When a Triangle Becomes a Square
I’D REACHED A NEW STAGE of my life: I was the perfect jumble of a human being stuck between who I’d been and what I might become. I was in that gooey stage somewhere between caterpillar and butterfly. I had days when strength and clarity filled every inch of me—ready to claim my creative voice and so certain of my place in the world. Then, out of nowhere, a hidden cache of grief and anxiety would surface, and I’d collapse into a heap, a broken-hearted five-year-old aching for her mommy and clinging to her daddy. I had no idea that such contradictions could live inside one mind and body.
I was death and rebirth’s bitch.
* * *
A few months before our Christmas trip to Hawaii, Bob and I escorted my dad to the Primetime Emmy Awards show. He was nominated for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special for HBO’s George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy. In the limo on the way to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, my inner five-year-old surfaced, and I began to imagine us walking down the red carpet together, the media asking my dad, And who is this beautiful young woman with you?
This is my beautiful, talented daughter Kelly, he’d reply, and then I’d answer their questions in some witty and charming way, winning over the host of Entertainment Tonight.
When we all got out of the limo, some red-carpet wrangler quickly separated us, like curds from the whey, and we were told to stand about fifteen feet behind my dad. Awkwardly we loitered behind him, quickly becoming the unfamiliar faces you often see in the background behind the stars on those fancy red carpets. I felt stupid for my earlier fantasy.
In the auditorium, Bob went to sit with Jerry and his wife, and I got to sit with Dad close to the stage. During commercial breaks everyone stood up and talked to each other. Lots of people came up to my dad to say hello and tell him how sorry they were about my mom. When Garry Shandling came up to us, I nearly died. I was a huge fan of everything he’d ever done. He was very nice and funny, but in the end I felt invisible. My dad had earned his rightful place in the business, but I had not yet earned mine. I clearly saw how my inner five-year-old still needed to borrow my dad’s shininess to fit in. I, the thirty-four-year-old, felt like the outsider that I was.
Ultimately Dad was an outsider, too, at least at the Emmys. Although he was nominated five times for a Primetime Emmy over the years, he never won. Admittedly Dad never thought much about award shows, but at least on that day, his old friend from Greenwich Village beat him out: Bette Midler.
* * *
As I made my way through that mucky goo between death and rebirth, I started to get a hint at what form my creative wings wanted to spread into once I emerged from the chrysalis. In the early 1990s, before I’d left Andrew, I’d seen Karen Finley, the performance artist, and Spalding Gray the storyteller do their seminal works at UCLA. They sparked a revolution inside me. Although their styles and approaches were quite different from each other, their ability to be raw, funny, and vulnerable on a stage stirred me creatively. I saw the power of a one-person show.
In the fall of 1997, a few months after Mom’s death, I began writing a list of stories and events from my life in chronological order, searching for the narrative. I wasn’t sure what it’d be about, but I felt in my bones that it could be as powerful as what I’d seen watching those other shows. In my bones I also felt something else—terror. The thought of going onstage and allowing myself to be raw, vulnerable, maybe even funny, struck me as an act of insanity. But I knew I must.
I wasn’t quite sure how to start, but I knew I needed to start small, get my feet wet. I loved a local Los Angeles commentator, Sandra Tsing Loh, who was funny and talked about her own personal challenges in her weekly four-minute commentary, called The Loh Life, on KCRW. I’d also become enamored with Beth Littleford’s work on The Daily Show. Playing a character or a slightly exaggerated version of myself while commenting on the world or my life straight to camera felt safer than jumping onstage. Maybe I could produce these segments myself, but where to show them? What my heart really ached to do was a little live show at Luna Park called “UnCabaret.” It was a storytelling show where comedians like Janeane Garofalo, Sandra Bernhard, and Taylor Negron got up and shared funny, poignant personal stories instead of doing regular stand-up routines. But that was too scary even to think about. You see, it was in a room with a bunch of stand-ups, and—well—that was a bit complicated for me.
One day when I was hanging out with my dad and sharing some of these thoughts about what I wanted to do next, he asked me, “You’re not planning on doing stand-up, are you?”
“Uh, no, why?” I replied.
“It’s so different from when I was coming up,” he continued. “Much more competitive now. And the clubs are really tough. The audiences, the owners—” He took a beat. “I’d really discourage you from going that direction.”
My dad had never told me not to do anything, except that one time he told me never to smoke cocaine. This wasn’t quite as adamant as the cocaine warning, but I thought I got the message loud and clear: You are not good enough to compete with real comedians. Looking back on it now, I’m pretty sure I hadn’t gotten the message loud and clear. He was probably trying to protect me from the harsh realities of a life in comedy. I could see him imagining some heckler shouting out, Hey, get this cunt off the stage, and bring out the funny Carlin!
