How to Drink Yourself to Death in Bali

Mixing magic with arak--the saga of 52 Goodfingers

I closed his eyelids and folded his hands. The police carried his body to a morgue in south Bali. But that is not how he would want me to end his story.

A tall, strange foreigner approached me. He had long blonde hair tied up into a bun on top of his head. Arms decorated with serpent tattoos. is neck and wrists wrapped with multicolored beads. He wore a blue tank top and parachute pants. With a floral Bhakti print. That went past the kneecaps. I noticed that his right leg appeared mangled. A pair of worn-out sandals covered his dirty feet.

“Transcend it,” he mumbled from within a buzzing ball of flies. “Inhale; be one with nature.” He wandered up to a coconut tree and wrapped his arms around it. The stubble of his chin rubbed against the trunk.

A soft shower of white flower petals drifted earthward. He pretended to chase a flower floating in the air, even though it was within his reach. “Try to touch it; you can’t. It’s like time; all you can do is open your mind to it.”

I guessed he was being friendly and that he was making an effort to give me some insight into his world. He gazed up through the shafts of light that penetrated the coconut trees.

“You’re like the flower floating on the wind. Go with the flow, brother,” he said.

What he lacked in self-restraint he made up for in bold self-confidence. One artery pulsated on his temple and a single bead of sweat cut a path along his brow and off the tip of his nose. This was the first time he had faced the trees.

There was no pain in his face; just a thirst. He stood among his trees. It seemed that he could smell time on the branches; that he could hear it through the rustling palm leaves. His left eye went white. His right eye was wild; pleading. He shrugged and waved at the trees.

“This is my place,” he waved.

He handed me his business card: 52 Goodfingers. Life Coach and Ubud Community magazine editor. He pointed to a kampung across the road, indicating that he was my neighbor.

“More cosmic vibes flow through this area than anywhere else on the island,” he continued. “Take a deep breath. Taste nature’s amusement park. It’s a holy taste, brother. I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to join a drum chant.”

He invited me into his quarters. Consisting of a single room located inside a traditional Balinese family kampung. It was not uncommon for the locals to rent out a room in their kampungs. These rooms were the cheapest accommodations found anywhere on the island.

His modest living space was furnished with little more than a raggedy mattress on the floor. A small refrigerator that was at least a decade old, and a rusty gas cooker. He shared a bathroom with three other families, as was typical. A basic bathroom consists of a tub of cold water and a ceramic urinal dug into the floor. You pour water on your body with a bucket to bathe, and squat on the floor to relieve yourself.

We sat down on the dirty concrete floor. I observed that his room was cluttered with moldy newspapers. Piles of empty bottles. Beer and soda cans. Chunks of plaster, blankets, three pairs of soiled couch cushions. A few paintbrushes. And a blank canvas. His place was crawling with ants and covered with a heavy layer of dust to complete the effect. The filth of his dharma crash pad made my nose wrinkle and the hair on the back of my neck curl up into tight coils. I hadn’t seen anyone live in such unsanitary conditions since my hippie days.

52 lit up a cigarette; there were swirls of blue in the smoke that left his lungs in long, slow exhales. His face was gaunt. His body appeared to be nothing more than a shrinking skeleton draped with skin. His gaze betrayed a life complicated by many troubles. The whites of his sunken eyes surrounded oily pupils. Set in a viscous liquid that replaced once-clear pools of crystal blue.

For whatever trials he had faced, his spirit did not appear dampened. He managed to maintain a happy-go-lucky smile. His smile lit up his face, undeterred by yellow teeth, stained from years of smoking. It didn’t seem to bother him that his clothes no longer fit. Nor did he seem disturbed by the fetid aroma that formed a visible aura around him.

He reached into his worn backpack and pulled out an unmarked bottle. Filled with a lemon-colored liquid. With shaking hands, he filled two small glasses and handed one to me. In one gulp he emptied his glass. I was still examining the brew that smelled like a cross between gasoline and turpentine. Wondering if it might be combustible. It turned out to be a local variety of Balinese moonshine called arak. Offered to me before by locals who worked at a resort where I sometimes went swimming. It’s pure alcohol. Made from coconut palm sap. When the primary ingredient is not available. Old tires filled in the fermentation process. It is addictive and many people die from drinking it. I sat my full glass back down on the floor.

“Is this our last dance as warriors?” he asked, wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand. He picked up a paintbrush and stared at his easel.

I asked how long he’d been here. He related how he and his wife had first come to Ubud from Holland over 25 years ago. Had been among the first foreign shop owners on Monkey Forest Road. What had happened to his wife? Since it had been quite some time since his current dwelling graced with a woman’s touch? He mentioned that she had left him, but then became very vague about details of his personal life.

