Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

  When I turned lazily to hand Gina the pipe she was sitting exactly as before, her head back against the couch and eyes ceilingward, but nude from the waist up. Her two breasts rose from her chest like two mounds of molded honey, with two neat circular sculptured crowns of brown sugar at the peak of each rounded, honeyed hill.

  Without smoking she passed the pipe on to Osterflood on the other side of her. The pipe went flying off onto the living room floor on top of the buttons, the sweater and the bra. He had bashed at her hand.

  “Get up,” Osterflood said.

  Slowly, like a sated leopardess, she stood. I could see Osterflood now and he was staring at her bleary-eyed and without expression, neat in his soft, gray suit.

  “You bitch,” he said dully. “You cunt-caked bitch.”

  I was smiling to myself without thought, leaning back and examining with aesthetic bliss the curve of Gina’s right breast, which stuck out gracefully in front of her right arm like the prow of a boat nosing out from behind a cliff. An earnest American jawed aggressively with a greasy Latin American just at the tip of the short bowsprit.

  “You slut,” Osterflood said just a bit louder. “You juicyjointed sewer. Shitslitted slut. Slime-oozing whore.”

  Gina was fumbling with the belt and then one side of her leather skirt and after a moment or two, the skirt dropped like a guillotine to the floor at her feet. She was now totally nude. A long lovely scar ran down the back of one thigh.

  “You bitch!” Osterflood screamed, and he staggered woozily to his feet and wobbled uncertainly for several seconds. There was a scream from the TV screen and I glanced idly over to see one of the Americans pick up one of the peasants and throw him onto a manure pile where another peasant could be seen struggling ineffectually.

  I turned back just in time to see Osterflood grab Gina’s curly dark hair and throw her back onto the couch. She bounced once, in segments, and then sat quietly, her large brown eyes looking vacantly at the ceiling.

  “Feces!” shouted Osterflood. “Female feces!”

  I smiled friendlily over at her.

  “It’s going to be a nice evening,” I said pleasantly.

  68

  I have been a woman on hundreds of occasions: in my dicelife, group dice therapy and in our Dice Centers. I’ve usually enjoyed myself thoroughly. The only time I haven’t enjoyed being a woman is when people have thought I was a man. For example, my experience with the Cleveland Brown defensive tackle (he used to be a truck driver—of Good Humor Ice Cream trucks) was at first unrewarding because he wanted me to be a man and I thought he was a man. Confusion of roles is always difficult.

  I found that being a woman physically was more difficult than being one socially and psychologically. Sexually it was a big disappointment. I simply don’t have the right equipment to enjoy being laid. It is much more pleasant in bed to play a passive “feminine” role with an aggressive “masculine” woman than with a real man. The pump of a penis in the anus is, to be precise, a pain in the ass. The feel of a nice hot prick moiling in one’s mouth is certainly an experience that everyone should try, but is for me one of the minor sexual pleasures. The flood of hot semen into the mouth is pleasing enough if one takes any pride at all in one’s work, but it is at best a psychological pleasure rather than a physical one. Choking on oversalted soup is not my idea of sensuous bliss, but I admit my limitations.

  The appeal of being a woman—at least for me—lies in the freshness of the experience and in the passivity, the masochistic passivity I might even say. There is something basic in wanting to be dominated by a superior creature—whether man or Die. Responding to men respectfully and passively has never been my majority nature, but the times the Die has ordered me to play a woman have uncovered the latent slave in me.

  And certainly being a woman is absolutely basic for every man in our society. And vice versa for women. The human is built to imitate, and every male has stored within him a thousand female gestures, phrases, attitudes and acts which long to be expressed, but are buried in the name of masculinity. It is a tragic loss. Perhaps the single greatest contribution of our Dice Centers is that they create an environment which encourages the expression of all roles; it encourages bisexuality. One might even more honestly say full sexuality, were honesty one of our virtues.

  I have been a woman on hundreds of occasions and I recommend that every other healthy, red-blooded American man be one too.

