The Yaks Are Coming

By Denitza Blagev

I. The Yaks Are Coming

“A guy joins a hunting retreat,” Raphael starts a joke. “All night the men are sitting around a fire and getting trashed, totally wasted!” Raphael slaps his hand on his thigh and takes a gulp of the glass of wine before him. We are in a restaurant celebrating the end of a project. The kids, first year analysts, worked hard on it, and as their manager I want to reward them. “The guys keep drinking all night. The man wonders when they’ll start hunting.” The kid next to me, James, shifts his weight in his seat and crosses his arms at his chest. He looks down at the table and seems uncomfortable. “They keep drinking and drinking,” Raphael says, his eyes bright and alive. His body is barely able to contain his smile.

“Around midnight, someone yells ‘The yaks are here! The yaks are here!’” James bites his lip to keep from smiling and looks down at his lap. The other four, Steve, Tim, Lilian, and Roger focus on the steaks before them. I smile to fit in, their boyish shyness - the lot of them one hundred years younger than me.

“Then suddenly, all the men put down their drinks and run outside,” Raphael continues. His eyes are focused; he is only talking to me now. “The man follows them outside, and he sees all the men with their pants around their ankles going at it. They’re fucking the shit out of these yaks!” Raphael lets out a loud laughter, but he is not nervous. I can feel James holding his breath next to me. They are waiting for my reaction. I smile. I am relaxed and glowing; I don’t need to assert my masculinity. Bestiality is safe - it hides no homophobia. James takes a deep breath and lets his face fall into a smile. They are beautiful, all of them.

“The next week, the man decides to go to the retreat again,” Raphael keeps going. He doesn’t miss a beat. “He figures, he’ll try it one more time,” he says. I reach for the glass of heavy-bodied red wine. “Again, they spend the whole night getting trashed,” Raphael bobs his head, a lock of baby brown hair falls in his eyes, and he casually brushes it away. “Around midnight, someone yells ‘The yaks are here! The yaks are here!,’” he says. “The guy runs outside and again, he sees all the men going to town on those yaks,” James is giggling in anticipation. I put my glass down and lean back in the chair. Raphael’s skin is glowing, his cheeks are flushed, and everyone at the table is licking up every word before it even drips from his lips.

“The third week, the man decides he’ll do it. He says to himself: When in Rome do as the Romans, and he decides that the next time he hears someone announce the arrival, he’ll be the first man out the door.” That reasoning is an easy leap of faith for me. After twenty years in the business, I am no idealist. “So all night the man is pounding drink after drink, until he can barely see. He hears someone yelling ‘The yaks are here! The yaks are here!’ and sprints out of the bar, grabs a yak, drops his pants, closes his eyes, and starts going at it. When he’s done, he opens his eyes and sees that everyone is standing around, staring at him in disgust. The man goes back into the bar, and nobody will even look at him. He is confused.”

James’ laughter is reduced to a whimpering. He knows what is coming, he can taste it. “The man says ‘Guys, what happened? I thought that’s what we do?’ Nobody will even look at him.” Raphael leans forward on the table, his body is barely touching the chair. “Finally, an old man comes over to the guy, and says ‘Man, that was the ugliest yak!’”

My laughter is hardy, healthy. It feels good. James is squealing with joy, Lilian is holding her stomach, her teeth showing. I can hear my own laughter rising above the rest. It is a man’s laughter. It is deeper, more desperate, imprisoned. I hold Raphael’s face in my gaze and I love him for this. I love him for the joy.

II. Work

The kids had an evening off, and they went drinking. I overhear their chatter. Raphael slept with a girl he does not remember. Steve woke up in a pool of vomit. James and Lilian are blushing.

People who aren’t dying, or rather, those who aren’t reminded that they are, think that living as if you’re about to die is a good idea. They don’t know that the real joy in life is in living as if you’re going to live forever. I go to work every day now, not because I think I will ever retire and reap the benefits of my labor, but because I savor Raphael’s laughter, and I want to be around unadulterated youth.

The young haven’t heard of death yet, they don’t know that life is finite, or that time passes. It is a fever that I want to catch from them.

Raphael comes to my office. His hair is greasy and parted to the side. He has deep circles under his eyes. He is wearing glasses he probably got in eighth grade that he never counted on wearing again. His shirt is wrinkled, and I can see dried sweat marks under his arms. He hasn’t slept in two weeks. I envy his health.

“The numbers,” he says and hands me his report. He is smiling, happy to be done, but the exhaustion is obvious. His movements are slow.

“Good job,” I say and take the folder.

After he leaves I hear James’ voice greet him with: “Raph is here! Raph is here!” I hope they know enough to savor this. They will forget the fatigue. But the laughter stays. And the miracle of seeing straight into a fellow’s soul in the wee hours of the morning, that stays too. These are the moments that keep you alive when you wake up in despair at three o’clock in the morning.

