Golden

  

There are only so many times one can be asked what one studies in college to be replied with “Would you like fries with that?” Art is dead; long live art.   

If my sole intention was to make money, of course, I would have studied something else, like business or communication or ass-kissing. But that is far from my mind, as it is primarily preoccupied with iambic pentameter and an inoperable tumor.   

I’d like to think that no one wants to be even the most eloquent time bomb, but let’s choose executors and talk of wills: and yet not so, for what can we bequeath, save our deposed bodies in the ground? The gravity of getting a timeline to your demise is not easily measured in weight and white blood cell count. It would hang heavy in my body like lead heartburn.  

I will set the stage now like my long-dead friend Will did some 400 years ago. The stage will dip low like my chin to my chest, to give you ample view of my valley of death. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; make it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble; which delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The doctor’s jargon was as foreign to me as my Shakespearean studies were to most. I sat on the examining bed, its clear plastic covering crinkling and squeaking, breaking the quietness of the room, as I shifted my weight from left to right glute. The room’s air felt cold and sharp and more like inhaling Lysol than oxygen. Dampness was forming in the pits of my mint green gown that draped over my unkempt body. A girlfriend I had once bought me a polo shirt in that same color, noting how it complimented the warm darkness of my skin. The thought brought a small amount of bile up my throat.  

My entire life became the rest of my life, and it was all changed in a single room.  

  
  

“Five years.” It rang in my head, and I knew how I was going to spend them. I would defy my cursed brain by filling it with what I loved and all that I wished to love in more depth. I would go back to school.  

  
I was twenty years old, so it didn’t feel as big of a stretch as some may have thought. I really never thought about going to college because I knew everything. Teenagers always know everything, and I felt content to work part-time jobs and study on my own. But this was it. I had a final timeline, and a death certificate nullifies student loans.  

“So, this is what you want for sure?” my mom had asked me, as I was at the kitchen table, filling out applications. My mom looked down at me as she was walking by to the fridge and stove. I knew her face was mostly turned from me, so I wouldn’t see her red eyes. She took to crying in private only once a day now.  

“Yes,” I replied, filling in tiny squares with letters that seemed to spell the words wrong the longer I looked at them. “This is what I want. ‘Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.’”  

“So, now you’ll be able to quote even more Shakespeare then?” she said was a small laugh, lifting a cup of coffee to her face. That whole scene felt rehearsed, very forced, and I sensed she was faking normalcy the best way she could. It was coping, and I couldn’t fault her for that. “And here I thought you’d be going to college just to drink and get laid.”  

“Only after class,” I said. That was still basically true.  

  
 By contrast, my nights at college were not rehearsed scenes of the sad nerd boy who sits alone in his dorm and studies. My nights were spent exploring the backstreets of the adjacent city, the party houses plain as day in light or at night. Why, sir, for my part I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five senses. The houses were much like the row home I grew up in, only with small spaces in between them, often dark allies dripping with Poe-esque darkness, thrilling me, filling me with fantastic terrors never felt before. (I have room in my heart for more than one writer, Will, please don't get jealous) The pregaming left my direction pleasantly off as I ascended the concrete stairs of one such house, hand on the railing. The paint of the railing flaked off in big chunks, exposing the rusted metal beneath like burned skin peeling away from the flesh of an arm. I reeled at my own morbid and pretentious thought, expressing them aloud to my friends with me. They looked and exclaimed “Dude, what the fuck, that’s so true! Guy’s a philosopher sober and drunk!”  

The house was filled to the brim with bodies and somehow still breathing room. These things were often far less violent than you’d think – I watched people looking out for each other, I saw fleeting, fanciful friendships flourish, I saw happiness, and I saw life. I knew that many of them were like me… not to my literal extreme, but I saw people who wanted to feel alive through means other than life itself. They couldn’t get that satisfaction, and neither could I. I was just facing more imminent ends.  

