The Return of the King: Or How Rigby Got His Groove Back

"It must be painful to watch a man die piece by piece. Casting off his parts leaving holes in his whole." - King, from "It Was Beauty Killed The Beast"

When I got home last night he was waiting for me.

I couldn't see him at first, but as I sat in the dark listening to a sound I knew I should have been able to place I realized he was there.

~

It has been a wicked week. My mortgage fell through at the last minute, business is both tough and good and bad all at the same time, people just suck.

The closing got pushed back till Friday while I worked out another way to pay for the house, but I am pleased (and scared shitless) to say that I am now the proud owner of a piece of paper and a key. If I ever actually decide to take up residence I'll consider myself the proud owner of a home as well.

It's not a grand house. Not really special in any way, but it's perfect for me. And in an amazingly simple way that's more than I ever could have really asked for.

We haven't done a radio show in a month. Just too much going on, too much going wrong. Tuesday will be our last show before Goldberg goes and starts a real full time job. With everything going on right now I don't know how much I'll have left by Tuesday night. Have to come up with something though, I mean...this is the end.

~

I'm about to relate two stories to you at once here. Try and keep up. I have, for the majority of my life, been sure of two things about myself. The first is that I will never be normal. That's never bothered me. No one's really normal, the word itself is filled with lies and fallacies. But I'm not normal in all the wrong ways. I'm not unique, or special, or quirky, or eccentric, or oddly charming. I'm just off. I've never really felt right in my entire life.

The second thing is that I will always be uncomfortable around other people. I don't know why. I love being around other people. I love to be able to talk to people, to be near people, to be surrounded by life and all it's trappings. I don't always do well in social situations, I struggle like a motherfucker sometimes, but I even love that. Sometimes I freak, I know, I'm 25 and sometimes when you put me in a room full of people I still completely lose my shit. But it's not fear or nervousness, I like to let people believe that because that just makes me weak or pitiable. It's that everything that is going on is always so fantastic that it absolutely overwhelms me. It drives me mad to the point of almost losing control.

That frightens me.

I've built up mechanisms my entire life, studied it, practiced it, worked at it till I had "Me" designed and refined to the point of absurdity. I found me and ran with it. Problem is sometimes I'm not very good at being me, and other times I am so good it's frightening.

It's a balancing act. A fragile one at that. I've always said that heaven and hell lie so close together in my head that if you haven't been paying attention it's often difficult to discern one from the other.

I don't drink much anymore. A drink or two a month is what it's come down to. I never really drank much. I'd have two, maybe three drinks tops and be happy with it. I got drunk once, but I was trying really hard, and haven't come close since. Drinking really could have become my vice, but I just wasn't feeling it. I don't think I'd make a very good drunk. I don't smoke, don't do drugs. For a while I thought my vice could be pornography, but I never really could make myself enjoy that. It just didn't do anything for me. Sure I checked out some porn, but that childish fascination that other guys have with it never really took root in me. Gambling didn't work either. Either I was too conservative (and didn't have fun), too repetitive (come on six), or too blase (and when you don't care if you win or lose you tend to lose a lot really quick). Gambling just didn't do it for me. And then were was my latest attempt at a vice. Strippers. Holy Shit. Strippers.

When I was younger I hated strip clubs. All the guys were really into them so we went every once and awhile, but I never liked it. Never got a lap dance, never talked to the girls. It was interesting for about ten seconds and then I just sort of sat and stewed the rest of the time. Then we went to Montreal. Holy Shit. Montreal.

The night we spent in a strip club in Montreal was so awesome I knew nothing could top it. So for four years I didn't set foot in another one of those joints, no matter how bad the guys wanted to go. Then we ended up there one night for someone's bachelor party. I was in a shit mood, had been for weeks, months even. I had a shitload of money in my pocket and nothing to lose, everyone else was having a great time. I decided I had to make my own fun, and in an odd sort of way that made everything better. I was cracking stupid jokes, telling stupid stories, and combining two of my favorite past things: women so beautiful they want nothing to do with, and giving away money. It was all a grand joke. But I still didn't like the places.

And then, I'm not entirely sure how, we ended up in one of them a few months back. And for some reason I had fun. I had a blast. It was great. It wasn't the women, or even the guys that I was with, it was just...the moment. I'll be damned if that makes any sense.