III. Zodiac Sign

“I have breast cancer,” Taylor says, her brown eyes bright in the sunlight of the spring day. I put my coffee cup down on the table that separates us. I don’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry,” I offer. I have nothing else to give my friend.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, still smiling. “Besides, I seem to be in remission for the time being,” she consoles me. Taylor is a psychiatrist. It takes me a while to absorb the shock. It is old news for her. I just found out.

“Are you OK?” I ask.

“I want to get married and have children,” she says. I note the use of the present tense. When I first found out about my infection, I stopped using it. I wanted to be married, I would say in my head, wanted to travel, wanted to change the world. I could tell her, I want to tell her, but I say nothing. I am afraid to see myself die in her eyes. As if it would cease to be true if nobody knew.

“If only I’d thought of it sooner,” she says. She is leaning back in the chair now, holding her skim decaf cappuccino, no sugar. “My risk of breast cancer would’ve been lower, had I only had a child by 30,” she says and laughs.

She looks at me. “You look good, have you lost some weight?” she asks.

“I’ve been working out,” I lie. It’s a benefit of the disease I hadn’t thought about before.

“New boyfriend?” she asks. I’ll never have sex again. Dying for love is old fashioned.

“Not quite,” I hear myself say. In this age of promiscuity, unrequited love is underestimated.

I lean forward and put my hand on top of hers.

“I love you Taylor,” I say. She is still smiling, but I can see the tears coming from behind her eyes.

“I know,” she says and we sit at the table, holding hands, smiling, and sobbing loudly.

“Look at us, a couple of crybabies,” she says and laughs, then wipes the tears off her cheeks. Concern flashes through her face. “Is my mascara running?” she says and smiles wiping her eyes again.

IV. Test

“What’s a colonoscopy?” my mother asks. She sits at the table, drinking her Camomile tea.

“A long tube with an asshole on either end of it,” I say and let out a loud burst of laughter. My mother does not find it funny.

“Why do you need it?” she asks.

I don’t.

“I am losing weight,” I say. I don’t think I can survive hearing myself spell HIV to her. So I make a wish. Wouldn’t I be lucky to live long enough to die of colon cancer?

“What’s wrong with you?” she badgers. Already I am regretting I told her. I didn’t want it be sudden. I was worried about the shock. A child dying, there’s so much expectation of pain in it.

“I’m fine, mom,” I say, but even I don’t believe it. “It’s just a test.”

“A test for what?” This is exactly the conversation I do not want to be having with her. This is exactly why I don’t bring medication when I fly to visit her.

“I don’t know mom, nothing. Nothing’s wrong, OK!” My voice rings louder than I intended. My mother puts her tea cup down.

“Everything is fine, mom,” I say. I make myself look up and smile at her. I flash her my teeth as insurance against life going wrong.

V. Play

At the company retreat I am sitting in the sun holding a beer. I save my most macho look for summer barbeques and friendly sports. Young bare skin sweating in the sun leaves me hypnotized. They are playing volleyball, the lot of them. They haven’t heard of skin cancer yet, and thirty seems osteoporotic. Young bare skin sweating in the sun, muscles flexing. Raphael jumps up to spike and I hold my breath. I am just a little bit afraid that he will take off into the sky.

My horoscope today says that on sunny days I “will have feelings of love toward everything.” The nerdy college overachiever who is waiting for his big break as a writer got it right. I look at Taylor’s horoscope too now. I don’t tell her what it says. Taylor makes her own hope. I need my horoscope to insert some expectation for living.

For Cancer, it says that Taylor has been “caught up in old habits for too long, and it is time for a new adventure.” When I read it in the morning, I thought that Taylor had won. (I keep track of this, whose horoscope is better each day, on a spread sheet.) But now, I am reconsidering. I have it better than I thought.

"Ahh!” I hear a squeal and look up. Lilian has just spiked the volleyball in Steven’s face. He is holding his nose, and blood is streaming through his fingers.

“I’m so sorry,” Lilian is frantically repeating. She runs to the other side of the net where Steven has fallen on his knees in the soft sand. Raphael runs to help her and they start to take Steven’s blood-covered hand away.

I stand in horror for a moment. I feel a gust of wind as someone runs past me to call an ambulance.

“Wait!” I order Raphael and Lilian. “Don’t touch his blood,” I say and rush to Steven’s side. I am breathless, struggling to catch up. They obey my command. Raphael’s hand is still holding Steven’s elbow. His other hand is suspended in midair, about to touch Steven’s bleeding face.

“They have gloves inside,” I say. I am embarrassed to think this way. They are young, they do not think of these things. Lilian steps aside, and Raphael’s eyes grow big at me. He is about to defy me, I can tell by the hair standing up at the back of his neck. All he sees is his friend in need.

“Go get them,” I say before he can say anything. Lilian runs off and I peel Raphael’s fingers off Steven’s arm. I stand like this, holding Steven’s bloody hand, letting the red liquid thicken as it drops from his now deformed nose. “You’ll be OK, Steven,” I say and I run my hand through his thick hair. It’s true - he will be OK. And I am dying of envy.

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Denitza Blagev is a medical student at New York University and editor of the NYU literary journal, Agora.