When you tell the great stories of your life, no one will have to ask why. They won't need explanations or reasons or someone to help them follow along.

It will all seem perfectly clear.

But while they're happening...

I don't think I've been clear on a god damn thing since I was thirteen. Don't think I understand anything any better then I did damn near half a lifetime ago.

In three days I'll be twenty six. As of three hours ago it's 2007. Never thought I'd live to see either one of those.

I've seen things. I know how it will all play out. The rest of my life is now. Is that such a bad thing?

If it doesn't bother me, why should it bother anyone else.

So much I've missed out on, so much I've yet to do.

Who are we kidding though?

All I have left is time.

I once said that every great story I'd ever tell has already happened to me.

Maybe I was right and maybe I was wrong.

I came. I saw. I kicked ass...and somewhere between I loved a little and lost a lot.

I don't know if I ever really slowed down.

I've learned things, but not everything.

Half things really.

I know what I want...but not how to get it.

I know where I want to be...but not really where I am.

I know Love is not enough...but I've never figured out what is.

The great stories of your life are the simple ones.

They begin at the beginning and they end at the end.

And though the best may be behind us, there are still plenty left ahead.

Happy New Year...

Entry posted by King | Zero note [Add] | www | E-Mail this entry

Once More The Whicked Whirlwind,
Once More The Dark Grows Wide.
Once More Into The Night Dear Friends,
Another Day Has Died...

To Rigby, King, Kong, Hob, Lazzy, The Beast and all the others who helped tell the story.

To my friends, family, and random strangers who helped make up the story.

And to anyone who cared enough for the past three years to read the story.

Thank you.

Just because we're leaving, doesn't mean we're going anywhere.

So it goes...

This is the end... for now.

"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

Entry posted by King | Zero note [Add] | www | E-Mail this entry

"Quis custodiet
ipsos custodes." - Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

"Oft the query of the studious mind,
are we all dumb, or are we just blind?" - Epistocles

"God it feels like the whole world done fell in." - Lazarus Jones

"You ain't kidding Lazzy." - T.O. Hob

I am so fucked.

I really don't know how to explain it.

Let's put it this way. I've done some things recently that I'm not too proud of. But I've also done some things that I shouldn't be too proud of...but am.

Confusing, right?

I miss my puppy. The Tuck is currently boarding with the parents because my closing went long and my landlord wouldn't let me keep him. A week ago I expected to have a house and a puppy at this time...instead I have neither.

I've given up some of the moral high ground so I could understand a few things better, so I could defend myself against a lot of what is going on. It doesn't change everything, it just changes some things. But some things it changes too much.

We had a plan. The problem is one of us stuck to it, and one of us didn't. And as it happens with things like plans when you try and veer of from it the momentum ends up taking you in the complete opposite direction, further from the plan then you ever intended to be. But when this sudden veering off of sorts catches the other parties in your plan by surprise it makes things that much worse. Dangerously so actually.

We're in a spot of trouble. I guarantee things will get much messier before they get much better.

I'm devouring books like they were candy, yearning for stories even if they aren't mine. I've run out of things to talk about, run out of tales to tell, run out of people to tell them too.

It's cold in here and I'm feeling awfully alone.

But I feel strong.

Fucking strong.

I need to call some people. Need to see some shit. Need to get my god damn head clear before something bad happens.

Nobody needs to get hurt.


"Battle not
with monsters,
lest ye become
a monster,

and if you gaze
into the abyss,
the abyss gazes
also into you." - Nietzsche

Entry posted by King | Zero note [Add] | www | E-Mail this entry

"What are you saying? Strippers can't study law? Cuz that sounds like some racist shit to me." - Lazarus Jones

"You're one in a million Lazzy, never change." - T.O. Hob

~

It may not have started out like one, but this is a serious entry.

~

After twenty some odd years I have come to the conclusion that I may never forgive my father for not wanting us. I tried, I really did. And while I very often thought I was close to forgiving what he had done, I knew I couldn't forget it. And in the end it's not the kind of slight you can live with.

Let me explain.

I'm twenty five years old. When I was three years old my mother and father split up. It was her first marriage, his second. His first one had ended in a similar way, kids he didn't want, a life he couldn't live, infidelities he could no longer hide. He was his first and only priority...but that didn't make him a bad guy. Just immature...even thought he was well into his forties.