  69

  When Jake Ecstein was walking through a Dice Center one day he over-heard a conversation between two people.

  “Show me the best role you have,” said the first person.

  “All my roles are the best,” replied the second. “You can’t find in me any piece of behavior which isn’t the best.”

  “That’s conceited,” said the first.

  “That’s diceliving,” replied the second.

  At these words Jake Ecstein became enlightened.

  —from The Book of the Die

  70

  Gina was kneeling on the floor, her hands tied behind her back with her bra, and Osterflood, with his pants and undershorts bunched at his feet but still dressed in white shirt, tie and suit jacket, was thrusting with his erect, pink weapon at her mouth, cursing her at every poke. I felt I was watching a slow-motion movie showing some huge piston at work, but some flaw in the machinery resulted in the rod’s seeming frequently to miss the wide-open mouth which Gina, large-eyed and expressionless, was presenting Osterflood’s sword of vengeance against the female race kept sliding past her cheek or her neck or poking her in the eye. Whenever she would seem to have a good mouthful (she would close her eyes then), Osterflood would withdraw, raging, and thrust away sporadically, redoubling his curses. It wasn’t clear whether he hated her more when she sucked him in or when he missed contact and bounced painfully off her forehead. In both cases he seemed like a movie director enraged because she, the actress didn’t mouth her lines correctly.

  “Ahhhggg! How I hate you,” he yelled and lurched forward and collapsed onto the couch beside me. I smiled over at him.

  He struggled sideways into a sitting position.

  “Undress me, you disgusting, filthy hole,” he said loudly.

  A cute, frightened peasant girl had joined the number-one earnest American and was pleading with him passionately about her corn crop. Without any apparent effort, Gina freed her hands and dropped the bra back onto the rug next to her skirt and sweater and the buttons and the pipe and came to the couch to undress him.

  “Get me a drink,” he shouted to no one in particular as Gina tried to slide his pants over his shoes and off. She stood up and said:

  “Sure honey. You want some acid?”

  “I just want your ass, you sink!” he shouted after her.

  “It’s for the good of your country,” the firm TV voice said.

  Osterflood’s sword was melting into anc arc at the moment but mine wasn’t. My body was tingling all over pleasantly and I had to adjust my .38 and my other rod (semiautomatic), to make all continue tingling pleasantly. I wondered how Osterflood could keep his hands off those breasts and buttocks and I deeply resented all his talking and his abominable aim.

  He gulped down the drink she brought him while she slowly untied and removed each of his shoes and the CIA man drove a tractor and then on her knees in front of him she removed his necktie, unbuttoned one by one the buttons of his shirt and—all in a slow-motion movie which I watched as if it were a faithful newsreel of the Second Coming—she had just managed to slide the second sleeve of his shirt down off his left arm (the peasants I could hear were cheering now and I glanced briefly to catch a glimpse of a forest of white, toothy grins), when Osterflood’s huge, muscular arms loomed out, closed around her, his face plowed into her face and his mouth sunk into her mouth.

  Gina groaned sharply and the way she twisted indicated he must be hurting her somehow.

  “You bastard!” she snapped shrilly when she got her mouth free. She hit him
as good a slap as she could from her closeup position, and he grinned and sunk his teeth into her shoulder. As she scratched at his back he toppled her backward onto the rug with a tremendous crash. When he raised himself off her to place his weapon into the disgusting cesspool, she got in a few blows at his face and then he was in and working.

  There wasn’t much to see: just Osterflood’s big buttocks moving a few inches up and down as he plowed away at Gina’s rich earth and her fingers splayed out on his back and occasionally changing position, as if she were playing chords. Gina was groaning, when Osterflood abruptly rose to his knees, flipped her over onto her stomach like a farmer working with a sack of wheat and fumbled with his weapon to reengage the enemy in her other cave. When he thrust himself into her and fell forward upon her Gina let loose a terrible scream. It corresponded so perfectly with gun shots from the screen that I looked back quickly to see a beautiful, frightened peasant girl with a ripped blouse clutching the arm of the number-one earnest American and the peasant spies blasting away from behind a chicken coop.

