By the middle of her second day in Lukedom Kim realized that though she was excited by some of Lukedom’s experiments, she was also disappointed at what she finally thought of as its ‘institutionalized spontaneity.’ Spontaneity should be spontaneous, and she wasn’t sure it really worked when it was contrived by the dice or some diceguide. On the other hand, how else could you get unspontaneous people to be spontaneous?
She was flattered that Michael Way seemed to single her out for special attention, though after listening to him for hours she concluded that for all his attacks on the folly of ego and self, he had at least the trace of one of the biggest egos she’d ever known. Of course it could just be his high-toned English accent. Although he could make fun of himself, his ‘spontaneity’ sometimes seemed as controlled as most people’s rationality.
The previous evening he’d taken her to the church, where she’d met Dr Ecstein. She couldn’t help comparing him with the man she’d read about in The Dice Man, a copy of which she’d been reading since she arrived. All the fierce ambition he’d had twenty years before seemed gone; he was now more like a benevolent rabbi.
Then Michael had taken her on a moonlit jaunt along a stream that skirted the centre of town. If he was making a pass his technique seemed to be to show how wise he was.
The philosophy of ego-destruction was familiar to her from her interest in Eastern mysticisms. She saw that diceliving was a way to humiliate and break down the socialized self – a goal of several Eastern traditions. But it seemed more akin to LSD and the other powerful psychedelics that seekers had used two decades earlier – useful for some, dangerous for most.
So she argued with him a bit, made sure he noticed how intelligent and well read she was on these matters.
‘But what brought you to all this?’ she asked. ‘Making a fool of yourself – as diceliving necessitates – seems awfully un-English.’
‘Well, exactly,’ he said easily. ‘We English are much more tightly hammered into our square boxes by society than you Americans. So we need all the explosives we can find to break free.’
‘Are there any places like this in England?’
He smiled – almost to himself.
‘Oh, yes,’ he answered. ‘Actually more than here.’
‘How come we don’t read about them?’ asked Kim.
‘Ah, well, that’s a question now, isn’t it?’
Their wandering had brought them back towards the remaining lights of the village.
‘Well, is there an answer?’ asked Kim, suddenly aware of how tired she’d become.
‘Yes, but I’m afraid it’s hardly appropriate to give to casual Lukedom visitors – no offence intended.’
‘Classified stuff, huh?’ said Kim, and then added: ‘Say, I just realized I need a place to stay tonight. Is there a dorm or something for newcomers, or a cheap motel?’
‘Actually there are both,’ said Way. ‘There are cots at the orientation centre and rooms at two hotels in town. But you’re welcome to stay at my place. I’ve two spare bedrooms.’
‘No, thanks,’ she found herself replying easily. ‘I want to sample this place the way most people do. I’ll try the dorm.’
She was happy to see him appear disappointed at her decision, and so wheeled away into the dorm before he could respond.
The next morning she’d gone to orientation and been ‘trained’ by a guide named Ray and another named Kathy. It had seemed like a cross between boot camp and an encounter session from the seventies. Again, she thought she saw what they were up to, but thought it was pretty strong medicine for most people. After the lunch break she’d cut her afternoon session and taken a short hike out of town. She visited the teepee village and met people she might well have met at some of the ashrams she’d visited. Many were indifferent to the dice business and were in Lukedom mainly because it was cheap. She felt a little uneasy thinking that living simply and cheaply and purposelessly in a teepee was probably where her life was heading.
When she returned to orientation she was randomly selected to man the cash register at the orientation restaurant for an hour. As she went through the motions of receiving the money and returning the change – it came to her much more easily than she had assumed it would – she thought about her feelings. She was surprised that despite all her listening to Michael and the other diceguides, she still had a strong resistance to using the dice. She could use them in silly little trivial ways or to show off, but when it came to doing something that might be really different for her, she drew back.
She tried to convince herself that she was already free and flexible and multiple without the dice, and that her resistance was reasonable. Nevertheless she sensed that she was strongly attached to her free-wheeling spirit and resisted appearing otherwise – options which the dice sometimes chose.
The main thing that disappointed her about Lukedom was that it didn’t seem as much fun as Luke himself. She had finished Luke’s The Dice Man and thought that though Luke sounded a little sick at times, he was fun! He was playful, a man who really did seem to have gotten rid of his ego, who didn’t care what people thought of him or where the dice took him. But Lukedom seemed a rather serious place, more like many of the ashrams she had visited or lived in briefly over the years. Where could there ever be any spontaneous warmth or communication if everyone was on stage all the time trying on new roles? It was exhausting.
After her stint at the cash register, she grabbed a bite to eat, sitting with a young woman her age who had been in Lukedom for eight months. The woman seemed to be utterly serious about the need to free herself from feminine stereotypical role-playing and argued that Lukedom was offering the solution to the oppression of women. Kim could see that the breaking down of society’s normal attitudes might be liberating for any of those oppressed by those attitudes, but she wondered what would emerge in its place. In Lukedom jobs and roles were so randomized that women were as likely to be carpenters, plumbers or bank presidents as men, and men cooks, housekeepers or babysitters. From a woman’s point of view it was a clear improvement over most societies, although the plumbing must sometimes suffer. Susan, it turned out, was working for the next two months as crew boss of a gang of men and women renovating houses on the south edge of town and claimed she was better than any of them at her job.
After that talk, Kim sat down alone on a bench in the sun and finished off her iced tea from lunch.
She realized she was glad that Larry still seemed so uneasy in her presence. Despite all his earnest efforts, he was hooked on her. And she was glad. One of her not-completely-hidden motives for coming to Lukedom, especially after Honoria gave him back his ring, was to be with Larry, to ‘see what developed.’ Despite his seeming to be the sort of man she usually made fun of, she liked Larry – probably more than ‘liked.’
She felt a little guilty that she enjoyed seeing him struggling with his need for control against her, struggling to convince himself marrying Honoria was what he wanted. But depressing too. He had a lot of things in him waiting to break free, but she doubted they would ever make it. The reason she hadn’t let herself get involved with him was not only Honoria, but because she feared Larry would make of their affair something melodramatic. He would be passionate and brooding, loving her for their physical connecting and haling her for taking him away from the straight and narrow path to fame and fortune he had set out for himself. She knew that being loved by a neurotic was a sure formula for misery. Larry would have to be miserable without her. Although she had to admit she was sorely tempted.