My mother was younger, not young, but younger and very, very pregnant. This was the time my father chose to split. He had one kid he didn't want, and one more wasn't going to make the
situation any better. So before my brother showed up, our old man split. Didn't even come to visit him in the hospital, or so the story goes.

Now my mother wasn't the easiest person to get a long with, she can be a bit loopy sometimes, takes things to heart too much, doesn't always makes the most sense. But she's not a bad person either, just takes some patience in dealing with. My father had no patience, and was quick on the trigger when it came to being a little too physical. It was a bad combination.

It sounds horrible, but I was a little kid. I could have forgiven him for everything he did to me, everything he did to my mother. I could have lived with the separation, the financial and emotional problems it caused me, my mother, and my baby brother if only the old son of a bitch had tried a little harder. If he had wanted us, if he had fought for us. If he had done anything but basically abandon us. It would have been easier if he had just disappeared. But he didn't. His new "wife" lived nearby, his business was nearby, and he figured that if he had to continue to support us financially he would stick around to abuse and harass my mother. Somehow that sort of made sense to him.

We were good little kids my brother and I. We weren't like his older boys. They didn't do well in school, had problems at young ages, just weren't nice little kids. When I was young I thought maybe they had deserved to be abandoned. But what had we done? I didn't see at the time that they were that way because he had abandoned them. They were victims, not criminals.

My father was a terror when he was around. It wasn't that he hit us much, or neglected us even. It was just how he treated us. He yelled more than he talked, took pleasure in frightening us, would do anything he could to get us out of the way when he had something he found more important going on. Those memories were so frequent and so disturbing that I try not to think about them. But what really stands out in my memory isn't so much how he was when he did show up but how often he didn't show up...and how disappointed we always were. We would sit in the living room, staring out the window, waiting for him to come up the hill. Sometimes we would wait right up until bedtime, when finally our mother had to concede, he wasn't coming. I've talked about it before, but writing this now I remember how much it hurt. And I almost tear up thinking about how stupid we were. Most people only touch a hot stove once, we just kept on getting burned.

When he remarried he didn't tell us. She didn't like us very much, and she was a bit fucked up herself. Kids can sense when they're not liked, and we responded in the only way we knew how, by not liking her just as much. There were long periods where my father would ditch us. Not return phonecalls, not come to visit, not even take time inquire about how we were doing. Usually when he disappeared he'd stop sending child support checks and things would become very tight around the house. A couple of times they almost cut the power off, few times they might have actually cut the television and phones off. One of the predominant memories of my childhood was my mother calling in to radio station contests where they were giving away small monetary prizes, because she couldn't come up with another way to make ends meet.

He would always show back up. It was like sometimes he needed us, or needed us to need him, just long enough till he felt better about himself. Then he returned to being cold and distant. We wanted a father, he just didn't wants sons. He made no secrets about it.

When I was in high school he disappeared once, refused to take our calls, told his secretary to tell us he went away, but not tells us where and not give us a phone number to get him at. It was a tough time for me, a lot was going on in my life, I needed someone to talk to, someone to back me up, someone to teach me things. I needed him, and he wasn't there for me. It wasn't a surprise. I forgave him, treated him no differently when he came back. But I knew I could never forget. I got by alright on my own, but when you're a kid like that, and you're struggling...you shouldn't have to get by on your own.

When he returned this time there was something different about him. All of a sudden he needed us. He wanted us to be interested in what he was doing, the company he was building, the toys he had acquired. He needed someone to admire him, someone to love him for what he had done. We tried...we really did.

My father didn't come to my high school graduation. He had the gout. He went to work...but didn't come to my high school graduation.

I still didn't hold it against him.

When I was a freshman in college he had some health problems. Suddenly he changed again. Although he would never admit it, and none of us would ever call him on it, it was like he realized what a shit he had been for so long. Now, as he stared death in the eye, he had to do something to make up for it. Had to work his way into heaven.

My grandmother (my mom's mom) hated my father. She once told me that one day he would realize what a miserable fuck he was and that he would try and buy his way into heaven. She seemed almost eager to watch him try. The day after he checked into the hospital, she died.

She was right. He had previously refused to contribute to my college education (I paid for my first year of school with my mother's help). Now he was willing to foot the entire bill for my education. Whereas previously I had worked several shit jobs at once, suddenly he was willing to give my brother and I jobs working for him. He just seemed to care more. I could never forget the things he had done, but this was what I had been waiting my entire life for. My father finally seemed to give a shit.

