In first becoming the dice man, my audience was changed from my peers in psychiatry to Blake, Nietzsche, Lao-Tzu. My goal was to destroy all sense of an audience; to become without values, evaluators, without desires: to be inhuman, all-inclusive. God.

In moving the dice man into sexual research, however, what I aspired to was a piece of ass. Zeus wished to disguise himself as beast and fornicate with a beautiful woman. But my equal desire, as strong as lust, was to become the audience for our subjects. As audience I might be able to create an atmosphere of all-embracing permissiveness, one in which the virgin would feel free to express her latest lech; the queer to express his latent desire for cunt. The dice man had discovered that the experimenting man was permitted almost everything. Could I create an experimental situation for the subjects which would be equally permissive? Such was my hope. Seduction is the art of making normal, desirable, good and rewarding what had previously seemed abnormal, undesirable, evil and unrewarding. Seduction was the art of changing another's audience and hence his personality. I refer, of course, to the classical seduction of the `innocent' and not to the mutual masturbation of promiscuous adults.

Dr. Felloni's dean-of-women dignity and my own rugged, professional look had convinced our subjects that we were the epitome of respectability. They had become more accustomed than the average person to discussing all sorts of outrageous sexuality with strange, non-condemning adults. All of this might ready them, so my thinking went, for any outrageous instructions we might give them.

`Now this afternoon, Mr. F., in the next room is a shy but promiscuous young woman your own age. She has been paid to make love to you. Be a gentleman with her, but insist that she fuck good. At the conclusion of your experience fill out the questionnaire in this sealed envelope. Be as honest as possible with your answers; they will be completely anonymous.'

`Miss F., in the next room is a shy young man your own age named F. Like yourself he is a virgin. He has been told that you are a prostitute hired to teach him the art of love. For this experiment we wish to see how well you can play this role by interacting with him sexually to permit us to collect as much data as possible. If you overcome your inhibitions about nudity and intimate sexual contact with a man you will receive a bonus of one hundred dollars. If you permit him to have sexual intercourse you will receive a bonus of two hundred dollars. For other possible bonuses read pages five and six of the enclosed instruction sheet and questionnaire. You need not fear pregnancy, since the other subject has been medically certified as sterile.'

`Tomorrow afternoon, Mr. J., you are to go to the address printed on this card. You will meet there a man who has been told you are a fellow homosexual. He will attempt to seduce you. You are to encourage him as much as possible, while noting your own feelings and reactions. If he achieves an orgasm you will receive a bonus of one hundred dollars for producing such significant data. If you also achieve orgasm you will receive an additional two-hundred #161;dollar bonus. We are interested in studying the social and sexual intercourse between normal men like yourself and homosexual men.. Within the enclosed…'

Instructions like these came parading through my mind. I might have to hire prostitutes and homosexuals, but in some cases I might have subjects playing both roles. (Two heterosexual men banging away at each other collecting data.) I began to believe that human beings are capable of anything. Our other-directed modern men are so accustomed to looking to the immediate social environment for approval or disapproval that, given the correct experimental leader, tone and situation, I should be able to get the subjects to alter their customary sexual roles.

It seemed a worthy project, worthy of the Marquis de Sade. Consciously, I wanted to confirm my theory of the malleability of man, but I seemed to be taking a rather fiendish non-rational delight in the prospect.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hectic, hectic, hectic. The life of an experimenter is not easy. To set up mazes, find rats to run them, measure the results and to tabulate everything is hard. To set up sexual encounters, find people to run them, measure the results and believe everything is harder.

Nevertheless, in the next few weeks I completed the complicated task of setting up what was officially named the Rhinehart-Felloni Investigation of Amorality Tolerance, but which has become generally known among New York psychiatrists as `Fuck Without Fear for Fun and Profit,' and in the New York Daily News as `The Columbia Copulation Caper.'

I had some trouble convincing Dr. Felloni of the correctness of our joint venture, but I took her to lunch one day and just kept talking about `test of the stability of behavioral patterns and attitudes under experimental conditions' and `the Leiberwitz-Loom criteria for defining a homosexual,' and `heterosexuality as defined operationally by the maintenance of an erection in the presence of a woman for five or more minutes' and, as my clincher, `the complete quantification of all results.'

She finally agreed and laid great professional stress on the necessity of anonymity for all subjects.

The first two weeks of the experiment were incredibly confusing. Too many of our hired personnel - prostitutes male and female - were failing to show up or, more usually, failing to follow instructions. Women hired to play hard-to-get would bring along a friend and give our subject an orgy. Another woman hired to exhaust a Don Juan type sexually, fell asleep after fifteen minutes and couldn't be roused even by a gentle beating with a belt.

Many of our subjects, after seeming to agree to the experiment, disappeared. I was desperate for subjects, `lab assistants' (our `help' was so designated in our budget and foundation report) and data. I found myself tempted to hire my wife, Arlene, Miss Reingold even, to meet the various appointments. Dr. Felloni reported that she was having the same problem with the group of subjects she was dealing with. The confusion was further compounded by our having to use the same two apartments for all our `experimental sessions.'

I sent Arlene out to play the role of a lonely, prudish, love sick housewife for a sexually hard-up and inhibited college student who had been instructed to play the role of a Henry Miller; she came back exhilarated. She announced that the evening had been a total success, although she admitted that nothing much had happened for the first two hours and that she may not have stuck completely to her assigned role when she walked into the living room nude after taking a shower. She volunteered to assist in any way she could if needed further for the experiment and even agreed not to tell Jake.

Finally I decided that the old coach himself had to get off the bench and into the game. Someone had to get in there who could plug up the holes when they needed to be plugged or burst up the middle of a score. A hush fell over the crowd when I trotted onto the field.

Miss T. was required by the instructions to: `Spend the evening at the apartment of Mr. O., age thirty-five. Man will have paid one hundred dollars to spend the evening with you. Mr. O. is a lonely college professor whose wife died a year ago. He knows nothing about this experiment and believes a friend has provided him with a young, inexperienced call girl. You are to try to give yourself to him as completely as possible. Examine closely your own attitudes and emotions and fill out the questions contained in the enclosed envelope.'

According to her answers on our attitude questionnaires, Miss T. was nineteen years old, had never had sexual intercourse, had `necked heavily' with only two boys, had kissed `less than ten' boys and had never had any conscious lesbian inclinations or experiences. She believed that premarital sexual intercourse was wrong because `God punished it finitely,' it was `psychologically unhealthy' and there was `danger of pregnancy.'