He described the Ubud of long ago as a quaint little village. No hotels or restaurants. No traffic. A beautiful and unspoiled paradise of mountains, rice fields, and natural beauty. Everybody knew everyone and the villagers would come together to bathe in the river. Wash their clothes, and exchange the latest news and gossip. Although artists and celebrities had been visiting the area since the 1930s. It remained a virgin territory. Until modern high-tech communication and transportation arrived. And gave consumerism pimps easy access to Bali’s inhabitants. Seducing them into prostituting their island paradise for the promise of material gain. Wasn’t this what I had tried to escape?

“Hold still; stop fidgeting,” 52 said. Then he stuck another paintbrush in his mouth and smudged the canvas with his right thumb. I held my pose. Right hand on knee. Left hand draped to the floor, upright, head cocked a slight shit-ass grin.

“How long do you plan to stay here?” he asked. I stared at a spot above his head, avoiding eye contact. I couldn’t look into his eyes dead-on without feeling like I was falling into a well. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to this man. What had his life been like; what trials had he faced and what had happened to his leg. I found it hard to talk to him, so I didn’t dare question him about it. As if shaken from a dream, I realized that I had no particular plan. I’d been in this situation before. Living from day-to-day. But had never dreamed I would ever find myself thrust back into a vagabond lifestyle. Particularly at this point in my life and in a foreign land besides.

“I don’t know,” I finally responded. “I suppose it will depend on what I find.”

52 studied the canvas like a boxer facing a heavyweight opponent. His first brush stroke turned into an awkward dance made up of head jerks. Backbends. And flailing arms. It looked like a mismatched fight. He took another drink and exhaled across his knuckles to loosen his stiff hands. The hand was then tested for dexterity on scratch paper. Before making its triumphant return to the canvas.

Up and down. Back and forth. I listened to the soothing, rhythmic sound made by the stiff bristles of the brush. Scratching against the old canvas. While he painted, the late afternoon sun broke through the gray mass of clouds. Filling the room with narrow, dust-filled fingers of light. It felt at that moment that we touched the gods. I wanted him to go on, never finish, keep this moment frozen in time. As he continued painting, my curiosity grew. I was dying to see what vision had inspired the artist. Had he discovered my secrets? I could contain myself no longer; I had to see the image that my new companion had been so compelled to create.

“What’s with the big furry feet?” I inquired.

“A traveler needs to be nimble. Well-protected feet that can move like a panther in the jungle,” he replied.

“You can never tell what creatures dwell in the shadows. You are set upon a great adventure, no?”

Without waiting for an answer, he added a touch of gray to the eyebrows in the portrait.

The face was mine.

He painted a flat, square, and hairless face with the innocent countenance of a child. The eyes sparkled like a prism when struck by a sunbeam. It had ears that resembled wings. Peeking through a mop of shaggy reddish curls and sporting a traveling jacket. Backpack, and a long, carved walking stick as if prepared for a long journey. And those feet; they almost appeared to belong on another creature.

Like it stirred something deep inside of me. A vision that was long forgotten. Rediscovering my purpose, recalling an act of courage I thought I’d long since lost. I felt empowered and a sense of imminent victory replaced that of impending doom.

My face gave way to a smile.

“I like it,” I told him.

The muscles in his face tightened and a tear seemed ready to spill from the corner of his eye. I gathered that he was searching as if to recover something he’d lost, some idea of himself. His eyes scanned my body. Inspecting every detail. Each wrinkle in my shirt, every subtle shadow on my face, each visible fold of skin. Finally, he nodded and shot me an understanding smile.

I resumed my pose.

“Turn your head and face me,” he said.

I stared at the painting. Then he began talking to the image in the painting. As if there were no difference between the world of his dreams and visions. The conscious world of physical reality where we sat amid the garbage and clutter.

“I’m sorry for not listening to you,” he said to the image he had created. “Do you forgive me?”

He stopped painting for a moment and appeared to be studying something inside his mind. “Have you ever dreamed that you died?” he said, with one eye half-closed. “I see of a mirror when I look at you. A reflection filled with a myriad of colors. Crafted by the winds. Blowing across the great canvas of life, all mysterious and unknowing.”

He made no further comment and continued painting.

I paused as if observing a lifetime of history filling the vision behind his eyes. I didn’t know where to begin. Somehow I knew that he knew that he would die from drinking. I closed my eyes and thought how too many of my other friends had ended their lives that way. A bottle can kill you in paradise as anywhere else.

