Later the teacher tried to suggest other possible option to Dr. E. `Your wife has been unfaithful, your best friend
betrayed you, your-'
'So what else is new?' Dr. Ecstein asked.
`Well, let's say your money has all been lost in foolish investment.'
`Never.'
`Never what?'
`I'd never lose all my money in any way.'
`Try to use your imagination, Jim. The-'
`The name is Jake Ecstein. Why use my imagination? If I'm in touch with reality, why leave it?'
`How, do you know it's reality?'
'How do you know it's not?' Dr. E asked.
`But if there's any doubt, then you should experiment with other realities.'
`No doubt in my mind.'
`I see.'
`Look, buddy, I'm here as an observer. I like Luke Rhinehart and want to look over his plant.'
'You can't understand CETRE without living it'
`Okay, I'm trying, but don't expect me to use my imagination.'
Later Dr. Ecstein was taken to the love rooms.
`What kind of love experiences would you like to have?'
`Huh? ?'
`What kind of sex experience would you like to have?'
`Oh,' Dr. Ecstein said. `Okay.'
`Okay, what?'
'Okay, I'll have a sex experience.'
`But what kinds interest you?'
`Any. Doesn't make any difference.'
The teacher handed Dr. E the basic list of thirty-six possible love roles.
`Are there any that particularly appeal to you or any that you would prefer not to have as possible options of the Die?'
he asked.
Dr. E looked over the list: 'You wish to be loved slavishly by a . `You-wish to love slavishly a ' `You wish to be courted sweetly by a . . : 'You wish to court sweetly…' `'You wish to be raped by a . . : 'You wish to rape a : . : 'You wish to watch pornographic films,' 'You wish to watch
other people's sexual activities,' 'You wish to striptease,' `To watch a striptease,' 'You wish to be someone's mistress, a
prostitute, a stud, a call girl, a male prostitute, happily married to Most of the options gave the choice of alternatives
for performing the sexual role with: a young woman, an older woman, a young man, an older man, a man and a
woman, two men or two women.
`What's all this?' Dr. Ecstein asked.
`Simply choose those you are willing to play, make a list and let the dice choose one for you to play.'
`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.
Chapter Seventy-six
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.