My eyes couldn't seem to focus on any single person or couple but only on the torsos of males dancing. Finally, I raised my eyes and looked at the two men dancing nearest to me. The man, or rather the tallest of the two men, was in his late twenties, rather ruggedly homely, with a crooked nose and bushy eyebrows. The other person was shorter, younger and very good-looking in a young Peter Fonda sort of way. They were dancing rather disinterestedly and looking past each other at other couples. As I was watching, the younger man suddenly turned his eyes on me, lowered his lashes and raised one shoulder and gave me a sensual feminine sexual parting of moist lips. It was a sexual shock. It was one of the most lecherous and exciting looks I had ever received.
Ping! Did this mean that all my life I had secretly been a latent homosexual? Did my sexual response to a female come on in a male body imply healthy heterosexuality, debased perversion or healthy bisexuality? It was time to take stock. Was it the intention of the Die that I be active or passive: Zeus to Ganymede or Hart Crane to a sailor? Was I to be Socrates entering into the old dialogue with one of his boys, or Genet supine and spread before the onslaught of some six-foot walking erection? The Die had been ambiguous, but it seemed more appropriate and habit breaking to be passive arid feminine than aggressive and masculine. But where would I find a Zeus to my six-foot-four Ganymede? Where was the Great Cock that could split me in two? It would be much easier to find someone who saw in me the Awful Erection of his dreams. But ease was irrelevant. I needed to be a woman, to play the role of a woman. Even if I
loomed over my husband like Mount Everest over a stunted shrub I must learn to spread myself supine before him. My
femininity must be given freedom. The dice man could never be complete until he was a woman.
`Can I buy you a drink?' the man asked, standing above me like Everest above a stunted shrub. It was the ex-
Cleveland Brown defensive tackle, and he looked down at me with world weary knowingness. And a smile.
Chapter Sixty-four
You must never question the wisdom of the Die. His ways are inscrutable. He leads you by the hand into an abyss and,
lo, it is a fertile plain. You stagger beneath the burden he places upon you and, behold, you soar. The Die never deviates from the Tao, nor do you. The desire to manipulate your surrender to the Die so that you may gain from it is futile. Such surrender never frees
you from the pains of the ego. You must give up all your struggling, all your purposes, values and goals, and then, only then, when you have given up the belief that you can use the Die to gain some ego end, will you discover liberation from your burdens and your life flow free.
There is no compromise: you must surrender everything. from The Book of the Die
Chapter Sixty-five
`I'm a virgin,' I said in a thin, delicate voice. `Please be gentle.'
Chapter Sixty-six
There are two paths: you use the Die, or you let the Die use you. from The Book of the Die Chapter
Sixty-seven
`Christ,' I said heavily, `am I going to be sore.'
Chapter Sixty-eight
Dear Dr. Rhinehart, I admire your work so much. My husband and I do our dice exercises every morning after breakfast and again before
bedtime and we feel years younger. When are you going to have your own TV show? Before we began playing with emotional roulette and Exercise K we almost never spoke to each other, but now we're always shouting or laughing even when we're not playing dice games. Could you please give us some advice as to how we might better bring up our daughter Ginny to serve the Die? She's a willful girl and doesn't say her prayers to It regular and is almost always the same sweet shy girl and frankly we're worried. We've tried to get her to do the dice exercises with us in the morning or by herself, but nothing seems to work. My husband beats her every now and then when the Die says to but it doesn't help much either. The only dicedoctor in these parts left for Antarctica three months ago so we have no one to turn to but you.
Yours by Chance, Mrs. A. J. Kempton, (Missouri)
Dear Dr. Rhinehart,
I discovered my sixteen-year-old daughter on our living room couch with the postman this afternoon, and she referred
me to you. What the hell is this all about? Sincerely Yours, John Rush
Chapter Sixty-nine
The birth of the first dicebaby in the world was I suppose, an event of some historical importance. It was just after
Christmas in 1969 that I got a phone call from Arlene announcing that she and Jake were rushing off to the hospital to have our dicebaby. They knew where I could be reached, since I'd stopped off two days before to give them each a Christmas present: Arlene a set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Jake a rakish bathing suit (Not my will, O Die, but Thy will be done).
When I arrived, Arlene was still in labor, and her private room was something of a messy jumble from two huge opened suitcases, filled, as far as I could see, entirely with baby clothes. I noticed at least thirty diapers with two green dice branded on each, and many of the pajamas, shirts, pants and tiny baby socks seemed to be similarly monogrammed. I found this to be in bad taste and told Arlene so while she was in the middle of a labor pain, but when she stopped groaning (she claimed it was mostly pleasurable), she assured me the Die had picked a one-in-three shot and ordered the monograms.
The three of us chatted about our hopes for the baby, with Arlene doing most of the talking. She told us that she had given 215 chances in 216 that she practice natural childbirth and breast-feed the child and that much to her delight the Die had chosen that she should do both. But most of her talk was about when the child should be potty trained and when it should be dicetrained.
`We've got to start early,' Arlene kept saying. `I don't want our baby corrupted by society the way I was for thirty-five
years.'
'Still, Arlene,' I said, `for the first two or three years I think the child can develop randomly without using the dice.'
`No, Luke, it wouldn't be fair to him,' she replied: `It would be like keeping candy away from him.'
`But a child tends to express all his minority impulses - at least until he gets to school. They may batten down the
hatches there.'
`Perhaps, Lukie,' she said, `but he'll see me casting dice to see which breast he gets or whether we go for a walk or
whether he naps, and he'll feel left out. What I'd like to do .is …'
But she went into such a long labor pain and it came so soon after the previous one that Jake buzzed for the nurse and
they wheeled her off to the delivery room. Jake and I trailed after her down the hall.
`I don't know, Luke,' Jake said after a while, squinting up at hopefully. `I think this dice business may be getting out of
hand.'
`I think so too,' I said.
`The dice may be good for us uptight adults, but I'm not sure about two-year-olds.'
`I agree.'
`She could confuse the poor kid before he developed any patterns to break.'
`Right.'
`It's possible the kid might grow up to be something of a weirdie.'
`True. Or worse yet, he might end up rebelling against diceliving and opt for permanent conformity to the dominant
social norm.'
`Hey, that's a possibility. You think he might?'
`Sure,' I said. `Boys always rebel against their mothers.'
Jake paused in his pacing and I stopped beside him and looked down; he was staring at the floor.