As I returned to my villa that evening, I tried to understand what had happened. I pondered the events of that strange afternoon well into the night. I tossed and turned before finally falling into troubled dreams.

The next night, I left my villa to go for a walk. I felt as though the walls were closing in around me. Had nine months passed since I’d arrived in Bali? Despite all the trials along the way, time seemed to pass in the blink of my third eye. Had I made any significant progress toward my reinvention goal?

Before I knew it, my villa had faded from view, and I had walked along a path until the jungle swallowed up the moonlight. The muffled beating of drums, in celebration of the full moon, penetrated the darkness. I realized that I was alone in the jungle on an unfamiliar path, and unsure if I would be able to find my way back. I hadn’t planned to wander so far, so I didn’t think I’d need my flashlight or phone. (What could go wrong?) Now the walls of the jungle were closing in on me. I began to panic.

Heavy drops of rain began falling onto thirsty leaves above. Insects, frogs, and other creatures of the night began warming up their voices to the drumbeat.

I sensed something brush by me. I could not outrun or outwit a threatening creature that I could not see. I froze in silence, one soon broken.

“I’ve been looking for you,” someone whispered.

I’d recognize that voice anywhere, even as a whisper in a jungle rainstorm. It was 52 Goodfingers. Shocked and relieved to see him. I told him how I ended up getting lost, and how grateful I was that he had somehow tracked me down to guide me home.

“It’s the night of the full moon,” he began, “and I’m here to conduct the magic bone ceremony. I want to foretell your future and help you unlock the hidden powers of your soul.”

I’d had enough excitement for one terrifying night in the jungle. I wanted to return to my villa. And I had already predicted my immediate future: this could not end well.

Still, I figured that 52 was my only way out, so I agreed to take part.

52 explained what he called the “Oracle of Bones.” He places sacred pig bones into a fire, then later searches the ashes for four unbroken bones. Upon finding them, he cleans them, then carves sacred symbols onto one side only. These become the oracle bones. Used for many kinds of divination in much the same way as people consult the I Ching. The bones can detect stirring. Every shadow and every fear became magnified a hundredfold in my imagination.

52 told me that we were heading to a place of power. In another half hour or so, we ended up at the entrance to a cave, which, 52 informed me, housed “the temple of Yama.” I hesitated.

“I sense that you do not trust me,” 52 said. “Is this not so?”

I did trust him, up to a point. After all, I hardly knew him. I tempered myself, but I had to ask . . . “With all due respect, 52, have you been sniffing arak?”

He bowed in a dignified manner.

“Like the yogi,” he claimed, “I am an uplifter of the people. One who has a foot in the yonder realm and can serve as a conduit for spiritual realities. I involve neither sorcery nor the wielding of parlor tricks. I am accountable to both the natural and the supernatural realms.

As we entered the cave. 52 told me that it is one of the largest holes in a catacomb that runs beneath an ancient complex of temples. He lit an oil lamp, which illuminated inscriptions, moss-covered statues. The remains of previous ceremonies.

“We have guests,” 52 announced. “There are warriors camped out within these walls.”

52 drew a circle in the dirt. Next, he emptied his pocket, which held the bones, and told me to place the bones “in the fire.” That was all fine except there wasn’t a real fire. Instructed to close my eyes, sit still, and meditate. Since I was so tired, I suspected that I’d drift off to sleep. I did not.

At some point, I began to transition from this world to the next. I began to cross the divide as though I was walking on a footbridge over a mile-deep gorge. Pieces of my thoughts began to break off like rotten planks. The sensation of falling was overwhelming. I felt the warrior paint break through my skin, come alive, and crawl over my face.

52 recognized my anxiety and held my face between his hands. “Let go, don’t hold on. If you do, you’ll get paranoid.” He looked hard into my eyes. “Look at me, that’s the spirit.”

“Does it hurt the oracle if I ask a question,” I said, tugging on my hair.

“All are welcome,” 52 said, in a peaceful voice.

“How does it work? The bones, I mean.”

He closed his eyes as if he were answering me with telepathy. “The sacred cow bones can be beads of ivory. Shell, bone, and other things, which thrown by the guide to learn the future. When they fall, they describe certain mystic patterns. The bones must fall in three different places: on a mountain, in the open country, and also inside a cave. If the message you receive from these places remains identical. Then that is the message that you must accept.”

“Have you thrown the bones in the other places?” I asked 52.

“I have thrown the old man. The old woman. The young man. And the young woman. If the bone lands face upward, it is to be smiling. If it lands face downward, it to be crying,” he explained.

“What have the bones said so far?” I asked.