  Gina was fighting with her right arm to raise herself and twist Osterflood off and out of her, but he bore down, pulling her hair with one hand and controlling her right arm with the other. His professional-wrestler role seemed to be paying off.

  “Bitchbitchbitch,” he gasped, and the American was dragging the beautiful peasant girl through a cornfield and bullets were shattering the kernels every which way and Osterflood was banging Gina’s head against the rug and the American tossed a grenade and whomp! the chink peasants were splattered like fertilizer over the cornfield and “Diediedie-bitchbitch,” Osterflood hissed and with a supreme thrust deep into her anus they both screamed.

  An unearthly silence filled the room. The beautiful peasant girl was looking with moist, frightened eyes from the pieces of peasant to the earnest American. “My God,” she said.

  “Steady,” the deep voice answered. “We’ve won this round, but there’s always more of them.”

  Osterflood rolled off his conquered foe with a grunt, his weapon still cocked, but presumably discharged.

  Gina’s hilly form lay quiet for a few moments and then she got to her knees and stood up. Although she was still facing away toward the TV set, I could see blood running in a tiny stream down the right corner of her mouth and something was smeared down the inside of one thigh. Slowly she moved off to the left and disappeared into what seemed to be a bathroom.

  I was perspiring a good deal and a lady was smiling ecstatically as she held up her laundry and I found myself sailing over to the liquor cabinet and fixing three more drinks, adding mostly melted ice.

  Osterflood was lying on his back when I sailed back again, but he sat up to take the drink I offered him. He stared wild-eyed at me.

  “I’m going to be killed,” he said.

  I’d forgotten all about that.

  He clutched at my pants leg, spilling part of his drink on the rug.

  “I’m going to die. I know it. You’ve got to do something.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “No, no, it’s not, it’s not. I feel it strongly. I deserve to die.”

  “Come into the kitchen,” I said.

  He stared wild-eyed at me.

  “I want to show you something,” I added.

  “Oh,” he said, and with a great effort he turned himself onto his hands and knees and staggered to his feet.

  I flowed off behind his whalelike form toward the kitchen, and as he passed through the door in front of me I drew my gun from my pocket, raised it in a long endless arc up over my head, and then down with all my force onto the top of Osterflood’s huge head.

  “Wha’ sat?” Osterflood said, stopping and turning, and slowly raising a hand to his head.

  I gaped openmouthed at his erect, swaying, hulking body.

  “It’s … it’s my gun,” I said.

  He looked down at the black little pistol hanging limply from my fist.

  “What’d you hit me for?” he said after a pause.

  “Show you my gun,” I said, still gaping at his blank, bleary, bewildered eyes.

  “You hit me,” he said again.

  We stared at each other, our minds working with the speed and efficiency of lobotomized sloths.

  “Just a tap. Show you my gun,” I said.

  We stared at each other.

  “Some tap,” he said.

  We stared at each other.

  “Protect you with. Don’t tell Gina.”

  When he stopped rubbing the back of his head, his hand and arm dropped like an anchor into the sea.

  “Thanks,” he said dully, and moved past me back into the living room.

  Two snake-eyed peasants were conspiring together on the screen, and I wandered over to the liquor cabinet and stared at the big photograph of Al Capone. Was it Al Capone? It was Al Capone. Robot-fashion I plucked three more fresh glasses from the neat stack there, poured in the dregs of ice from the bowl, and splashed some Scotch and water into each. I stirred them all idly with my finger, licked my finger and as a kind of dreamy afterthought, drew from my jacket pocket the envelope of strychnine and poured about half of it (fifty mg.) into one of the drinks. I stirred it with my finger again and was about to lick my finger but thought better of it. I poured the other half of the poison into an empty glass, filled it from the pitcher of water and stirred it with my finger again.

  “I’m going to die, whip me!” Osterflood was saying on his back from the floor. “Beat me, kill me.”

