FOR THE SEVEN YEARS I’d been with Andrew, I’d never been away from him overnight, or out of contact with him for more than three or four hours. Over the years he’d say things to me like, “I could never love another;” or “There will never be anyone who could love you as much as I do”; and let’s not forget the always-popular, “I don’t know what I would ever do if you left me.” This never made me feel loved. It just made me feel trapped. I was too afraid to leave him. Would he become one of those men who shot his wife, her family, and then himself? I knew that if I were ever going to leave, I’d have to do it cautiously. But I knew that I had to begin somewhere.
In the spring of 1988 I reapplied to UCLA, and got in. In January 1989, winter quarter, I’d become a full-time student. Knowing that I’d be reentering the world of reading, writing, and studying, I felt hope I hadn’t felt in years.
* * *
I wasn’t the only one. In 1988 my dad took an evolutionary step with his stand-up. In his sixth HBO special, What Am I Doin’ in New Jersey?, Dad included plenty of the standard Carlin observational routines like “Keeping People Alert” and “More Stuff on Dogs and Driving,” but where he stepped into new territory was with “Reagan’s Gang, Church People, and American Values” and “People I Can Do Without.” He’d always been a social commentator, but with these new bits, he’d found a new energy and intensity. Surviving two heart attacks and turning fifty gave him a new courage. Having endured the Reagan years of the 1980s gave him a focus for his outrage. When I watched the premiere of the show, I felt that something new and exciting was happening in his work. I was deeply proud and inspired.
* * *
On April 8, 1988, for Andrew’s thirty-sixth birthday, he and I went out to dinner at a nearby German restaurant with a couple he’d been hanging out with lately. I think their names were Steve and Melinda. Andrew’s newest toy was a Harley-Davidson, and he’d met them at some Harley event. They weren’t hard-core bikers, but they certainly liked to party.
Andrew rarely drank alcohol (it wasn’t his drug of choice), but on this night he ordered a schnapps, a gin martini, and a glass of white wine, all before dinner. By the entrée I was ready to walk out. At this point being with Andrew was difficult enough for me. Add a few too many ounces of alcohol, and it was as if his character flaws got turned up to eleven. He was intolerable—arrogant, pushy, and rude. The minute the check dropped on the table, I left and went to my mom and dad’s house.
Around midnight Andrew called. He was in jail at the Santa Monica Police Department and wanted me to bail him out. He wasn’t forthcoming about what had happened, and the turn of events didn’t become clear until Steve called me to tell me the whole tale. He said that after dinner, while the three of them walked toward our house, Andrew went ballistic about my leaving early, and vandalized a street sign. Steve, wanting to calm him down, agreed to go with him to our automotive shop. He thought they’d hang out there and cool down. But when they got there, instead of Andrew opening up the gate, he pulled out a handgun and began shooting at the front of the business. After he’d emptied a clip of bullets into the garage door of the shop, Steve persuaded him to get back into the car. As they drove away, a Santa Monica police car, on its way to check out the “shots fired” call, drove toward them and made them stop. Andrew had gotten friendly with a few officers from SMPD over the last few years (gun nuts love gun nuts), and told them what he’d just done. A sergeant friend of Andrew’s arrived and quickly took over. He arrested Andrew for drunk driving and discharging a firearm but was nice enough to throw away the cocaine he’d found on him.
When Steve was done, I hung up the phone and told my mom the whole story. We both agreed that we’d bail him out of jail only if he went straight to rehab. I called Andrew, told him the conditions, and he agreed.
When I saw Andrew swagger out of the station, I knew it meant trouble. He got into the car.
“Take me home,” he demanded. No “Thank you” or “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not going home. You’re going to St. John’s CDC,” my mom calmly replied.
“No I’m not. I need to think about it. I need to go home first,” he countered.
“I can’t take it anymore,” I tried to explain. “You have to go. You are not going home. We’re going to St. John’s.”
“Stop the car,” Andrew demanded, as he opened the door while the car was still moving. He got out blocks away from the hospital and our house, and started walking. Mom and I sat there and watched him.
“He’ll go,” Mom said as she pulled away and drove toward her house.
About an hour later Steve called.
“He’s trashing the house. Throwing shit everywhere. I think you should come home.”
“You can tell him I’m not coming home. I’ll only come home after he’s gone to St. John’s.” Of course, deep down inside, I hoped he wouldn’t go so that I would never have to go home.