I waded my way into the basement with my friends. I came with two… Erik and Jimmy. I roomed with them. I was marginally taller than them, so I led the way. The off-campus houses were notorious for their low-ceilinged basements. It smells strongly of liquor and faintly of candy.  

 Almost every night, I fell in love: with one who spun to the songs and eyes that looked aflame with the twinkling Christmas lights that hung from the rafters highlighting every sparkle on her face; with one with blue hair who spoke about the stars and threw Tarot cards at unsuspecting passersby (I had suspected he had illustrated them himself) whose darkness in both voice and complexion drew me in; with one who went by Lee, who wore a sunflower tucked behind their ear and often spoke in a lullaby whisper; one and one in the same and one many a night. To awake with a lover and then never speak to them again. I kept my eyes out for one such tonight.  

Love ached within me, and I felt so conflicted with every passing fling, for I knew I could love them all forever if only I had the time.  

 There were still the platonic things too, as my friends and I sat with the others in the basement around a low-sitting table. It was away from most of the traffic off to the other side, where two pitchers with dispenses were filled with juice and God knows what else. We all sat and talked, not bothering with formal introductions, as it was unlikely anyone would remember anyway. I loved to talk too much, as I felt I needed to get all my words out before I died. It was funny, in a way; people just thought I was chatty.  

“There is one thing I cannot stand,” I began, with a sweeping voice and a slight and dramatic pause. “And that is interviews.  

“You mean celebrities or for jobs?” asked a girl, sitting next to another, hands clasped around her cup and listening intently.  

“Jobs… though celebrities piss me off too.”  

“So, what is it?” she asked.  

Every conversation seemed so much deeper, so much purer in this setting. People actually said things with passion. People actually spoke the truth, even hurtful things. I thought of the abysmal pleasantries we as adults face every day, the “Hi, how are you?”s and the “Fine, how are you?”s and the “Doing fine, great weather, isn’t it?”s when no one gives a shit about anything they’re saying. They just say it. They pretend. The world would be a weird place if everyone told the truth. But in this setting, I could believe anything.  

“Job interviews have got to be the biggest session of organized, assisted masturbation that I’ve ever encountered.” There were several bouts of “ooh!”s and big laughs that had sealed their attention to me. “You want a job because you need a job. You need money. Otherwise, society has deemed you fit to starve to death. But what do you have to tell them during an interview? You have to tell them how much you’d love to work for them, you have to explain the most delicate ways you will sell your labor – oh, but don’t actually bring up the subject of your pay! All the experts say you shouldn’t ask too early on, or about benefits, the ilk. So… so, they know that you need this job for money. They know it. But they don’t want to hear that. They want to know how long you can last on your knees whilst jerking them all off simultaneously. And only when they ejaculate all over you, humiliated you, and destroy your integrity, will they ask you back for a second interview… where you do it all again for the boss.”  

There was an eruption of hoots and hollers from my group, and a cheer from someone off to the side who was too drunk to know what was going on but wanted to cheer too. I won't pretend like I'm super profound, but I like it when other people think so.  

“Never liked interviews either,” started one of the girls, as the laughter started to wane out. She spoke with sweeping arm motions yet never spilled any of her drink in hand. “Honestly, every question sounds like a trick. ‘What’s your greatest weakness?’ What am I supposed to say? They know I’m not perfect, but they want me to be! ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ I don’t fucking know, I hope with this job, maybe food every night?”  

“Five years? Obviously retired,” Erik chimed in. It was a running joke with Erik – he was just 17, so we often called him an old man.  

“How about the boss?” said Jimmy. “Pfft, five years… where do you see yourself in five years?”  

“Dead?” I said with a shrug.  

Laugh pause. Audience laughter. Curtain. Intermission.  

