my sadism be determined by the Die - whether she responded to my tender love with a bitchy self or with a sweet,
giving self, or whether she was a bitter, cynical whore, half-enjoying being abased by me sexually, or a flower deeply
crushed by cruelty.
She followed the Die's commands with the intense fanaticism of the new convert to any religion. Together we prayed, wrote poems and prayers, discussed dice therapy and practiced our randoming lives. Although she wanted to give up her sexual promiscuity, I insisted that it was a part of her and must be given a chance to be expressed. One night the Die commanded her to go out and pick up a man and bring him back to the apartment and she did and the Die ordered me to join them and the two of us worked with her diligently for two hours. I shook the Die next morning to see how I was to treat her and it said `in a surly fashion,' but the Die told her `not to worry about last night' and to `love me' no matter how I acted, and she did.
In the fall the Die set us the assignment of infiltrating the numerous encounter groups in New York City. We were trying to introduce some of their group members into diceliving.
We varied who we were from one encounter or sensitivity group to the next, sometimes acting as a couple, sometimes acting as a couple, sometimes as strangers.
I remember one time in particular: a weekend marathon we attended at the Fire Island Sensitivity Training Headquarters of Encounter Resources Society in late October, 1969.
As with most psychotherapies, FISTH provided mental first aid by the prospective rich (the therapists) for the already rich (the patients), and the dozen people at this marathon were representative Americans: a magazine editor, a fashion designer, two corporation executives, a tax lawyer, three well-to-do housewives, one stockbroker, a freelance. writer, a minor TV personality and a mad psychiatrist - seven men and five women, plus I should add, two young hippies present tuition free, as an extra added attraction for the two-hundred-dollar weekend paying clients. I was one of the two corporation executives and Lil a well-to-do housewife (divorced). The leaders were Scott (small, compact, athletic) and Marya (tall, lithe, ethereal), both of whom were fully qualified psychotherapists. Our main meeting place was the huge living room of a huge Victorian house on the ocean outside Quoquam, Fire Island.
Friday evening and all day Saturday we did a few loosening up exercises to get to know each other better: we played pitch and catch for a while with the hippie girl; we had a tug of war; we stared into each other's eyes like used-car salesmen; we symbolically gang banged the woman who had the first crying jag; shouted shitheads and cocksuckers at each other for an invigorating half hour; played musical chairs with half the group being sitters and the other half being chairs; played `get the guest' with the minor TV personality, by taking turns seeing who could be the most obnoxious to her; played blind man's buff with everybody blind - except for Marya, who stood by whispering hoarsely, `Really FEEL him, Joan, put your HANDS on him.'
By Saturday evening we were exhausted, but felt very close to one another and very liberated for doing publicly with strangers what previously we had only done privately with friends: namely, feeling each other up and calling each other shitheads and cocksuckers. The more bizarre games reminded me pleasantly of life on a dull day in a Dice Center, but every time I'd begin to relax and enjoy some pattern-breaking event, one Of our leaders would start getting us to talk honestly about and it would begin to rain cliches.
So by close to midnight we were all lying in various informal states of decomposition against the walls of the bare living room watching the spontaneous light-show the firelight was making on our faces from the blazing logs, while Marya tried to get the other corporation executive, a balding little man named Henry Hopper, to open up about his true feelings. I'd just called him a `liberal fink,' Linda had called him a `virile looking hunk of man,' and the hippie girl had called him a `capitalist pig.'
For some reason Hopper was maintaining that he was confused in his feelings. Two or three of the group were trying to help Marya, assuming that we were beginning another round of `get the guest,' but many of the others looked tired and a bit bored. Nonetheless, Marya, a slender, bright-eyed fanatic on the subject of honesty, pressed onward in a soft husky voice that reminded me of a bad actress doing a bedroom scene.
`Just tell us, Hank,' she said. `Let it come out.'
`Frankly, I don't feel like saying anything right now.'
He was nervously breaking open peanut shells and eating peanuts.
`You're chicken, Hank,' a big, beefy tax lawyer contributed.
`I'm not chicken,' Mr. Hopper said in a quiet voice. `I'm just scared shitless.'
Linda and I and Mr. Hopper were the only ones who laughed.
`Humor is a defense mechanism, Hank,' leader Marya said. `Why are you scared?' she asked, her blue eyes blazing
sincerely.
`I guess I'm afraid the group won't like me as much if I tell them I think we're wasting our time.'
`Right,' said Marya, smiling with encouragement.
Mr. Hopper just looked at the floor and arranged the peanut shells on the rug in front of him.
`You're not sharing with us, Hank,' Marya said after a while. She smiled. `You don't trust us.'
Mr. Hopper just stared at the floor, the firelight reflecting brightly off his balding head.
After another few minutes of unsuccessful sniping, co-leader Scott suggested we try some trust exercises with Hank
namely, play pitch and catch with him to help him come to trust us. So we formed a circle and tossed him around
among ourselves until he had a blissful smile on his face, and then Marya had him towered to the floor, where she
knelt by him and, smiling with half closed eyes, suggested in a soft voice that he tell us the truth about everything.
Before he could begin, though, Linda interrupted.
`Lie,' she said..
Beg pardon,' he said, still smiling dreamily from the flowing caresses of being manipulated by a roomful of people:
'Tell lies,' Linda said. `It's much easier.'
She was seated against the wall opposite the fire with her feet tucked under her.
`Why, Linda, what are you saying?' Marya asked.
`I'm suggesting Hank really let go and just lie to us. Tell us whatever he feels like saying with no inhibiting effort to
get at some illusion we call truth.'
`Why are you afraid of truth, Linda?'
Marya asked, smiling. Her smile had begun to remind me of Dr. Felloni's nod.
`I'm not afraid of truth,' Linda answered with a slow drawl, half imitating Marya's. `I just find it far less fun and far
less liberating than lies.'
`You're sick,' contributed the burly tax sawyer.
'Oh I don't know,' I said from my corner of the room. 'Huck Finn was the greatest liar in American literature and he
seemed to have a lot of fun and be pretty liberated.'
The sudden appearance of two challengers to the godhead of honesty was unprecedented.
`Let's get back to Mr. Hopper,' said co-leader Scott pleasantly. `Tell us now, Hank, why were you so scared before.'
Mr. Hopper answered promptly: `I was scared because you wasted truth, and both the answers I felt like making seemed to me to be half-lies. I was confused.' `Confusion is only a symptom of repression,' Marya said, smiling. `You know there are unpleasant aspects to your true
feelings which you're ashamed of. But if you'd just share them with us, they'd no longer bug you.'
`Lie about them,' Linda said, stretching her lovely legs into the middle of the room. `Exaggerate. Fantasize. Make up