The Dice Man

  Traditional autobiographers wish to help you understand how the adult was `formed.'

  I suppose most human beings, like clay chamber pots, are 'formed'- and are used accordingly. But I? I am born anew at each green fall of the die, and by die-ing I eliminate my since. The past - paste, pus, piss - is all only illusory events created by a stone mask to justify an illusory stagnant present. Living flows, and the only possible justification of an autobiography is that it happened by chance to be written - like this one. Someday a higher creature will write the almost perfect and totally honest autobiography 'I live.'

  I will acknowledge, however, that I did, in fact, have a human mother. This much I admit.

  Chapter Twenty

  In November I received a telephone call from Dr. Mann informing me that Eric Cannon had been acting up while I'd been away a week at a convention in Houston, that it had bees necessary to increased his medication (tranquilizers) and would I please make a special trip over as soon as possible and see him. Eric might have to be transferred to another institution. In my temporary office on the Island I read through Head Nurse Herbie Flamm's report on Eric Cannon.

  It had a kind of novelistic power that Henry James sought for fifty years without finding:

  It is necessary to report that Patient Eric Cannon is a troublemaker. There haven't been many patients in my lifetime that I would have to label that, but this is one. Cannon is a consciously evil troublemaker. He is disturbing the other patients. Although I have always kept this one of the quietest [sic] wards on the island, since he has been here it is noisy and a mess. Patients who haven't said a word in years now can't shut up. Patients that have stood always in the same corner now play pitch and catch with chairs. Many of the patients are now singing and laughing. This disturbs the patients who want peace and quiet to get better. Someone keeps destroying the television set. I think Mr. Cannon is schizophrenic. Sometimes he wanders around the ward nice and quiet like he was in a dreamworld and other times he sneaks around like a snake, hissing at me and the patients like he was the boss of the ward and not me.

  Unfortunately he has followers. Many patients are now refusing sedation. Some do not go to the machine shop for factory therapy. Two patients confined to wheelchairs have pretended to walk. Patients are showing disrespect for the hospital food. When one man was ill to his stomach, another patient began eating the vomit, claiming it tasted much better that way. We do not have enough maximum security rooms on the ward. Also patients who are refusing or not swallowing their sedation will not stop singing and laughing when we politely ask. Disrespect is everywhere. I have sometimes had the feeling on the ward that I do not exist. I mean to say no one pays attention any more. My attendants are often tempted to treat the patients with physical force but I remind them of the Hypocratic Oath. Patients will not stay in their beds at night. Talking with each other is going on. Meetings I think. They whisper. I do not know if there is a rule against this, but I recommend that a rule is made. Whispering is worse than singing.

  We have sent several of his followers to ward W [the violent ward] but patient Cannon is tricky. He never does anything himself. I think he is spreading illegal drugs on the ward but none have been found. He never does anything and everything is happening.

  I have this to report. It is serious. On September 10, at 2.30 P.M. in the Main Room right in front of the destroyed and lifeless television set, a large group of patients began hugging each other. They had a circle with their arms around each other and they were humming or moaning and kept getting closer and humming and swaying or pulsating like a giant jellyfish or human heart and they were all men. They did this and attendant R. Smith attempted to break them up but their circle was very strong. I attempted to break their circle also as gently as I could but as I was so endeavoring the circle suddenly opened and two men physically clamped me with their arms and hands and I was drawn against my total will into the horrible circle. It was disgusting beyond my ability to say.

  The patients showed no respect but continued their illegal hugging until four attendants from ward T plus R. Smith rescued me by breaking up the circle as gently as they could, unfortunately accidentally breaking my arm (the lower tibia minor, I believe).

  This event is typical of the poor conditions which have developed on our ward since patient Cannon came. He was in the circle but since there were eight, Dr. Vener said we couldn't send them all to ward W. Hugging is also not technically against the rules which again shows the need for more thinking.

  The boy never talks to me. But I hear. Among the patients I have friends. They say he is against mental hospitals. You should know that. They say he is the ringleader of all the trouble. That he is trying to make all the patients happy and not pay attention to us. They say he says that patients ought to take aver the hospital. That he says even if he leaves them he will come back. These patients, my friends, say this.

  Because of the facts what I have written I must respectfully recommend to you;

  (1) That all sedation be given by needle to prevent patients from falsely swallowing their tranquilizers and remaining active and noisy during the day.

  (2) That all illegal drugs should be strictly forbidden.

  (3) That strict rules be developed and enforced regarding singing, laughing, whispering, and hugging.

  (4) That a special iron mesh cage be developed to protest the television set and that its cord go directly from the set which is ten feet off the floor to the ceiling to protect the wire from those who would deny the television set to those who want to watch it. This is freedom of speech. The iron mesh must form about inch wide squares, thick enough to prevent flying objects from entering and smashing the screen but letting people still see the TV screen although with a waffle-griddle effect. The TV must go on.

  (5) Most important. That patient Eric Cannon be transferred respectfully someplace else. .