An hour later Andrew called, demanding I come home. I reiterated that I would not be coming home unless he went to rehab. He then said, “Well, if you don’t come home now”—and then I heard the sound of a shotgun being cocked—“I’m going to shoot Jeremy.” Jeremy was my eight-year-old black Lab.
I said, “That’s nice.” And hung up the phone.
A few hours later Steve called to say that Andrew had taken some Valium, calmed down, and was ready to go to rehab. Jeremy was sound asleep, too, oblivious to the drama that had unfolded all night.
* * *
Five days later, after Andrew’s detox period, I found myself in my first group therapy session at St. John’s Chemical Dependency Center, with the spouses and significant others of the rehab patients. We would undergo our own rehab program, learning about addiction, how to live with people in recovery, and of course, our own issues.
“You know you’re more insane than he is,” the therapist, Berenice, said to me.
Excuse me? I had just poured my heart out to her and the group, sharing all the insanity, chaos, and emotional turmoil that Andrew had created in my life over the last seven years, and I was the insane one?
She continued, “You stayed with him. You enabled him. You ignored your own needs, and you expected him to change. That sounds pretty insane to me.”
I didn’t want to hear a word of it. I didn’t want to hear the truth. This “tough love” thing was a bit too tough for me. And yet, somewhere deep inside, I felt the love behind it, too. I was actually relieved. She was the first person in my life ever to talk to me like this. She was not afraid to confront me on my denial and bullshit. She became my therapist for the next ten years.
* * *
Once Andrew was out of rehab, our life together was amazing. We both went to meetings—Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous—and I to Al-Anon, where we made a bunch of new friends. We immersed ourselves in the twelve-step culture and learned how to live in a different way. I realized that my needs and feelings were separate from Andrew’s, and that I had the right to ask for what I wanted and needed. Of course, having been expertly trained since the age of three to take care of everyone else’s feelings before mine, I found that unlearning this habit was challenging. I felt intense pangs of guilt when I put myself first, but I soon learned that no one died when I abided by my needs instead of others’. Baby steps, yes. But even these baby steps created more space within me than I’d ever had.
Andrew became more honest, accountable, and productive. The house stayed cleaner longer. When he said he was going to do something, he actually did it. He became willing to listen to others and let go of the belief that he knew everything. (I even glimpsed a small sliver of humility one day!) We sold the auto business (too many bad memories and baggage), and he decided to open a new business—a small hobby store that sold radio-controlled helicopters. For him it was a transformation. There were moments when I felt we just might be able to live the life that I had always imagined we were capable of living.
* * *
In January 1989 at the age of twenty-five, and despite the fact that my panic attacks were still in full swing, I finally began school at UCLA. I was excited to fill myself up and move toward a real future. After seven years with Andrew, who had no interest in learning about anything because he felt he already knew it all, being in an environment that invited my curiosity, independent thinking, and creativity was like drinking at an oasis. I could actually dare to ask myself, What do I want to make of this one precious life?
My dad loved that I was in school, not just because I’d be the first Carlin ever to graduate from college, but because he got to hear about everything that I was learning in classes like Astronomy, Oceanography, and Anthropology. He even intimated that he was a bit envious of my chance to soak in so much about the world. He wished he could join me.
It was so nice to be able to share my life with my dad again.
Because I’d been out of school for seven years, I was required to take a Remedial English class my first semester back. One day the instructor, a cool thirty-something guy, brought in what he called the perfect essay that reflected the “compare and contrast” style of writing that we would be expected to use in our future studies. He put a boom box on the desk, pressed PLAY, and my dad’s voice came out of the speakers: “I’d like to talk a little bit about baseball and football. Starting with baseball; baseball is different from any other sport in a lot of different little ways. For instance, in most sports, you score points or you score goals. In baseball, you score runs.”
I guess Dad made it to class after all.
I swelled with excitement. After class I told the instructor who I was. He nearly fell off his chair. For a flash I felt that old flood of “specialness” that I used to feel backstage with my dad, but mostly I felt a rush of pride for the force my dad had become in the culture. He’d been doing comedy for almost thirty years, and he’d made a real mark. I could feel my own aspiration rise within me. I, too, wanted to make a dent.
But before I could make that dent, first I needed to make it to class. My anxiety and panic made getting to class a bit like an obstacle course. I feared walking up the big hill in the middle of campus because it raised my heart rate, and that always triggered a panic attack for me. My solution was to go into Ackerman Union (a huge building that housed the bookstore, auditorium, and food court), take the elevator to the third floor, and walk through the coffee shop. This would situate me nicely three-quarters up the hill.