I walked out of there not completely comfortable with anything that had just happened, but relaxed. And if you know me, then you know...I'm never relaxed. A few months later we went again. It was ok, but I didn't enjoy it. When we left that night I was finally able to put my finger on what had made it great that last time. The whole thing had made me feel normal. In a place that was anything but normal I felt normal. And now I had lost that. So we went again. And again. Four times in all, which is both not a lot of times and far too many times all at once. I spent a shit load of money, had a little bit of fun, but I could never find that feeling of normalcy again. It sound insane and certainly doesn't make any sense (or sound like that good of idea) searching for normalcy inside a strip club. But the truth is it had very little to do with the strip club and entirely to do with me. I just couldn't wrap my head around what it was and why it wasn't working anymore.

So last night I went back...by myself. I was on a mission. I don't mind being by myself, but I hate going places by myself. There's nothing worse than being alone around other people. It just burns you. And being alone in a place like that is sort of creepy. But I had to sort my shit out and this was my last ditch effort of sorts. Sounds pathetic, right? And it is. But...

Just as I was about to give up, as I was about to leave and start out on my next insane experiment one of the girls caught my eye. I walked all the way across the room to talk to her and said something that in a million year no one would ever imagine could come out of my mouth, "I'm just dying for a lap dance, think you could help me out?"

A half hour later, with a completely naked total stranger sitting on my lap it hit me. I was comfortable. Not because of the situation, but in spite of the situation. This was one hundred percent not "me", not any of the "Me's" I could possibly conjure up. But here we were, and I was comfortable.

That's what it was all along...I'd accomplished something. In a situation where I should be ridiculously un-fucking-comfortable...I wasn't. I'd been beating back The Afflictions for so long that I thought it would be a permamnent struggle, and now I was sure, I've beaten them.

I was done with this.

I looked at this girl, this girl I was paying a shitload of money to for nothing, and suddenly I realized she reminded me of someone.

She reminded me of her.

Fuck.

I started to laugh. Not in my head. Not to myself. Not quietly. Just regular old Palomba laughter. And I couldn't stop.

She stopped dancing and looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

But I kept laughing, because in that instant I knew.

He was back.
~

I ran into "The Beast" once. It was in one of my less clear episodes where I found myself wandering around Central Jersey at three o'clock on a Saturday morning trying to figure out where all my ambitions had gone. I don't remember where I had left my car, but I was on foot walking down a somewhat shady street in South Plainfield. I felt him long before I saw him, lurking in the shadows, watching my every move. When I realized who it was I called out to him. The darkness shifted and from it rumbled a guttural growl that told me he was in no mood to talk. I moved towards him but before I could take two steps he had fled deeper into the shadows. My encounters with "The Beast" were always like that. Fleeting and inconclusive. He would show up and disappear before you ever even knew he was there.

King was never like that. He was always more brash, more showy, more King like. You always knew when King entered a room because he did his damndest to light up the whole place. Which is why it surprised me that I felt him so long before I saw him.

When I walked into the house in North Haledon I could tell that he had been there. I had always expected him to show up at some point, so the fact that he was suddenly around wasn't a complete shock. But like I said the fact that I couldn't see him was. Why was he hiding?

When I walked into the house in Hawthorne I could tell that he had been there too. I plopped down on the couch so exhausted I hadn't even bothered to stop and turn on the lights and as I sat there in the darkness there was a noise. A tapping noise. A familiar tapping noise. His ring against the wall. It shouldn't have taken that long to realize I'd heard it so many times so long ago. But that was all it could be. I was up in a second moving to turn on the lights, when he spoke.

"Stop."

It was the first word I'd heard from him in over a year. And as I turned to face him I could tell he wasn't alone. There were two others with him. They could be no one else but Rigby and Kong, back from the dead. And as the four of us stood face to face in that small little room and black of night turned into the dreary grey of a cold rainy day I knew they were here to stay. This time they weren't going anywhere.

The old team was back together.

Here we go again.

"This is the end of something I did not want to end,
Begining of hard times to come.
But something that was not meant to be is done,
And this is the start of what was." - The Streets, Empty Cans