  Head Nurse Flamm sent this report to myself, Dr. Varier, Dr. Mann, Chief Supervisor Hennings, State Mental Hospital Director Alfred Coles, Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller. - I had seen Eric only three times since my Jesus session with him and he had been extremely tense each time and done very little talking, but when he walked into my office that afternoon he came as quietly as a lamb into a grassy meadow.

  He moved to the window and stared out. He was wearing blue jeans, a rather soiled T-shirt, sneakers and a gray hospital shirt, unbuttoned. His hair was quiet long, but his skin was paler than it had been in September. After about a minute -he turned and lay down on the short couch to the left of the desk.

  `Mr. Flamm,' I said, `reports that he believes that you are stirring up the patients to - improper behavior.'

  To my surprise he answered right away.

  'Yeah, improper. Bad. Lousy. That's me,' he said, staring at he green ceiling. `It took me a long time to realize what the bastards are up to, to realize that the good-game is their most effective method of keeping their fucking system going. When I did, it made me rage against the way I'd been fooled. All my kindness and forgiveness and meekness just let the system step on everybody all the more comfortably. Love is groovy if it's for good guys but to love the fuzz, love the army; love Nixon, love the church, whoa man, that is one lost trip.'

  While he was speaking I took out my pipe and began filling it with marijuana. When he finally paused I said: `Dr. Mann indicates that if Flamm continues to complain you'll have to be transferred to Ward W.'

  `Oh, boohoohoo,' he said, not looking at me. `It's all the same. It's a system, you see. A machine. You work hard to keep the machine going, you're a good guy; you goof off or try to stop the machine and you're a commie or a loony. The machine may be blowing blacks under like weeds, or scattering ten-ton bombs over Vietnam like firecrackers or overthrowing reform governments in Latin America every other month, but the old machine must be kept working. Oh man, when I saw this I vomited for a week. Locked myself in my room for six months.'

  He paused and we both listened to the b
irds singing away among the maple trees outside the building. I lit the pipe and took a deep toke. I exhaled, the smoke drifting idly in his direction.

  `And all that time I began slowly to feel that something important was going to happen to me, that I was chosen for some special mission. I had only to fast and to wait. When I bopped my father in the face and was sent here I knew even more certainly that something was going to happen. Knew it.' He stopped talking and sniffed twice. I took another drag on my pipe.

  `Has anything happened yet?' I asked.

  He watched me take another lungful and then settled back onto the couch. He reached into kiss hair and brought out a home made joint.

  `Got a match?' he said.

  'If you're going to smoke, share mine,' I said.

  He leaned over to take the pipe, but it was out, so I handed him the matches too. He lit up and for the next three minutes we passed the pipe back and forth in silence: He was staring at the ceiling as if its green cracks contained like the back of a turtle's shell, portents of the future. By the time the pipe ovens out a second time, I was pleasantly high. I felt happy, as if I were embarking on a new voyage that for the first time, even in my dice man life, represented real, rather than superficial change.

  My eyes were focused on his face, which, under the influence of his high perhaps, was glowing. He smiled with a peacefulness well within my understanding. His hands were folded across his belly, and he lay like a dead man, but glowing, glowing. His voice when he spoke was slow, thick and gentle, as if it came from way off in the clouds.

  `About three weeks ago I got up in the middle of the night when all the attendants were asleep to take a piss, but I didn't have to take a piss. I was drawn into the day room as if by a magnet and there I stared out through the window at the Manhattan skyline. Manhattan: the central cog of the machine, or maybe just the sewage system. I knelt and I prayed. Yeah, I prayed. To the Spirit, which had lifted Christ above the mass of men to bring His Spirit to me, to give to me the light that could light the world. To let me become the way, the truth and the light. Yeah.'

  He paused and I emptied the ashes out into an ashtray and began refilling the pipe.

  `How long I prayed, I can't tell. Suddenly, wham! I was flooded by a light that made an acid trip seem like sniffing glue. I couldn't see. My body seemed to swell, my spirit swelled, I seemed to expand until I filled the whole universe. The world was me.'

  He paused briefly, the sound of the Jefferson Airplane coming from someplace up, the hall.

  'I hadn't smoked a thing for three days. I wasn't loony. I filled the whole universe.'

  He paused again.

  `I was crying. I was weeping for joy. I was on my feet I guess, and the whole world was all light and was all me and it was good. I stood with my arms outstretched to embrace everything and then I was conscious of this terrific mad grin I had on my face and the vision kind of faded and I shrunk back to me. But I felt that, I knew that I had been given a job ... a role, a mission ... yeah. This gray-green hellhouse couldn't be left standing. The gray factories, the gray offices, the gray buildings, the gray people .. . everything without light. .. has to go. I saw it. I see it. What I'd been waiting for had happened. The Spirit I'd been looking for, I . . . had . . . I know, I'm not for all men. The mass of men will always see and live in the gray world. But a few will follow me, a few, and we'll change the world.'

  I passed him the relit pipe when he'd finished talking and he took it and inhaled and passed it back to me. He didn't look at me.

  `And you, what's your game?' he said. `You're not smoking pot, with me just because you feel like smoking pot.'

  `No' I said.

  `Then why?'

  `Just chance.'