But that’s not how I took it. I took it as rejection. And not just rejection from my dad, but rejection from George Carlin. Never mind that I’d never even entertained the thought of going into a club and doing stand-up. Never mind all the times he’d praised my writing and talents, or the thousands of times I’d made him laugh. Never mind all that. I now knew the rules—no stand-up. I swept my ego, pride, and hurt under my emotional rug and allowed myself to move toward where I knew I was going—commentary, short films, and storytelling—some real moneymakers. Yeah, right.
Pursuing my craft while finding my voice was not going to pay. I knew that. That’s why they call it paying your dues, right? Luckily, due to the overwhelming success of Brain Droppings, Dad’s career was exploding. The book had climbed onto the New York Times bestseller list the first week it was out, in May 1997, and stayed there for eighteen straight weeks. He was very proud of being on that list. In the archives of his stuff that I inherited, I have every single one of those lists that Dad ripped from the paper. Because the book gave him a new wave of momentum for his career, Dad was ready to reach out to more fans and have some fun on this new thing we were all trying to figure out: the World Wide Web. Dad wanted a Web site, and so he hired me to guide its development. He knew he could trust my taste to make it what he wanted. I was back on the Carlin payroll and able to pay some bills while spreading my creative wings.
* * *
Wanting to be inspired by the cream of the crop of the comedy world, in February 1998 I went to the Aspen Comedy Festival, produced by HBO. It was an insider festival for the industry to showcase new comedy talent, further the careers of the cool kids of comedy, and rub elbows with VIPs. There were tons of solo shows, sketch comedy, and short films to see, and people to get my schmooze on with.
The first night I was there I went to the opening-night cocktail party. I was not a drinker, but I grabbed a beer at the bar to relax into the atmosphere, and didn’t think much about the altitude adding to the alcohol’s strength. I saw a man standing by himself at the side of the bar, and I struck up a conversation. He introduced himself as Jim Burrows. My mind quickly woke up. Jim Burrows! Jesus Christ, Jim Burrows was a legend in the world of sitcoms. He was the creator of Cheers, and wrote and directed a few others—Taxi and Frasier. Before I knew it we were doing the cocktail party chitchat about Aspen, LA, and so on. He seemed genuinely engaged in our conversation, and I was relaxed and felt funny and charming. I told him what I was doing there, and we talked a bit about my dad (the Carlin last name always begged the question: Are you related?).
I could tell the conversation was winding down, so I leaned in and said, “I absolutely loved As Good as It Gets.” He smiled and said, “That’s the other JB—James Brooks.” James Brooks—the creator of Taxi and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and director of As Good as It Gets. My face went sheet white. He put his hand on my shoulder. “We get that all the time. Don’t worry.” And he walked away. I stood there flooded with shame. Great job, Kelly. Dear foot, please meet mouth. Shit. All I could hear in my head was, Kid, you’ll never work in this town again.
To this day I blame it on the altitude.
For the rest of the trip I stayed under the radar, introducing myself only to stand-ups that I knew my dad knew, until I saw Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo hanging out together at another party. I’d been a huge fan of The Ben Stiller Show, and knowing that I’d met him briefly while he was doing a TV movie with my dad—Working Trash—I felt comfortable approaching him.
“Ben, Kelly Carlin. We met when my dad did Working Trash with you,” I said, putting my hand out for a handshake.
“Hey, nice to see you,” he said, and smiled at me. “This is Janeane.”
“I’m a big fan,” I said to her. Not sure where to go next, I said to Ben, “I really loved your show on Fox. I think my favorite sketch was ‘Amish Cops.’”
“Oh, thank you. That was all Bob Odenkirk. He wrote that one,” Ben said. Awkward silence filled the space between us.
“Oh, well. It was nice to see you,” I said, ready to not do any more damage.
“Yeah, same here,” he said as someone else grabbed him for a conversation. I backed away once again feeling awkward, and convinced that I should stop striking up conversations with people I didn’t know.
The next day, while in line for a sketch show, Bob Odenkirk was standing right behind me. Don’t do it, Kelly. Just shut up. I turned around anyway.
“Hey Bob, loved your work on Ben’s show. Loved ‘Amish Cops.’”
“Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that.”
Yes. Victory. Redemption.
I did have one piece of actual business to do in Aspen. An old family friend, my former math teacher from Montessori, Sandi Padnos, had worked in cable TV for a decade and had set up a meeting for me. She connected me with a woman who was going to Aspen specifically to find content providers for this new thing that was brewing—Internet television. She worked for a Web site called ComedyNet that featured stand-up, a talk show, and short films. The screen they played these shows on was maybe a little bigger than two by three inches. It was ridiculous, but it was all we had back then. It was the future, and I wanted to be part of it. I met with Victorria Johnson and told her of my desire to do commentary and short films. She loved the idea and hired me on the spot. It was 1998, the Internet was barely a thing, and a company was actually going to pay me to make short films! I was going to get paid while paying my dues.