  
  

My classes went well at first, but my health was degrading and becoming more visible. There was a part of me that wanted to parade my impending doom around like a Scarlet C to garner pity grades and pity fucks. There was a smaller part of me that believed I even deserved all that. But I kept my secret. If you have to hitherto coneal’d this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still. And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue. The idea of secrecy did not appeal to me either, not that anyone came right out and asked, “Alim, do you have brain cancer?” and I replied “No.” That would be lying. I wasn’t lying.  

  
 “Your grades have been slipping,” started my academic advisor. She was sitting behind her wide, oaken desk, surrounded by supplies and knick-knacks that were strategically placed to make the office look more lived in. Instead, I felt watched by the dead eyes of small ceramic figurines and framed photos. I was faintly sure at least one of the frames still held the stock photo it came with. “But I don’t think it’s due to anything you’re lacking. I think you might be bored and unchallenged.” I wordlessly nodded. Again, not lying. The material was vast but not too dense. My absences from class would have easily been thought to be boredom and not weakness or shakes from my oncoming death.  

“This is what I’ve been thinking for you…” she began as she slid a manila folder out from a pile, gingerly opening it to reveal several papers, all from a copy machine, with some hand-written notes. “You need to do something new and out of your field. And something away from campus…”   

  
  

Dr. Kree was a seasoned geologist and a small man, at least 80 years old. He walked slowly and with a perpetual curve to his spine. His face was bright with life though. He was certainly one of those scholars with quirks, be it from teaching so long or getting stir-crazy within his own head. He carried his supplies in a pale blue bucket: rocks, tools, and papers to grade. That would be grasped in one small, wrinkled hand while in the other, a grabbing stick to pick things up off the ground. He couldn’t bend his knees much anymore. He was often assisted by his son, who stood a foot taller and had a more deadpan expression. Both wore matching beards, save for the color, and they both told bad puns. (Case in point: the first night out, Dr. Kree exclaimed: “If you look up in the sky tonight, you’ll notice the moon is looking for donations. That’s because… it’s on its last quarter!”)  

My advisor’s idea was to jump aboard the closest study abroad class available. Conveniently enough, none of them involved Shakespeare or theatre at all. Instead, I found myself in Peru.  

It was hotly debated if I should be traveling or exerting myself. Shouting matches over a phone speaker. The muffled sound of tears between the feedback. The way I saw it, I had this semester left in me. Just learn about some rocks, finish my other courses online, and then call me the Moor of the Morgue. I did not want my final days to be spent shriveling up amongst my books and good grades. The more I thought of it, the more I liked the idea.  

“They’re taking us to a gold mine, ma,” I said on the phone a week before departure. “Just think of it; if I can take some home, you can bury me in a gold-plated coffin!”  

“No one's fawning over the nicest casket in the boneyard,” she replied without an ounce of humor in her voice. There wasn’t sorrow either, at this point, just annoyance at a few years of death jokes.  

The mine was called Yanacocha, which translates to “dark lagoon.” Despite its ominous name, it was beautiful to behold. The long road along its side showed a landscape with edges like God had physically folded parts of the map. Slices of rusty reds next to mellower beiges, steps in the land that showed this Earth’s years in its layers, manmade mountains and valleys in an ancient giant with veins so shiny and metallic enticed men to cut her up and sell her blood. Beyond the warmth of the mines in the distance lay mountains, jagged and fading, like layers of blue construction paper laid sloppily yet artistically on an endless craft table in the sky.  

At one point, I found myself snapping pictures of this stepped landscape above a pond. Dr. Kree spotted me and hovered by me.  

“Ahh, admiring the pad then!” he said with a light slap on the shoulder.  

“Pad?” I asked.  

“Heap leach pad!” he began, with his voice filled with awe and knowledge, just like he does when he’s launching into a new lecture. “This is a way to extract gold from ore. The ore is crushed down finely, then heaped into these large piles! It’s then sprayed with cyanide, and that trickles down through the ore and bonds with the gold. Cyanide just loves gold!”  