  He stared at the green ceiling until I passed him back the pipe. When he finally exhaled he said again as if from very far away: `If you want to follow me you must give up everything.'

  `I know.'

  `Pot-smoking doctors who get stoned with mental patients don't stay doctors long.'

  `I know.'

  I felt like giggling.

  `Wives and brothers and fathers and mothers don't usually like my way.' `So I gather.'

  `Someday you will help me.'

  We were both staring at the ceiling now, the hot bowl of the pipe resting unused in the palm of my hand.

  `Yes,' I said.

  `It's a marvelous game we'll play - the best,' he said.

  `For some reason I feel I'm yours,' I said. `Whatever you want me to do, I'll want to do.'

  `Everything will happen.'

  `Yes.'

  `The blind bastards [his voice was quiet and serene and remote] will panic and kill, panic and kill, trying to control the uncontrollable, trying to kill what can only live.'

  `We will panic and kill.'

  `And I'll,' he interrupted himself with a chuckle, `I'll try to save the whole fucking world'

  `Yes.'

  `I'm Divine, you know,' he said.

  `Yes,' I said, believing it.

  `I've come to wake the world to evil, to goose mankind to good.'

  'We'll hate you-'

  `To slash the mash-potato minds until their sirs is seen.

  'We'll be blind-'

  `Try to make the blind see, the lame walk, the dead live again.'

  He laughed.

  `And we'll try to make the seeing blind, the walking lame, the living dead.'

  I smiled.

  `I'll be the insane Savior of the world, and you'll kill me.'

  `Whatever you want will be done.'

  I eased out a slow motion bubbling of mirth.

  `I'll be...' He was chuckling too, in slow motion. `I'll be . . . the Savior . . . of the world . . . and do nothing, and you .. .'ll kill ... me.'

  `And I . .' Goddam it, it was funny! How beautiful it was `... I'll kill you.'

  The room was a beautiful blur bouncing up and down on the bubbles of our laughter. Tears were in my eyes and I took of my glasses and put my face in my folded arms and laughed, my big body rumbling from cheeks to belly to knees, laughing, tears wetting my jacket, the soft cotton material caressing my wet face like bear's bristle, and crying with an ecstasy that I hadn't known before that moment, and looking up because I couldn't believe I was crying and Eric's face blurred, blurred bright but blurred and I looked for my glasses - such terror that I might never see again - and after groping for forty days I found them and put them on and looked at the blurred brightness and it was Eric's holy face flowing tears like mine and he wasn't laughing.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  [Being an edited tape from one of the early analytic sessions given by Dr. Jacob Ecstein to Dr. Lucius Rhinehart, neurotic. We are cutting into the tape about half way through the analytic hour. The first voice is that of Dr. Rhinehart.]

  - I'm not sure why I entered into this affair but I think it may partially be aggression against the husband.

  How have your relations with Lillian been? - Fine. Or rather, about as usual, which means up and down but essentially happy. I don't think it was or is aggression against Lil. At least I don't think it is.

  But against the husband.

  Yes. I won't use names or go into details because you know the people involved, but I find the husband too ambitious and conceited. I experience him as a rival.

  You don't need to hide the names. You know it would make no difference outside this office how I treated them.

  Well, maybe. I suppose you're right, but I don't think the names should be necessary if I can present everything else honestly. - The details.

  Yes. Although I suppose you will know then immediately the people I'm talking about. But still, I'll omit the names.

  How did the affair start? - I followed . . . a whim one night and went to her place, found her alone, and raped her.

  Raped her?

  Well, there was a good deal of cooperation. Actually, she enjoyed it more than I did. But the original idea was mine.

  Mmm.

 
We've been seeing each other off and on now for about half a year.

  Mmmm.

  I go to her place when her husband's away, or occasionally we meet in a room I rent in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.

  Ahhh.

  Sexually it's been rewarding. The woman seems totally without inhibitions. I've tried just about everything my imagination can cook up and she seems to have more recipes than me.

  I see.

  The husband doesn't seem to suspect a thing.

  He doesn't suspect a thing.

  No. He seems completely wrapped up in his work. His wife says he pulls off a quick one about once every two weeks but with about as much passion or pleasure as when making an extended bowel movement.

  Mmmm.

  I once finished an orgasm in her while she was handing a towel in to her husband in the bathtub.

  You what?

  I was pumping away from behind while she leaned into the bathroom and talked to her husband and handed him a towel.

  Look here, Rhinehart, do you know what you're saying?

  I thought I did.

  How could you ... How could you possibly...

  What's the matter?

  How could you possibly miss the significance of this affair?

  I don't know. It seems just...

  Free associate.

  What?

  I'll feed you words and you free associate. Oh, okay.

  Black.

  White.

  Moon.

  Sun.

  Father.

  Mother.

  Water. Ah. . . bathtub.

  Road.

  Roadway. Green.

  Yellow.

  Fucking from rear.

  - Ar . . . ah . . . ah . . . artificial.

  Artificial?

  Artificial.

  How so? -How should I know? I'm just free associating.

  Let's go on. Father.

  Figure.

  Lake.

  Tahoe.

  Thirst.

  Water.

  Love.

  Women.

  Mother.

  Women.