Over the next nine months I made short films for them: The Manual of Life—my quest for the instruction manual for life I never got; Who Fucking Cares?—a string of short clips from tabloid TV followed by a shot of a celebrity looking directly into the camera and saying, “Who fucking cares?”; Lost in La La Land—a series of my Beth Littleford–esqe reports from life in Los Angeles; and Adela—a black-and-white character piece about a Muslim woman who becomes enamored of butterfly hair clips even though she can’t wear them in her hair.
* * *
As always, Dad was also busy with his work that year, despite battling depression. He never talked about it directly with me, but I knew he was struggling emotionally. He looked tired and didn’t seem to have the vigor he usually had about his work. He was supposed to have done another HBO show in 1998, but he didn’t have the motivation to do it. I was worried that he might say, “Fuck it,” give up on life, have another heart attack, and join Mom. Luckily, a nice distraction came along when he got a call from Kevin Smith to play Cardinal Ignatius Glick, an arrogant attention whore, in a little movie about religion called Dogma. I was so excited for him. Back in 1995, when Bob and I thought we’d become low-budget filmmakers, I met Kevin at the Mill Valley Film Festival at a No-Budget Filmmaking panel. He was a really nice guy, and he was an inspiration to me. Seeing his success with the film Clerks let me know that anything is possible. I was so happy that my dad got to go play with Kevin, and Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock, and Linda Fiorentino.
* * *
About five weeks before the first anniversary of my mom’s death, right around the date that she was diagnosed, I fell into another darkness. The cellular memory of shock, sadness, and fear took over my life, and I was once again a zombie of grief. I realized, due to the timing of her death, that for the rest of my life, I’d now be getting the double anguish of her death anniversary with Mother’s Day. Dad also got a double whammy—his birthday, May 12, would always fall on the day after her death for the rest of his life.
The only thing that we both had to distract us from the impending anniversary was that I had demanded that we do a big celebration for Dad’s birthday. Because he didn’t get to have a sixtieth birthday party the year before, Jerry and I threw him a huge bash with a live big band that played the music that spanned his life—everything from boogie-woogie to disco. We invited family, friends from every era of his life, and people he’d worked with over the years. We decorated the tent with poster-size pictures of Dad from age five to fifty-five.
In addition to organizing the party, I wanted to give my dad a special gift. He was impossible to shop for since he could buy anything he wanted, so I was usually making him collages, or handmade books of quotes and poems, or even painting funny pictures. Mom had usually bought him clothes or books about language or New York. I decided that this year I’d sing him a song. To assuage my stage fright I gathered some allies—my ex-boyfriend Mark Lennon, Dennis Blair (a comic who had opened for my dad for years who used a lot of music in his act), and my cousin Dennis, who was a singer and a drummer, to rehearse a few songs with me. I’m not a professional by any stretch, but like my dad, I have a nice tone and can carry a tune. And although I was very nervous and sang a little sharp in a few places, I managed to sing Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” to my dad. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place.
The evening was perfect. I wished Mom had been there. But like so many things and events that were occurring then, I realized that they were happening only because she wasn’t.
* * *
A few months later, in July, while Dad and I were at lunch, somewhere between the bruschetta and the pasta course, he casually announced, “I want you to know that I’ve met someone, and I went to lunch with her, and I really like her.”
Shocked and confused, my body tightened with terror. My mind scrambled around words like: Excuse me, pardon me, what the fuck did you just say? But nothing came out of my mouth. Instead I thought, Be calm. Stay calm. Look cool.
He continued, “Her name is Sally Wade, and last year she sent me a funny letter addressed to Moe from her dog, Spot. It was really clever and cute. I let her know at the time that I was grieving Mom’s death and that I needed a full year to do it properly.”
Thank God for that, I thought.
Still, he would not shut up. “After my birthday party, I looked her up and asked her out.”
“What does she do?” I asked, trying to stop the buzzing in my ears. I thought I might pass out.
“She’s a TV writer. We’d met at Dutton’s bookstore briefly last year.”
By now he could tell I wasn’t coping well with this information, and ended with, “So it was nice. She’s really smart and funny.”
I’d never imagined my dad with anyone except my mother. Never. We were the Three Musketeers for Christ’s sake! I knew in the 1970s he’d probably slept around, because they argued often about it then, but I never let it be a thing that really existed in the world. Our little family had not fallen apart like so many others had that decade. We were indelible. The Carlins would never change. This news about this woman felt impossible.
I somehow managed to form the sentence, “That’s great, I’m glad you’re getting out and doing stuff.”
I calmed myself by imagining that he’d be going out with all sorts of ladies, maybe a string of interesting types that we’d learn to laugh about—nothing too serious. He would become the typical aging man trying to find some company. It would almost make him human in some ways. It would certainly be nothing so serious that it would usurp my mother, or me, or the family that was my inner GPS.
