4. The Fake Hypnosis Session
As they entered the room, both my wife and Will the casino worker were carrying drinks, she a tall glass with some kind of mixed drink in it and he yet another bottle of beer. They were apparently having a minor disagreement. I asked them about it.
Nancy explained: "Will's roommate just called him. He asked Will if he could hang out with us. Will tried to talk him out of it, but I said it was fine with me. It would be fun to meet his roommate. It's not like we're on a date or anything. So, if it's all right, Cal, he's on the way over. We gave him your room number and he's only like a block away, so he should be here pretty soon."
A second guy? Better and better, I thought. Fuck, if it were possible, I'd assemble a whole roomful of horny guys for my wife.
"No problem," I said. "An audience doesn't bother me."
While we waited for Will's roommate, I sat Nancy down on one side of the king-sized bed and began going through some "pre-hypnosis" exercises with her that we'd rehearsed. We had no idea, of course, of what a real hypnotist did to get his subjects ready. But we'd seen something about pre-hypnosis on the Internet and thought we'd be able to fake it.
I showed her the little frog figurine, swinging it in front of her eyes a few times. She laughed and said she didn't see anything in the least bit hypnotic about it. Then I fell into the role of authority figure.
"I know you're setting your mind against this procedure," I announced in a domineering voice, "but gradually, despite your efforts, you will give into it. You'll give in because you are intelligent. Intelligence, strength of mind, is required in a hypnotic subject. Stupid people are immune to hypnosis. You are intelligent, so you will take to hypnosis like a duck to water."
It goes without saying that I was pulling all this babble out of my ass. It was such outrageous bullshit that Nancy couldn't keep from smiling, but she quickly got control of herself and assumed a self-controlled, dead-pan look.
"Now," I continued, "show me your hands." She held her hands up to me and I took them in mine. I held her hands firmly for almost thirty seconds before releasing them. She let them drop to her lap.
"I could feel great strength in your hands," I resumed pompously. "I want you to lock your fingers together now. Yes, just like that. Feel the strength in them. I have not hypnotized you but already your fingers have taken on additional strength from what I'm saying. Your fingers now have their own strength which is only partially under your control."
I snapped my fingers for effect and said, "Now try to unlock your hands. Try as hard as you can to unlock them. You will be unable to."
Nancy, who'd been smiling up at me as I'd held her hands, stopped smiling as she pretended to try to pull her hands apart. She stared at her entangled fingers. The muscles in her arms flexed with the apparent effort to pull them apart. "What the fuck?" she said. "What's going on? My hands are stuck together!" She was beginning to act afraid.
"OK, Nancy, don't worry. When I snapped my fingers again, your powerful fingers will relax and you'll easily be able to separate them."
I snapped my fingers and Nancy's hands flew apart. She sat, looking up at me with an expression of fear and anger on her face, opening and closing her hands.
"That was weird," she said. "I'm not sure I want to go through with this. I don't want parts of my body doing what I don't want them to do."
I laughed and said, "Don't worry. Even if I hadn't snapped my fingers just then, your hands would've unlocked in thirty seconds or so on their own. My power over you is actually quite weak. You have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You weren't even in a trance then. All this little exercise demonstrated is that you are definitely a good hypnotic subject."
She stood up picked up her drink from the table, and emptied it. "Well, if you say so, I guess it'll be all right. It's just that all this is new to me."
Just then there was a soft knock on the door. Will, who'd been sitting in a chair watching Nancy's locked-fingers act, stood up and let his roommate in. He was quite tall, at least six-foot-four, and well built like an athlete. His short-cropped red hair reinforced the impression that he was a jock. He wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with a pouch in front.
He introduced himself as "J.J." and apologized for intruding into our "party."
I told him it really wasn't a party. It was a sort of scientific experiment involving hypnosis. I asked him if he knew anything about hypnosis and was relieved to hear that he didn't.
"J.J. goes to UNR [University of Nevada-Reno]," said Will irrelevantly. "Oh, I had a friend who went there," said Nancy just as irrelevantly.
I tried engaging Will and J.J., who sat in the two chairs facing Nancy (still seated on the side of the bed) in small talk for a few minutes. They weren't into the conversation much, though. This was obviously because, from where they were sitting, each had a very distracting view up my wife's dress. She was sitting with her legs dangling over the side of the bed and her knees at least ten inches apart.
Finally, I turned all my attention to Nancy. I took the figurine out of my pocket again and asked her if she was ready to begin the actual hypnosis experience. She nodded that she was.
Standing to the side of her, I swung the figurine back and forth in front of her eyes and began using hocus-pocus talk I'd seen in bad movies. "Pay full attention to this little frog, Nancy. Watch it swing this way and that way and this way and that way. Keep watching and your eyelids will begin to get heavier and heavier. You're beginning already to feel sleepy. You're very sleepy now."
I repeated this hypnosis patter for almost a minute. Then, abruptly, my beautiful wife's eyes closed, her head slumped forward, and she acted as though she were about to fall over sideways. I caught her and guided her upper body backwards so she was lying perpendicularly on the bed with her legs still dangling over the side and her knees now spread apart about fourteen inches. I propped a pillow under her head to make her more comfortable.
"She's really under now," I whispered to our two guests. "You might want to scoot your chairs a little closer now so you can hear what she says better. I'm going to be asking her some questions."
They scooted their chairs closer to the bed. I noticed that they'd also drawn their chairs closer together so that both of them had a more straight-on view up her dress. It excited me to know that they could see all the way up to her panties, what there was of them.
But I got myself under control so I could do my part in our little play. As soon as Nancy was apparently "under," I began my enquiry.
"What's your name?"
"Nancy."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five," she lied, knocking five years off her real age.
"Where do you live?"
"San Francisco," she lied again.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a teacher. I teach second grade."
"Are you married or single."
"I'm divorced."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Sort of. His name is John."
"Are you going to marry John?"