After another minute Linda's eyes blinked open. She looked over, at me, at my wilted penis, at the walls, the ceiling. A buzzer sounded for what I now realized may have been the third or fourth time and I started.

`The hour's up,' she said dazedly and then added: `What a funny, stupid story,' but without bitterness, dreamily.

Except for the silent restoration of our clothing, the session was over.

Chapter Fourteen

During these first months of diceliving I never consciously decided to let the dice take over my whole life or to aim at becoming an organism whose every act was determined by the dice. The thought would have frightened me then. I tended to restrict, my options so that Lil and my colleagues wouldn't begin to suspect that I was into anything slightly unorthodox. I kept my shimmering green cubes hidden carefully 'from everyone, consulting them surreptitiously when necessary. But I found myself adapting quickly to following the die's sporadic whims. I might resent a particular command, but like a well-oiled automaton I went and did the job.

The dice sent me to bars scattered throughout the city to sit, sip, listen, chat. They picked out strangers to whom I was sent to talk. They chose roles that I played with these strangers. I would be a veteran outfielder with the Detroit Tigers in town for a Yankee series (Bronx bar), English reporter with the Guardian (the Barbizon Plaza), playwright homosexual, alcoholic college professor, escaped criminal and so on. The dice determined that I try to seduce stranger chosen at random from the phone book of Brooklyn (actually Mrs. Anna Maria Sploglio was the lucky lady and she totally repulsed me. Thank God); that I try to borrow ten dollars from stranger `X' (another failure); that I give twenty dollars to stranger `Y' (he threatened to call the police, then took the money and ran, not walked, away). In bars, restaurants, theaters, taxis, stores - whenever out of sight of those who knew me - I was soon never myself, my old `normal self.'