On the outside I looked like any other student making my way through the building, but on the inside I was a secret agent searching for the earliest sign of racing heart, tingly hands, and spaced-out head. Once I’d get to class, I’d casually put my finger on my neck, checking my pulse every five minutes, making sure my heart was still beating.
I have no doubt this is what an insane person looks like.
And of course I still told no one. Why break with tradition at this point? I suffered silently. Eventually my mom, who had suffered from panic attacks in her twenties, too, figured it out. But instead of talking about it head on, she just asked, “What do you need? Would you like me to drive you to school today? Come onto the campus with you?”
Quietly I replied, “Yes.”
Sometimes she’d drop me off. Other days she’d bring a book and find a table or patch of grass and read while I went off to class. Every once in a while, when I had a big lecture, she’d join me and come to class and pretend that she was just another student. There I was, twenty-six years old, in American History 101 sitting next to my mommy. Life had worked itself out in such a way that I could finally be the “helpless child” and she the “nurturing mother” that neither one of us was able to be during her alcoholism. It’s amazing how a simple gesture can heal so much.
* * *
About eighteen months after Andrew got sober, the magic spell of sobriety wore off, and he returned to his old Andrew ways. He wasn’t using, but he became what they call a “dry drunk”—doing all the dishonest and manipulative behavior of an addict without the drugs or alcohol. It’s kind of like memory foam—no matter how much you try and change its shape, it will always return to its original form. He was once again arrogant, controlling, and a liar. He went to fewer and fewer meetings and stopped calling his sponsor. Once again he believed he knew better than everyone else. All the patience and understanding that had been restored in me quickly dissolved. I knew for sure now that my future could not and would not include Andrew. For now, it was all about school.
* * *
Eventually every college student must face the question: What the fuck do I major in?
I myself dabbled with the idea of anthropology until I realized that every professor in the department was nine thousand years old. I thought maybe English would be a good fit, but English seemed like the default major for the completely lost—athletes and stoners. I didn’t want to pick just anything. I wanted this time at UCLA to really count.
When I was eleven years old, my dad had taken me to the UCLA Mardi Gras, and we’d gone to a booth that played short films by UCLA film students. After watching them I turned to my dad and said, “I want to do that.” But now that I was at UCLA and faced with the opportunity to actually apply to that very same Film Department, I balked. I feared being rejected so much that I did it for them by not applying.
In the fall of 1990, the beginning of my third year, I took a rather famous class at UCLA: Communications 101 with Jeff Cole. He was a rock star of a lecturer in the Communications Department. He was funny and cool, and he talked about popular media culture in a way that allowed you to feel like a fan and a scholar at the same time. He was voted favorite lecturer a number of times during those years. We watched everything from All in the Family to the famous 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate. The class was the perfect blend of entertainment and sociology—basically what my father had been doing his whole career. I saw how the media subtly shape our worldviews. This enabled me to see below the bullshit that they try to feed us. It was like learning how to read the secret code of our culture. I immediately applied to get into the department and was accepted.
I thrived. I loved the classes and the camaraderie of the professors. The department was more like family than school. I created a circle of friends who were smart, curious, and full of life, and I kept all this very separate from Andrew. I never invited people to my house or talked about him to my friends. Not surprisingly, this new separate life fed Andrew’s jealousy and paranoia, and I’d dutifully have to check in with him every few hours. But I didn’t mind. I knew I was biding my time.
The first quarter in my new major, I took a class that focused solely on First Amendment issues—something I was already passionate about because of my father. The first day, the lecturer, Geoff Cowan, told the one hundred or so students, “My favorite part of this course is teaching the famous First Amendment case called Pacifica v. the FCC. The reason I love teaching it is because I get to recite George Carlin’s famous ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.’”
I was the one who practically fell out of my chair.
After class I introduced myself to Geoff. He asked me if my dad would like to come to class to discuss the case. I asked my dad, but he declined. He felt out of his element, and knew nothing about the law behind the case. I tried to explain to him that no one expected him to argue the case. They just wanted him to talk about the comedy that inspired it. He still said no, but a few quarters later he did accept another invitation—to be part of a forum I organized, in conjunction with Geoff and the department, about the chilling effect of politically correct speech on campuses. Dad was genuinely thrilled to participate, and after the event, I could tell he was even a bit in awe of my new scholastic career.
Although I was now president of the Communications Students Club, I still had no idea how any of this would translate into the real world. Some people went into advertising, others into Hollywood agencies or studios, but I knew those were not options for me. Those felt like selling out to me. I needed to find my way.