Although shaken, I put the whole thing out of my mind, hoping it would go away.
A few weeks later he informed me, “I’m in love—goofy, silly fantastic love.”
My heart exploded into a billion pieces. The little slice of my dad that I’d just gotten back since my mom had died, the slice I thought I now had to myself forever, was going to disappear again. My very existence felt threatened. For my entire life, all my psyche had ever known was our little family system triangle—George, Brenda, Kelly. Now it was—George, Brenda, Kelly, and Sally. This was not a triangle; this was a square. I did not know how to do a square.
I hated this square. And I hated that I wanted my triangle back. I felt as if the whole world were the wrong shape. But, I also knew how lonely and depressed he’d been, and I wanted him to thrive and live another twenty years. Looking into his lovesick eyes, I saw a spark that I’d rarely seen. He was in pure bliss. I couldn’t deny it. I just wished this bliss had come in the form of “I’ve taken up finger painting and mah-jjong, and it’s saved my life!”
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—express any of this to my father. I knew that I had no say in what he was doing. Logically I completely understood that he needed to find a way to have a life after Mom. I know that was what I was doing, too. My reaction was my business. Plus I already felt as if I’d burdened him with my grief over the last year. I didn’t need to burden him with my insecurity, too.
A few months after my mom’s passing, he and I had driven out to Palm Desert for a gig he had. I wanted to share with him the music that had been helping me grieve. I played Van Morrison’s Back on Top. It had been on constant rotation in my CD player, helping to fill the void in my chest.
About five songs in he said, “Can we play something else? This is depressing me.” I quickly turned it off, and felt ashamed and weak for letting myself wallow in all this grief.
Now, with this new turn of events, I knew I wouldn’t risk sharing any of my feelings about what I was going through because of his relationship with Sally. I was terrified that if I did, I’d lose him forever. I didn’t want to be that daughter that makes the new woman’s life impossible, and ostracizes herself from her father. I wanted to be the enlightened daughter, the one on the high road. Even though really I just wanted my mommy and my triangle back.
But I also knew that turning my triangle into a square would eventually create something solid to stand on. It would give me the opportunity to learn how to be an autonomous adult and leave behind this family system that had kept me small, silent, and ineffectual in the world.
After getting used to the idea that Sally was here to stay, it was decided that I’d meet her after Dad’s show at the Comedy Store in August. He was beginning to work on new material for his next HBO special. Dad was very excited for us to meet and finally connect. I was nervous. I talked to many of Mom’s friends about Sally, trying to find some equanimity about the whole thing. But being in the middle of grief isn’t necessarily the time for equanimity. I knew I had to feel it.
One thing that helped move the grief through me was giving my mom’s things to her friends. Months earlier, after my dad gave me all of my mom’s jewelry and clothing, I decided I’d share them with my mom’s closest girlfriends. These were women whom my mother had nurtured, remothered, and in some cases, saved their lives. They were mourning her as deeply I was. As I distributed bracelets and rings and cashmere sweaters, I felt my mom’s love spread out throughout this group of women.
The big “meet Sally” night came. My stomach was doing triple flips. As I walked through the club, many of my mom’s friends came up to me, hugged me, and whispered in my ear how they were wearing my mom’s ring or sweater or bracelet tonight, in solidarity. I felt my mother and the love that she represented carry me through the impossible.
After the show the dressing room was packed with comics and friends. The dressing room at the Comedy Store is very dark. It has black walls, black furniture, and a mirror table. I looked down at the mirror and wondered how much cocaine had been done on that table in the last twenty years. I looked across the dimly lit room and saw a woman with blond hair and prominent cheekbones. My heart leaped. It was my mother. I’d been seeing her everywhere those days out of the corner of my eye. Any flash of blond hair on a woman walking down a street would make my heart skip.
I took a beat and let my eyes land on this blond woman again. That’s when I realized—it’s Sally. It’s Sally, and she looks like my mother. There’s the ash-blond hair. There are the cheekbones. Then it hit me: My dad has a “type.” And something relaxed in me. The sting of this whole debacle lessened because I realized that my dad had a type. Why? I don’t know. It made him more human? It made the whole thing less about my mom and Sally, and more about what his needs were? Probably.
As I approached her, it was clear she was way more nervous about meeting me than I was about meeting her. She was nice, and funny, and I could see she was not some wicked stepmother type. We laughed about how awkward this was for both of us.
Eventually, after a few months, I saw that she was a woman ten years older than me, interested in writing, performing, and spiritual seeking just like me. She, too, was attempting to find her place in the world. She even had stage fright.
And even though my inner five-year-old was still miserable about Mom and Dad breaking up, my thirty-five-year-old self was genuinely happy for my dad.