`Really?'
`Yes. Fred Boyd helped me let go of the mad mad mad business and that's just left me with . . . the other.'
`How'd Fred do it?'
`After I'd cried and complained and raged for an hour or so two days after you'd left, he said to me: "You ought to
consider suicide, Lil."
'Lil paused to smile at the memory. 'That sort of caught my attention so to speak, and he went on to say: "Shake the
dice also to see whether you should try to kill Luke."
'Good friend, old Fred,' Dr. Rhinehart interjected, and began pacing nervously back and forth in front of his wife.
`Another option he suggested was that I divorce you and try to marry him.'
`One of my real pals.'
`Or also, that I not divorce you but begin sleeping with him.'
`Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his best friend's wife `He than gave me a sincere impassioned
lecture on how I had let my compulsive tie to you limit me in every way, let it starve all the creative and imaginative
selves that would otherwise live.'
`My own theories turned against me.'
`So I shook a Die and Fred and I have been enjoying each other ever since.'
Dr. Rhinehart stopped his pacing and stared.
`Exactly what does that mean?' he asked.
`I'm trying to state the matter delicately so you won't be upset.'
'Thanks a lot. Are you serious?'
`I consulted the Die and It told me to be serious with you.'
`You and Fred are now… lovers?'
`That's what the novels call it.'
Dr. Rhinehart looked at the floor for a while (the realization that it was a new rug registered dimly on his
consciousness), then back up at his wife.
`How about that?' he said.
`It's pretty good, as a matter of fact,' Lil replied, lust the other night 'Er no, Lil, the details really aren't necessary. I'm …
hmmm. I'm . . . well, what else is new?'
I'm enrolled this fall at Columbia Law School.'
`You're what?'
`I gave the dice a choice of several of my lifelong daydreams and they chose that I become a lawyer. Don't you want
me to broaden myself?'
`But law school!' Dr. Rhinehart said.
`Oh Luke, for all your supposed liberation you've still got an image of me as a helpless beautiful female.'
`But you know I can't stand lawyers.'
'True, but have you ever slept with one?'
Dr. Rhinehart shook his head dazedly.
`You're supposed to be heartbroken, distraught, anxiety tilled, helpless, desperate, incompet-'
`Oh stuff that shit,' Mrs. Rhinehart said.
`Did Fred teach you such language?'
`Don't be a child.'
`True,' Dr. Rhinehart said, suddenly collapsing in a heap on the couch - it, he was glad to note, remained the same as
from his old life. `I'm proud of you, Lil.'
`You can stuff that too.'
`You're showing real independence.'
`Don't bother, Luke,' Mrs. Rhinehart said. `If I needed your praise I wouldn't be independent.'
`Are you wearing a bra?'
`If you have to ask, it's not worth asking.'
'The Die told me to re-seduce you, but I can't see even where to begin.'
He looked up at her as she leaned again against her new desk. She was smoking and her elbows stuck out sharply and
she didn't look too mousy. `I'm not in the mood for a knee in the groin.'
Mrs. Rhinehart dropped a Die onto the desk beside her and after looking at it said quietly to her husband: `Out you go,
Luke.'
`Where am I going?'
`Just out.'
`But I haven't seduced you yet.'
`You've tried and failed. Now you're leaving.'
`I haven't seen my children. How is my diceboy Larry?'
`Your diceboy Larry is fine. I told him when he came home from school this afternoon that you might be dropping by,
but he had an important touch-football game and had to rush away.'
`Is he practicing the dicelife, like a good boy?'
`Not very much. He says his teachers won't recognize dice decisions as a legitimate excuse for not doing homework.
Now out, Luke, you've got to go.'
Dr. Rhinehart looked away out the window and sighed. Then he dropped a die on the couch beside him and looked at
it `I refuse to leave,' he said.
Mrs. Rhinehart walked out of the room and returned with a pistol.
`The Die told me to make you leave. Since you deserted me, legally you have no right to be in this room without my
permission.` 'ah, but my Die told me to try to stay.'
Mrs. Rhinehart consulted a Die on the desk beside her.
`I'm counting to five and if you're not out of here I'm going to fire.'
`Don't be silly, Lil,' Dr. Rhinehart replied, smiling.
`I'm not `Two, three…'
`Doing anything which merits such extreme measures. It seems to me'
BAM!! The noise from the gun shook the whole room.
Dr. Rhinehart snapped up from the couch without undue delay and began moving toward the door. `A hole in the
couch is-' he began, trying to smile, but Mrs. Rhinehart had consulted the Die again and was counting to five and,
having only a limited desire to hear her reach the end of the recitation, Dr. Rhinehart sprinted with all deliberate speed
to the door and left.
Chapter Sixty-three
It must be admitted that the thought of penetrating the hairy anus of a man or of being so penetrated held all the allure of giving or receiving an enema on the dais before the American Association of Practicing Psychiatrists. The thought of caressing, kissing and mouthing a male penis somehow dimly reminded me of being forced at the age of six or seven to eat baked macaroni.
On the other hand, the occasional fantasy of being a woman writhing beneath some dim male was exciting - until the dim male grew a beard (shaven or not), a hairy chest, hairy buttocks and an ugly vein-bulging penis. Then I lost interest. Being a female could, in an occasional fantasy, be exciting. Being a male having `intercourse' with any precisely seen male seemed disgusting.
All of this I knew long before that November day in my habit-breaking life that the Die definitely asked me to shoulder the burden of going out into the world and being had. I went to the Lower East Side, where Linda told me I could find several gay bars, one of whose names in particular I remembered Gordo's.
At about 10.30 P.M. I entered Gordo's, a perfectly harmless looking bar, and was shocked to see men and women sitting together drinking. Moreover, there were only seven or eight people in the place. No one even looked at me. I ordered a beer and began doing research in my memory to see if I had in fact repressed or misheard the true name of the gay bar. Gordon's? Sordo's? Sodom's? Gorki's? Mordo's? Gorgon's? Gorgon's! What a perfect name for a gay place! I went to a pay phone and searched for Gorgon in the Manhattan directory. I drew a blank. Surprised and dejected, I sat in the booth and brooded out at the ineptly normal bar, Four young men moved suddenly past the glass door of my booth toward the front of the bar. Where had they come from? I left the booth and wandered toward the back, where I saw some stairs leading to the upper floors; from above I heard music. I wandered up, met the steely gaze of some ex-Cleveland Brown defensive tackle who was sitting at the head of the stairs and moved past him into a small anteroom. From behind large double doors came the music. I opened thin and walked in.
Three feet from me rocked two young men engaged in a passionate, deep-throated kiss. I felt as if I had been half-slammed, half-caressed in the belly with a slippery bagful of wet cunts.
I moved past them into a melee of dancing boys and men and made my way to a vacant table. It was about two inches by three and held the remains of three beer bottles, eleven cigarettes and a lipstick. After staring noncommittally and unseeingly into the chaos of noise, smoke and males for a minute or two, a young man asked me if I wanted a drink and I ordered a beer. Glancing around, I saw that at the two dozen tables only a few people were now sitting, all men except for one middle-aged couple immediately to my right. The man had a sickly smile on his face and the woman looked cool, and amused. When I looked over, she stared at me as she might at an inmate in a mental hospital, her husband simply appeared nervous; I winked at him.