In the ensuing silence I heard his chair squeak; he may have tipped back in it, but from where I lay I couldn't tell. I

could see only part of two walls, bookcases, books, my cobweb and a single small portrait of Socrates draining the

hemlock. My taste in soothing pictures for patients seemed dubious.

`I've been pretty cheerful lately too,' Osterflood said meditatively, and I realized I wanted to get the focus back on my

problems.

`Of course, habit breaking can also be a chore,' I said. 'For example, I find it difficult to improvise new methods and

places for urinating.'

`I think . . . I almost think you may have brought me toward a breakthrough,' Osterflood said, ignoring me.

`I'm particularly concerned with my next bowel movement,' I went on. `There seem to be definite limits as to what

society will stand for. All sorts of eccentricity and nonsensical horrors can be permitted - wars, murder, marriage, slums - but that bowel movements should be made anywhere except in the toilet seems to be pretty universally considered despicable.'

`You know that if . . . I felt that if I could just kick my little girl addiction, just … lose interest, I'd be all right. The big

ones don't mind, or can be bought'

`Also locomotion. There are only a certain number of limited ways of moving from spot A to spot B. Tomorrow, for

example, I won't feel free to jog to work. What can I do? Walk backward?'

I looked over to Osterflood with a serious frown, but he was immersed in his own thoughts.

`But now … lately … I got to admit it … I seem to be losing my interest in little girls.'

`Walking backwards a solution, of course, but only a temporary one. After that and crawling and running backward

and hopping on one foot, I'll feel confined, limited, repetitious, a robot'

`And that's good, I know it is. I mean I hate little girls and now that I'm less interested in fucking them I feel that's …

definitely an advance.'

He looked down at me sincerely and I looked sincerely back.

`Conversations too are a problem,' I said. `Our syntax is habitual, our diction, our coherence. I have a habit of logical

thought which clearly must be broken. And vocabulary. Why do I accept the limits of our habitual words. I'm a clod! A clod!'

`But … but … lately … I'm afraid … I've sensed … I'm almost afraid to say it…'

`Umpwillis. Art fodder. Wishmonger. Gladsull. Parminkson. Jombie. Blit. Why not? Man has limited himself

artificially to the past. I feel myself breaking free.'

`. . that I'm, I feel I'm beginning to want, to be like . . . little boys.'

`A breakthrough. A definite breakthrough if I can continue to contradict my habitual patterns as I have this morning.

And sex. Sexual patterns must be broken too . .

`I mean really like them,' he said emphatically; `Not want to rape them or hurt them or anything like that, just bugger

them and have them suck me off.'

`Possibly this experiment could get me into dangerous ground. I suppose since I've habitually not been interested in

raping little girls that theoretically I ought to try it.'

`And boys … little boys are easier to get at. They're more trusting, less suspicious.'

`But really hurting someone frightens me. I suppose - No! It is a limitation. A limitation I must overcome. To be free

from habitual inhibitions I will have to rape and kill: His chair squeaked, and I heard one of his feet hit the ground.

`No,' he said firmly. `No, Dr. Rhinehart. I'm trying to tell you, raping and killing aren't necessary anymore. Even

hitting may be out.'

`Raping, or at least killing, is absolutely necessary to the Random Man. To shirk that would be to shirk a clear duty.'

`Boys, little boys, even teen-age boys, will do just as good, I'm sure. It's dangerous with little girls, Doc, I warn you.'

`Danger is necessary. The whole concept of the Random Man is the most dangerous and revolutionary ever conceived

by man. If total victory demands blood then blood it must be.'

`No, Dr. Rhinehart, no. You must find another way to work it out. A less dangerous way. These are human beings

you're talking about.'

`Only according to our habitual perceptive patterns. It may well be that little girls are actually fiends from another

world sent to destroy us.

He didn't reply but I heard the chair give one small squeak.

`It's quite clear,' I went on, `that without little girls we wouldn't have women, and women - snorfu buck clisting rinnschauer.'

`No, no, Doc, you're tempting me. I know it, I see it now. Woman are human beings, they must be.'

`Call them what you will, they differ from us, Osterflood, and you can't deny it' `I know, I know, and boys don't. Boys are us. Boys are good.

I think I could learn to love boys and not to have to worry so much about the police anymore.'

`Candy and kindness to girls, O., and a stiff prick to boys you may be right. It would, for you, definitely be a habit breaker.'

`Yes, yes.'

Someone knocked on the door. The hour was, up. As I dazedly rolled my feet onto the floor I felt Mr. Osterflood pumping my hand vigorously: his eyes were blazing with joy.

"This has been the greatest therapeutic hour of my life. You're . . . you're … you're a boy, Dr. Rhinehart, a genuine boy.'

`Thank you, O. I hope you're right.'

Chapter Twenty-four

Slowly and steadily, my friends, I was beginning to go insane. I found that my residual self was changing. When I chose to let the sleeping dice lie and be my `natural self I discovered that I liked absurd comments, anecdotes, actions. I climbed trees in Central Park, assumed the yoga position of meditation during a cocktail party and oozed esoteric, oracular remarks every two minutes which confused and bored even me. I shouted, `I'm Batman,' at the top of my lungs at the end of a telephone conversation with Dr. Mann - all not because the dice said so, but because I felt like it.

I would break into laughter for no reason at all, I would overreact to situations, becoming angry, fearful or compassionate far in excess of that normally demanded. I wasn't consistent. Sometimes I'd be gay, at others sad; sometimes I'd be articulate, serious, brilliant; at others, absurd, abstracted, dumb. Only my being in the process of analysis with Jake kept me free to walk the streets. As long as I did nothing violent, people could still feel relatively at ease: `Poor Dr. Rhinehart, but Dr. Ecstein is helping him: Lil was becoming increasingly worried about me, but since the die always rejected the option that I tell her the truth, I kept making semi-rational excuses for my absurdities. She talked with Jake and Arlene and Dr. Mann, and they all had perfectly rational and usually brilliant explanations of what was happening, but unfortunately no suggestions as to how to end it.

`In a year or two…' said Dr. Mann benevolently to Lil, who told me she almost started screaming.

I assured her that I'd try harder to control my whims.

National Habit-Breaking Month certainly didn't help matters. How upset people become when confronting the breakdown of patterns, how upset or how joy-filled. My jogging into the office, my absurd speeches, my blasphemous efforts to seduce the sexless and incorruptible Miss Reingold, my drunkenness, my nonsensical behavior with my patients - all brought to those who witnessed them shock and dismay, but also, I began to notice, pleasure.

How we laugh and take joy in the irrational, the purposeless and the absurd: Our longing for these bursts out of us against all the restraints of morality and reason. Riots, revolutions, catastrophes: how they exhilarate us. How depressing it is to read the same news day after day. Oh God, if only something would happen: meaning, if only patterns would break down.