“All aspects of the bones’ arrangements considered. These include which way the image is facing. The distance between the bones, and any unusual configurations in the pattern. In the end, I may not know what the future holds for you — if there is any hope in the situation in which you exist. Not only here but in the context of the whole future world.”

52 slapped his hands together. “Tonight, the final reading is known.”

“Is there any reason to feel insecure about this?”

“Memory has monsters in its raw form. The past can only hurt us if we summon it unprepared.”

52 began to play a small wooden flute.

I forgot about where I was, who I was, where I’d been, or where I was going. Nothing seemed to matter. My fear lifted. The flute music carried me away.

“If you can hear your ally in the valley of tears, then you are ready to understand the bones.” 52 echoed.

Four unbroken bones smoked on the ground. He inhaled the smoke and appeared to bless them. Then stirring the bones with the stick, he flipped them like dice.

52 knelt for a closer look. His left eye looked relieved. His right eye seemed to swell shut in disbelief. “It is a strange reading. Never have I received one like this.”

The cave was moving.

“Fear not,” 52 announced. “We go for honor… and we go for the truth.”

The cave became cold. The ceiling and the walls disappeared, opening a great expanse of space. Beyond the imaginary campfire, glowing animals circled. The idea that I was going to die crossed my mind. “Where am I going?”

“Into chaos…” 52 smiled.

Like a stage, a curtain had lifted from my eyes. I saw thousands of lifeless shacks scattered across the land. Some clung for life to the roots of leafless trees, with bony branches that shook, as if casting an evil in the hot wind.

“What is this place?”

“You’re seeing the homelessness of your soul,” 52 said.

“You’ve already lived this life one thousand times before and each time you forget the last note of the song. By forgetting to learn from your karmic memories.

By remembering what you learned from the experiences can you remember everything.” He claimed. “It is only then that you can unlock the door; go beyond the dragons, and name your demon.”

Sprinkling leaves on my toes and taking laxatives had its merits, I speculated.

“Listen to your heart. What do you hear?” asked 52.

“It’s the sound of adversity.”

I didn’t know how much time had passed. A metal taste remained in my mouth, and my brain felt like a healing scab. The cave became a cave again; but now the bottoms of my feet were covered in a green, phosphorescent hue.

“I know, I had to experience it for myself.”

“More important,” added 52. In mid-sentence, he collapsed.

I put my ear to his chest and I heard a faint tom-tom drum beneath the ribs. I shook him until he opened his eyes. I lifted his head for a sip of water.

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” I asked.

“No, I don’t have the money,” he groaned.

“Where does it hurt?”

“It hurts all over,” he yelled. “Help me up,” he said, as his body shook.

“I am not dead,” he slurred, lighting a cigarette.

He took a coke bottle from his jacket. It was arak.

“52, you should try to eat something?” I nudged.

“Throw the bones at my feet,” he gestured.

Two of the bones bounced and stuck between his toes.

“Aha, I’ve been waiting for that reading!”

“What reading is that?”

“The bima puppet story.”

“Go on.”

“A bima puppet danced behind a thin white cloth. It was painted in black. Wearing bright red ornaments. A serpent was trying to swallow him. The bima puppet’s ferocious claw-like hands flinging failed to stop the beast. The battle ensued without either side claiming victory. The puppeteer dimmed the oil lamp behind the screen until there was only darkness. The ageless story about the conflict between this world and the other had no conclusion.”

52 dropped his bottle of arak, and his eyes and mouth froze open. I thought it was his way of expressing what a puppet looks like when its strings are cut. I looked at him for a few minutes until I noticed that his body had stopped moving.

“Wake up!” I shook him hard, again and again. There was no response. 52 was dead.

His family and I stood in a circle and held hands on the beach. They opened the container that held 52 Goodfinger’s remains. One of his sisters began to weep. His family sent him a few dollars here and there. They were aware of his chronic drinking problem and looked for any words to comfort the pain of their loss.

“Every seed contains everything required to become whatever is to be,” I said. “Watered by the rain. Warmed by the sun. Nourished by the earth, transformed into something more without ever losing its seedness. Overtime. Something so tiny and insignificant as a fragile drop of water. Changes the very structure and design of the Earth. Likewise, something so insignificant as a seed. Contains all the knowledge necessary to become a rose. An oak, a worm, a cat, a man.”

I dropped 52 Goodfingers' magic bones into the ocean.

“Like the seed that seems so insignificant. Incapable of anything of consequence until exposed to water. Sunlight, and nourishment. In those moments of being. The eternal now. Profound clarity. Wherein the boundaries of consciousness stretched. That we may continue becoming something more. And grow into the potential of our design."

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