It didn't last long, and I guess, on the surface I knew it wouldn't.

When I first went to work for him we had discussed my taking over for him. There were parameters. I wouldn't quit school, I would work with him not for him, I would never have to lie, cheat, or steal.

We had a deal.


He tried to make me quit school. I wouldn't. He hated the fact. Hated me for the fact. He barely made it out of high school, and in his mind no one should be able to do anything he couldn't. So if he couldn't make it into college, I shouldn't be able to either. I stuck with it anyway. He did his best to make it miserable for me.

I came out of school all ready to work side by side with him learning everything there was to learn about the business. Only thing was he wasn't ready to teach. He upped and left for Florida as soon as I arrived leaving me to figure things out on my own.

So I did.

For over two years I've worked at figuring things out on my own, fixing things that didn't work and running with the things that did. I don't know it all yet, but I know a lot of it, and most of it I've had to teach myself. What that means though is I don't always do things exactly like my father would. More often than not they work. He hates that. If something isn't done exactly as he wants it should fail miserably. As often as we can we will do exactly as he wants, and if it fails he'll say that it was never how he wanted it done. If something fails miserably it must be because it wasn't done exactly how he wanted it done.

He's sort of insane like that...and sort of typical for any father.

He likes to browbeat people, yell, and scream, and abuse people for no real reason. He'll make up a reason just so he can show how "powerful" he is. And woe be the person who challenges him. I remember the first time I challenged him. I was 12 years old. We were driving and he said something that I disagreed with. So I told him I disagreed and explained why. I thought I had made a pretty eloquent argument. He didn't, so he smacked me. I called him an asshole. I don't think I had ever even used that word before, but it just seemed to fit the situation. He hit me so hard I could taste the blood before I even realized I should be bleeding. Funny part was, it didn't hurt. I was a big kid getting bigger and he was an old man getting older. I realized that day that he couldn't hurt me. I was smarter than him even then, and soon I would be stronger. There was nothing he could do to me.

For a long time I thought that everyone's families were as fucked up as mine. A lot of the kids I knew had it just as bad as I did. But as I got older, as I met more people, as I shared more stories, I realized not everyone was like us. There were some good people out there. It scared me. I'd spent all this time swearing I would never have a family because I wouldn't want to become as big of a bastard as my father and here were all these people that had pulled it off. What if I could make it work too?

I don't know why I'm writing all this, rushing through it all when know I'll have to come back to it later. I guess it has a lot to do with something my father said today.

Last night we had it out again. He left the office in a huff. I don't like it when a conversation ends like that, and I don't like it when he thinks he's won an argument simply because he's left before you've had a chance to say your side. If you let him get away with that he'll just do it over and over and over again. So I went to his house, beat him home actually. And before he got in the door I said to him, "Do you have a fucking problem with me? Because if you do let's get it out there right now and get this shit over with, because I can't keep working like this."

He tried to ignore me, but I couldn't let him. "What's going on with us? Tell me what the problem is so we can past all this. Otherwise it's going to be a fight every god damn day. There's no reason for you to be up my ass all the time, so why are you?"

He just kept ignoring the question, and started complaining about shit he knew nothing about. As usual. I let it go and headed back to work.

Today he started again. I asked him to close the door of the office so we could talk about it. He did and then said this, "All this fucking talking isn't any good. You always want to talk about shit. It's no good."

The man would rather have no idea what's going on, would rather complain without resolution, would rather fight then discuss something.

He'd rather just keep on being an asshole.

My response was quick (as it usually is) and not entirely fair (as it has been lately). Before he could walk away I lowered my voice and said to him, "If you don't want to discuss things because you can't keep up, that's fine. But don't cry about it later when you have no idea what's going on."

He started to reply, but couldn't think of anything to say. He just stomped off like he usually does. The argument took a different course then it usually did, but ended just the same.

Nothing solved, nothing different.

I really wish I could forgive my father, it's just getting tougher and tougher to even try.

~

"I know, a minute doesn't seem like much, but just wait. That minute will turn into an hour. That hour into a day. Before you know it you're dead and buried thinking, 'What the fuck just happened?'" - T.O. Hob

Entry posted by King | Zero note [Add] | www | E-Mail this entry