I just sort of blankly nodded as he described the process, even using his hands to make trickling motions and the act of bonding, and while I found it all fascinating, I felt odd beholding toxic beauty. Who would have known gold mines weren't actually inhabited by old mountain men with pickaxes, discovering the metal by the nugget?  

My odd feelings hardened and sank with guilt in me as we explored the town below: Cajamarca. I reflected upon my history classes as we passed the faces of the Peruvian people; heart-shaped faces and diamond noses, some dressed in what we outsiders consider modern dress, others wrapped in hues and stripes so vivid they put the lines I saw in the Earth to shame. But this land was very different 500 years ago. Isn’t every land? It’s how things advance, right? But as I watch my classmates admire the buildings, the churches… I am reminded of how Spanish architecture ended up here in Peru. 

Bear with me for a history lesson.  

Francisco Pizarro arrived in Peru on September 24, 1532. He was a Spanish conquistador, so he sought to colonize and baptize. The Incas were in Peru; their ruler, Atahualpa, was near Cajamarca at the time, following the defeat of his brother. After the Incan ruler refused to pay tribute to the Catholic Emperor, Charles the Fifth, Pizarro and his forces attacked on November 16. They successfully captured Atahualpa. He was held for a ransom: a room filled with gold and two rooms filled with silver. The Incas managed to fill the rooms. The king was executed anyway.  

That room, the Ransom Room, was in the very city we were in. That room held the end of the Incan empire.  

I supposed, these days, the conquistadors had been replaced with mining company CEOs; they demanded a mountain of gold instead of just a room. You wouldn't know the collective net worth of this place by looking at its inhabitants. It would seem they benefit from none of it.  

I kept my camera tucked away as I watched the ground, walking with the group. It wouldn’t matter anyway; it wasn’t like I’d get to look back on these memories.  

  
  

That night at camp, I lay awake. The pains in my head returned. I scarcely noticed the tears leaking down towards my ears.  

I dreamt of a Peruvian man sitting in an empty room, save for a single bar of gold sitting in front of him. I was standing there, though I felt like I might be hovering – floating yet heavy. The man was wearing layers of the colorful textiles I had seen all along the streets that day, those vibrant colors against his grim face. He looked up at me, his irises quivering, beholding me.   

“Pin kanki?” he asked, in a frail, strained voice. I did not recognize the language but soon found my own voice speaking it.  

“Sutiymi, sutiyqa Alim.”  

“Allillanchu?” the man asked.  

“Onq’osianin,” I replied. I felt my body slowly start to drift down to the floor. “Ama hina kaychu Yanapaykuway, intiqa pakakuchianña.”  

The sun was setting rapidly, its light filling the room through a single window. The square of light fell directly on the bar of gold, staying there, and the room was suddenly filled with the orange glow. The man looked at me for a moment, the golden light softening the deep wrinkles in his angular face. He looked down at himself, taking a deep breath, and he began removing his layers of clothing, the shawl, and the coat, all falling off him before he began to unbutton his shirt.   

With the last bit of clothing gone, a naked man sat here, but his body was nearly skeletal, his skin clinging to his bones like dust. Any space where organs ought to be seemed empty, and there were long ravines along his limbs where his veins once were.   

He began to softly cry. “Ima naqtinmi mincha ripunki?”  

I wasn’t sure how to answer at first – well, my dream self, I should say, since I would look back and not know what was being said. But, more unknown words came from me. “Sayk'usqan kashiani, samaytan munani.”  

The man began to cry harder, and I wished that I hadn’t said… whatever it is that I said.  

“Ñogapas yuyarisqaykin,” he sobbed, head falling, bobbing up and down with his cries. The sun was gone. The room was dark.  

  
 When I awoke in the morning, my pains kept me from rising. I was starting to regret not informing the on-staff nurse of the extent of my condition. He knew it was cancer but not much beyond that.  

