesn't tell the others.

Agathon: He doesn't?

Allen: No, he opens a meat market, he marries a dancer and dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at forty-two.

(They grab me and force the hemlock down. Here 1 usually wake up in a sweat and only some eggs and smoked salmon calm me down.)

The Kugelmass Episode

Kugelmass, a professor of humanities at City College, was unhappily married for the second time. Daphne Kugelmass was an oaf. He also had two dull sons by his first wife, Flo, and was up to his neck in alimony and child support.

'Did I know it would turn out so badly?' Kugelmass whined to his analyst one day. 'Daphne had promise. Who suspected she'd let herself go and swell up like a beach ball? Plus she had a few bucks, which is not in itself a healthy reason to marry a person, but it doesn't hurt, with the kind of operating nut I have. You see my point?'

Kugelmass was bald and as hairy as a bear, but he had soul.

'I need to meet a new woman,' he went on. 'I need to have an affair. I may not look the part, but I'm a man who needs romance. I need softness, I need flirtation. I'm not getting younger, so before it's too late I want to make love in Venice, trade quips at '21,' and exchange coy glances over red wine and candlelight. You see what I'm saying?'

Dr. Mandel shifted in his chair and said, 'An affair will solve nothing. You're so unrealistic. Your problems run much deeper.'

'And also this affair must be discreet,' Kugelmass continued. 'I can't afford a second divorce. Daphne would really sock it to me.'

'Mr. Kugelmass-'

'But it can't be anyone at City College, because Daphne also works there. Not that anyone on the faculty at C.C.N.Y. is any great shakes, but some of those coeds…'

'Mr. Kugelmass-'

'Help me. I had a dream last night. I was skipping through a meadow holding a picnic basket and the basket was marked 'Options.' And then I saw there was a hole in the basket.'

'Mr. Kugelmass, the worst thing you could do is act out. You must simply express your feelings here, and together we'll analyze them. You have been in treatment long enough to know there is no overnight cure. After all, I'm an analyst, not a magician.'

'Then perhaps what I need is a magician,' Kugelmass said, rising from his chair. And with that he terminated his therapy.

A couple of weeks later, while Kugelmass and Daphne were moping around in their apartment one night like two pieces of old furniture, the phone rang.