I nervously signed up for a writing class, afraid of being critiqued but wanting to find my voice. The class was about learning how to write in the more personal reportage style that Hunter S. Thompson had created and made famous, and I thought it was something I’d be good at. When I got my first graded paper back, I could feel my stomach tighten. I slowly peeled the pages back to the last one to see my grade and comments. “A—Kelly, you need to pursue writing. I can tell you have a lot to say and a great way of saying it. Keep on writing!”
“Keep on writing!” Tears came to my eyes when I realized that I might just be able to carry on the Carlin family’s gift of the gab. I saw a future for myself.
When I got home I immediately called my dad to tell him about the comments. He said, “Congratulations, Kiddo. You’re on your way!”
I was on my way! On my way! On my way where? Back to Andrew? Ugh.
* * *
This newfound vision for my future made my daily life with Andrew even more oppressive. Being in his presence began to physically repulse me. Everything he did reminded me of the self I was when I picked him as my partner—wounded, naive, and desperate for love.
He once again never cleaned up any mess, so his shit took up every square inch of open horizontal space. His personal hygiene was horrific. Because he was diabetic he’d sleep-eat in bed. Because he’d snorted way too much coke for all those years, he’d created a hole in the cartilage between his nostrils; there were unmentionable disgusting ways he would deal with that when he had a cold. In the past, because I was an insane person sharing his space, I somehow tolerated it, but now all I could see was the hell I’d constructed for myself. I spent as little time as possible at home. I led a double life, pretending to the outside world that everything was okay, but also hiding from Andrew the joy and sense of purpose I got from school.
I spent almost all the free time I had with my mom. Many days her fibromyalgia symptoms—deep aching of her joints and fatigue—kept her from getting out of bed. I’d bring my homework over, and we’d while away the hours watching bowling, ice-skating, and poker on TV. That’s when we hatched a plan to go to Big Sur for Easter vacation in 1990.
It was heaven. Since I hadn’t taken a trip without Andrew for the last nine years, I was amazed at the freedom I felt. With each mile that ticked farther away from Los Angeles, I could feel myself relax into my body in a way that I had never known. The unsurpassed beauty and raw nature of California’s Central Coast settled into my bones. So many people had come to this very place for enlightenment and clarity, and I wanted some of that, too. We stayed at the famous Ventana Inn, ate cheeseburgers at Nepenthe, and bought pottery at the Coast Gallery—it was the quintessential Big Sur vacation. We soaked in the peace. We made it an annual tradition.
On our spring trip two years later, in 1992, as I settled onto the deck of our room at the Ventana and stared out at the Pacific, I knew it was time to leave Andrew. I felt the truth of this in my bones. It was time. Of course this put the fear of god into me. I feared Andrew’s anger, his guns, and his intense jealousy. He was a professional victim and wore these scars loud and proud.
I told my mom that I was going to leave him, and she asked me the strangest question: “Are you sure?” To this day I am not sure what she meant by asking that question. Maybe it finally occurred to her to ask me the question she should have asked when I said I was going to marry him—like some kind of bizarre, delayed reaction.
I knew there was no other option. It was either leave him or kill myself.
* * *
On April 29, 1992, a full month after I had returned from Big Sur, I finally mustered the courage to tell Andrew it was over. I walked into the living room ready to sit him down to explain that I needed to separate from him for a month and “find myself” (this was my way of letting him down slowly). Instead, I found him standing in the middle of the room glued to the TV. It seemed that at that very moment, Los Angeles had decided to erupt into a maelstrom in reaction to the Rodney King trial verdict. Andrew paced around the house and then came back into the living room. He slammed a shotgun onto the coffee table and said, “They’re coming for our stuff.”
Oh, if that were only true!
I found myself in a surreal world the next few days, going to school by day, knowing that only a few miles away people were going berserk on the streets while classes went on as usual. And then by night, the city went on lockdown, and no one was allowed out after dark.
Finally, weeks later, with the shotgun safely stowed away, I sat Andrew down and told him I was leaving. He was shocked. He said he had no idea anything was wrong. I was on the verge of suicide, and my husband had no idea anything was wrong! For the last two years I had been gone fourteen hours a day, had not slept with him in more than a year, cold-shouldered him when I was with him, and all he could say was that he had no idea anything was wrong?
And so I left. I just left all of it. On May 11, 1992, I walked away from the house and the piles of crap that were stacked up in every room. I walked away from Elliot. And I walked away from Andrew.