that you know the truth.
My father died when I was two.
Precisely. I need say no more.
He was six foot and blond. The husband is five feet eight and dark.
Displacement.
My father never took baths, only showers, or so my mother tells me.
Irrelevant.
When a woman is handing a towel in to her husband and chatting with him, it's inconvenient to penetrate her from the
front.
Nonsense.
I didn't know Tahoe meant Big Father Chief.
Repression.
I think I'm still going to enjoy making love to this woman.
I challenge you to examine your fantasies when you do.
I usually fantasize I'm doing it with my wife. ,
The hour's up.
Chapter Twenty-two
Days pass, Reader. So do weeks. Since I have a poor memory and kept no journal during these now-to-be- recorded days, the precise sequence of events is no clearer in my mind than it is in these pages. The dice didn't order me to write my autobiography until almost three years after my discovery, and the historic value of everything I did was not apparent to me at the time.
On the other hand, my selective defective memory presumably is hitting only the high points. Perhaps it is giving to my random life a pattern which total recall would blur. Let us assume, then, that what I forget is on a priori grounds insignificant, and what I remember is, in the same way, of great moment. It may not seem that way to either of us, but it makes a convenient theory of autobiography. Also, if the transitions from chapter to chapter or scene to scene seem particularly illogical, attribute it to either my arbitrary memory or the random fall of a die: it makes the trip more psychedelic.
In the evolution of the totally random man the next event worth noting is that on January 2, 1969 at 1 A.M. I determined to begin the new year (I'm a slow starter) by letting the dice determine my long-term fate.
I wrote with un-firm hand and dazed eyes the first option, for snake-eyes or double sixes: I would leave my wife and children and begin a separate life. I trembled (which is hard for a man with so much meat on him) and felt proud. Sooner or later the dice would roll a two or a twelve and the cast great test of the dice's ability to destroy the self would occur. If I left Lil there would be no turning back; it would be dice unto death.
But then I felt fatigued. The dice man seemed boring, unattractive, other. It seemed like too much work. Why not relax and enjoy everyday life, play around in minor ways with the dice as I had at the beginning, and forgo this senseless, theatrical challenge of killing the self? I had discovered an interesting tonic, more varied than alcohol, less dangerous that LSD, more challenging than stocks or sex. Why not accept it as tonic rather than try to make it a magic potion? I had but one life to lead, why sacrifice it to becoming locked in the cage of a rolling cube? For the first time in the six months since becoming the dice man, the thought of totally giving up -the dice appealed tome.
I wrote as the option for a 6, 7 or 8 that I return to a normal diceless life for six months. I felt pleased.
But immediately thereafter, my friends, I felt frightened, depressed. The realization that I might be without the dice produced precisely the same heavy depression, which the thought of being without Lil had produced. Erasing the 7 as a possibility for the option of giving up the dice, I felt a little better. I tore up the entire page and dropped it in the waste basket: I would abandon the whole conception of long-range dice decisions. I heaved myself up out of my chair and walked slowly off to the bathroom where I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I stared at myself in the mirror.
Clark Kent stared back at me, clean-cut and mediocre. Re moving my glasses helped, primarily because it blurred the image sufficiently so that my imagination was given leeway.
The blurred face was at first eyeless and mouthless; a faceless nobody. By concentrating I conjured up two gray slits and a toothless mouth; a death's head. With my glasses back on it was just me again. Luke Rhinehart, M.D., the Clark Kent of New York psychoanalysis. But where was Superman? Indeed, that was what this water- closet identity crisis was all about. Where indeed was Superman an if I went back to bed? Back at my desk I rewrote the first two options; leaving Lil and giving up the dice. I then gave one chance in five to the option that I decide at the beginning of each of the next seven months (until the birthday of D-day in mid-August) what each particular month was to be devoted to. I gave the same probability to the option that I try to write a novel for seven months. Slightly better odds went to the option that I spend three months touring Europe and the rest of the time traveling at the whim of the die. My last option was to turn my sex research with Dr. Felloni over to the imagination of the dice.
The first bi-annual fate-dealing day had arrived - a momentous occasion. I blessed the dice in the name of Nietzsche, Freud, Jake Ecstein and Norman Vincent Peale and shook them in the bowl of my hands, rattling them hard against my palms. I gurgled with anticipation: the next half-year of my life, perhaps even more, trembled in my hands. The dice tumbled across the desk; there was a six and there was a … three. Nine - survival, anticlimax, in-conclusion, even disappointment; the dice had ordered me to decide anew each month what my special fate was to be.
Chapter Twenty-three
National Habit-Breaking Month must have been dictated by the die in a fit of pique over my easy enjoyment of my dicelife; the month provided a hundred little blasts toward the breaking up of Lucius Rhinehart, M.D. Habit breaking had won out over (1) dedicated psychiatrist month, (2) begin-writing-a-novel month, (3) vacation-in-Italy month, (4) be-kind-to everybody month, and (5) help-Arturo-X month. The command was, to be precise, `I will attempt at every moment of every day of this month to alter my habitual behavior patterns.'
First of all it meant that when I rolled over to cuddle Lil at dawn I had to roll back again and stare at the wall. After staring a few minutes and then beginning to doze off, I realized that I never rose at dawn, so with effort and resentment, I got out of bed. Both feet were in my slippers and I was plodding toward the bathroom before I realized habit had me in his fist. I kicked off my slippers and plodded, then jogged into the living room. I still, however, felt like urinating. Triumphantly, I did so in a vase of artificial gladioli. (Three days later Dr. Felloni remarked on how well they seemed to be doing.) A few minutes later I woke up in the same standing position, conscious that I still had a silly proud smile on my face. Careful examination of my conscience revealed that I did not make a habit of falling asleep on my feet after urinating is the living room so I let myself doze off again.
`What are you doing?' a voice said through my sleep.
`Huh?'
`Luke, what are you doing?'
`Oh.'
I saw Lil standing nude with her arms folded across her chest looking at me.
`I'm thinking.'
`What about?'
`Dinosaurs.'
`Come back to bed.'
`All right.'
I started to follow her back to bed but remembered that following nude women into beds was habitual. When Lil had
plopped in and pulled the blankets over her I crawled under the bed.
'Luke???'
I didn't answer.