“It’s… probably something I… ate?” I forced through gritted teeth as the nurse, his assistant, and Dr. Kree looked over me, seeing a man sweating and grasping to a simple cot as if to keep him afloat.  

“Oh dear, yes, this can happen… does every year on these trips!” Dr. Kree exclaimed, just as I saw the nurse inhale to say something more useful. “He probably just needs some rest, right doc?”  

The nurse kept a stern face, even at the professor’s normal unwavering pep. “We’ll want to keep an eye on him to make sure his symptoms don’t worsen, and if they do-”  

“It’ll be alright, son!” Dr. Kree interrupted. The nurse closed his mouth, opened it for a fraction of a second, then clamped it shut again. He must have had to deal with this too often. “You take today to get better, and we’ll catch you up tomorrow, okay? I won’t penalize you – I’ll give you credit for today. If you’re better tomorrow, you can catch up, okay?”  

He gave a reassuring smile before bidding farewell. I tried to imagine a world with more people like him. I tried to imagine a world with me still in it. Cowards die many times before their deaths; The Valient never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heart, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.  

  
There was a time when the cold air of night signaled an escape. The darkness would whisper in my ear and lead me willfully astray. But finally, fear had found its home in me.   

In a way, it was almost funny, that it had taken me this long to be afraid. I'd had all that time for fear, but when I needed most to be brave, I couldn't be. The dark now felt like the icy fingers of death, as they reached into my throat to pull me forth, not with lust or yearning like before but with true greed and sadism. Night taunted me as it pushed up against the thin walls of our shelter.  

Now, there are many reasons that could have led me to my actions. One could chalk it up to the tumor taking its toll on my reason and logic, or even to pure desperation. After having slept through the whole day, I woke up around 3 AM. Everyone was still. No one would notice. If I must die I will encounter darkness as a bride. And hug it in mine arms.  

The urge was to find… something outside. I wasn’t worried about the particulars nor were my feet. I just left. I just walked in a direction that felt right.  

If I could have, I would have challenged the night to a duel. I would have faced it and conquered it. I had nothing to lose anymore.  

Through sharp brush and dry grass, I marched toward hills and slopes and stood as giant black ghosts leering over me. Perhaps I would traverse over them and find my college party street on the other side, where the music and lights would welcome me, where everyone would exclaim how much they missed me, how much they needed me. I could stumble through the doors into the party, into open arms, into an open bottle.  

In this thought, I began to resent them for all the things we used to have in common. They willfully flirted with death every night; they filled themselves with chemical happiness; they twirled in hellfire with glossy eyes and outstretched arms, asking, begging for the Reaper to sweep them away; let me feel nothing rather than this inebriated complacency. I was bitter, and I accepted this feeling. Maybe once they hear of my death, they will think differently, maybe they will pull their heads out of their collective sphincters and wipe the rose-tinted shit from their eyes. Maybe they will care. But they probably won't.  

I wanted to scream up into the unforgiving void, to curse all those who live and those who live without life. All of the beauty I felt, that embraced me, now felt fictitious, as if I could ever find beauty in a toxic dump that killed the people here, people who were already held for ransom once before. Fuck it all.  

I found myself at the mouth of a cave. With my phone’s flashlight, I illuminated the path inside. No one may ever know why I felt I needed to enter this opening to the mine. It’s not as if there was a glint of gold in my vision to entice me (I was almost certain now that that wasn't how mines worked). But this was my quest to find something, right? Against all the warnings, I walked in.  

  
In my youth, I had done marginal amounts of outdoorsy activities. Most often, I was inside with my thoughts preoccupied with far-off lands of the written word. I would curse myself for being such a stereotypical nerd child, who thought himself too intelligent for meager outdoor games, especially when I looked at my flabby, un-athletic body. Especially when I trudged into a cave.  