  Gina had returned from wherever she had been and was standing over Osterflood, sweat glistening lightly on her chest and forehead. Her child’s face peered down at him as at an interesting toad. Osterflood was groaning and writhing mildly on the rug. Then he stopped and said quietly:

  “Whip me.”

  Gina leaned down to her left and picked up her leather skirt and stepped into it, buttoning it loosely at her hips. She drew out the leather belt.

  “Would you two like a drink first?” I asked, holding the three Scotch drinks on a tray before me.

  Osterflood didn’t seem to hear me, intent instead upon some inner light. Gina reached her free hand out and took one of the two harmless drinks and took a big swig from it.

  “Frank, would you like—” I began.

  Whack!

  The belt burst across Osterflood’s thighs like a cannon shot. He grunted and turned over onto his stomach.

  Whack! it came across his buttocks; whack! across the back of his thighs. His powerful body arched in pain and then when Gina paused, collapsed trembling.

  I noticed now a bloody gash on Gina’s shoulder and blood mixed with saliva was still sliding from her lower lip. She looked down at Osterflood and in a single swift terrifying motion slashed the belt across his back. Three or four pinkish welt lines were now clearly etched on his body.

  “Ahh,” I said. “Is this part of the regular show?”

  She stood without answering, breathing deeply, a single line of sweat now running from the side of her neck down in between her breasts, which rose and fell moistly.

  “I’m dying, I’m dying,” Osterflood moaned. “Beat me, please beat me.”

  “You white pig,” she said in a soft voice. “Fat, man pig.” Thock!

  I absentmindedly took a sip from one of the drinks and spat it out on the rug. Wrong drink.

  A burst of applause flooded into the room and I glanced over to see a pompous little dictator parading down the aisle of an auditorium to the applause of formally dressed spics, or chinks, or gooks or greasies.

  “Drink,” I heard a voice say.

  Osterflood had gotten now to his knees and was reaching out an arm toward my tray. His eyes were unfocused and glittering.

  I raised my free hand and Gina took from the tray a glass and handed it to Osterflood and he downed it at a gulp.

  Holding the third drink in my free hand, I sighed. Osterflood had taken the wrong drink.

  While Gina reache
d down to take another swig from hers, I returned to Sugar Ray and Al Capone and poured two more drinks. I marched back again with my tray of three and stood just beside and behind Gina.

  “You’re trying to kill me,” Osterflood said looking at us from his knees. “You shit-filled monster, you’re trying to kill me.” He was staring at us glassy-eyed.

  Gina looked down at him, her large brown eyes radiant and curious, and for the first time she smiled, slightly.

  “Bad trip?” she asked quietly.

  “I see it all now,” Osterflood shouted at us. “You’re the killer!” He began shaking his head and trembling. “Now I see, now I see! It’s you!”

  The “thock!” that caught him across the face surprised both him and me, and he fell forward with a crash.

  “Yes, yes, whip me, I deserve it,” he groaned. “Hit me again.”

  Gina looked down at him, the soft smile still on her face, and sweat running now from her forehead, chin and both heaving breasts.

  She raised the belt slowly till her arm was perpendicular above her head and then dropped it in a lazy arc snapping the belt at only half-force across his back. Osterflood writhed nevertheless, and Gina’s soft smile became a sneer.

  I put my tray full of drinks on the couch and came over behind Gina, reached my arms around and enclosed at last in my hands those two marvelous mounds. They were hot and sweaty and firm and I grunted with pleasure. As I squeezed and pinched, and sucked at the salty sweat of her neck, I felt Gina lean back again and “whack!” across Osterflood’s buttocks, and after a short pause another heaving motion and “whock!” and Osterflood and I both grunted, although presumably for different reasons. Then Gina turned to me and we were two hot mouths endlessly exploring each other’s watery, snake-bulging wombs. Although my hands had removed her leather skirt and were around her bulging buttocks and digging into everything they could, my world was soon composed of mouths, huge caverns of tongue-tangled flow of motion endlessly plunging and being plunged, biting and being bitten, rising and sinking, filling and emptying, and I felt something scratching at my leg.