There was little to note about the walls I passed – all just dirt and stone. That’s all I could make out with my cylinder of synthetic light keeping me safe. There weren’t any turns or choices to make, but I sensed a downward slope. I would have welcomed a change, a fork in the road, an intersection – but it was but a linear path. Time passed. I was becoming aware of the solitude, the quietude – the crunching of dirt beneath my feet, the whistle of air rushing through my nose, the soft squish of my blinking eyes.  

All logic and reason faulted me, but such things happen when one is faced with death. The only reason logic and reasons would kick in, why one would start to feel anxious and afraid, is because of the need to survive. At death’s door, I felt no need to kick and scream, just wait to be ushered in. I felt it was braver to just admit defeat at this point. You have bested me, me.  

I wasn’t sure how long my phone battery would last. As I took a look at the battery and mused a moment, I thought, since it was just a linear path, I would go without it, right? I switched off the light. The darkness was like none I had experienced before. Everywhere we go in this modern world, there is light, even in the dead of night, even in the middle of nowhere, even if it’s just stars or light pollution. Underground, in the Earth, there is no light.  

My legs began to quake as I tried to step forward, arms out to their sides. This was the adventure that I wanted, wasn’t it?  

Every pebble felt like a demon under my feet, every noise I had noticed before in the light now sounded like a foe just out of reach. Every step felt like an accomplishment, every breath, a cry for help. I did want to cry. I wanted to see my mom. I wanted to say how sorry I was that I was going to die. I just wanted it all over with. I wanted an end to this path.  

I did get that last wish. I found myself at a dead end, a large, clear area with no exit that I could feel out. I fumbled for my phone and switched the light on again.  

It was a cavern. Its ceiling spiraled high above me, its top unseen – but what I could see was what lined the walls – slices of metal and crystal layered in the rocks and dirt, and above, shards of the same minerals sprouting out like spikes, all twirling and twisting above me. I turned around in quick jolts, shining my light in every direction, the flashlight’s beam refracting and reflecting in a million different directions, bright whites and golds and colorful hues. I cried; I saw colors I hadn't seen before.  

Control left my body. Falling to my knees, a horrid wail burst out of my throat, followed closely by more tears streaming down my face. The wails just kept coming in different decibel levels and octaves, even when I felt my throat go raw and could scarcely recognize it as my own voice, and even as I heard the tunnel give way in a terrible crumble behind me. I finally cried out, and it was to no one.  

Ultimately, I tossed my phone aside. It lay with its shattered screen on the floor and its flashlight still alight, small dust and dirt particles floated around its glow, as I sat on the earthen floor. With mouth agape and drooping eyes, I looked up at the shimming minerals above, their shafts like the fingers of angels here to poke me out of existence. I had said I’d have a gold-plated tomb.  

  
 It could have been any number of hours until the flashlight blinked out. Left alone with my thoughts. The pains in my head came in full force. I imagined my brain tearing itself apart, my brain bleeding and filling my skull with pressure. The darkness sat with me as colorful static swam across my vision, pulsing with the banging of my heart. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.  

My senses were gone. I knew not what was true. I can only recount what was felt in that moment, and it was myself, sinking, as if into the ground. A starved man with gold veins sat before me, slowly rising in my vision as I sank.  

“Imatan munanki?” the man asked me.  

“Kunanqa reksiniñam,” I must have replied, though my wholeness was detached at this point and I felt no voice coming from me. "Ch'isiñan ripusaq."  

Soon, the man was far above me as I sank into the emptiness, like the tendrils of unseen creatures grabbing at my body. To be or not to be – is the most quoted of all of Shakespeare’s lines, and no one ever seems to recite it in its relation to death. But ol’ Will wasn’t there with me. It was only the invisible beasts of the mountains, who whispered things to me about the Spaniards, the Ransom Room, the death of their people, the gold, the CEOs, the cyanide, the colors, the Gods, the air…   

I wished that I could have had the comfort of a sonnet, but, in the end, my death turned out much more like Lovecraft than Shakespeare.