A Carlin Home Companion (18 page)

My panic attacks escalated to the point where I could barely leave my house. I could only drive (and when I say drive, I mean white-knuckle-praying-to-the-Virgin-Mary type of driving) in certain safety zones: to my parents' house, to my shrink, and to the market. Nowhere else. I could no longer drive to the San Fernando Valley, or Beverly Hills, or any other part of the city that was not in my safety zone.

I was a crazy person.

When Andrew and I went on car trips to Big Bear or San Diego, I would silently look for signs along the freeway that identified where the hospitals were in case I needed one (I always felt like I needed one). I avoided stairs and hills when I walked because they would raise my heart rate, and then I would think that I was having a heart attack, and this would trigger another panic attack. If I managed to make it to the supermarket along my prescribed route—go up Twenty-third Street, take a left on Montana, drive straight into the parking lot—I would then find a person inside who I believed looked like a doctor or a nurse, and then follow him or her around while I shopped. I assumed that if I did happen to pass out or die in the produce section, they would be there for me. I guess that was part of my fear—no one would be there for me.

And yet I never actually gave anyone a chance to be there for me. I didn't tell a soul about what was happening to me, especially my mom and dad. I could be around my mom and fake it a bit, but I was afraid to be around my dad, so I avoided him most of the time. I was too ashamed to admit that all this was going on. Deep down inside I knew that it had to do with my marriage, but I thought,
I had made this bed, and I was going to lie in it
. Dammit. I could never admit what a horrible mistake I had made by marrying Andrew. I was in too deep.

*   *   *

Dad's career was undergoing a bit of a rebirth (something I could have used a bit of). He built on the momentum of his earlier HBO shows by doing a fifth one—
Playin' with Your Head
in 1986. And then in 1987 he got his star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, on the corner of Selma and Vine Streets, right near the very building where he and Jack Burns had done their first radio gig in Los Angeles. Dad loved that bit of synchronicity. His concert life was renewed, and he began to fill large theaters again.

The biggest thing for him, though, was his acting. He costarred in
Outrageous Fortune
, with Bette Midler and Shelley Long, and then starred, with Molly Kagan, in a Disney TV movie
Justin Case
, directed by the incomparable Blake Edwards. I remember visiting both sets. Arthur Hiller directed
Outrageous Fortune
, and the day I visited, he let me follow him around all day. This was the man who had directed
Love Story
,
The In-Laws
, and
The Hospital
. Arthur put his arm around me and said, “Let me show you how it's done.” He was a total sweetheart. I was in awe.

When I visited the set of
Justin Case
I met Blake Edwards briefly, but mostly hung out with the young woman, Molly Kagan, who costarred with my dad. She was about my age, and I was so envious of her. Not only was she a functioning person, but she was a young woman pursuing her art by working in a real movie—with my dad and Blake Edwards.

After doing
Apt. 2C
a few years earlier, I had similar ambitions and got my head shots and even went out on a few auditions, but I couldn't hack the audition process. It seemed I was always up for the young ingenue role. I'd walk into the casting office and find myself surrounded by a room full of bimbos. I didn't know how to play bimbo, so I gave up.

As Molly and I talked about the business, I shared with her my view about it all:

“This business is so full of shit. There's no real respect for artists or women or anyone who doesn't fit the mold. I thought I wanted to work in it, but then I realized that it's all about using people to make money.”

“Wow. That sounds rather bitter,” she replied.

I was shocked by her comment. I thought I was so sure of my point of view. “No. I just know what I don't want,” I said, covering my shame. But now I was really unsure about what I'd just said.

“Good luck with that,” she said, and went back to her work.

I wanted to crawl under a rock. But my dad had always taught me that if you let “the man” fuck you, “he” will. I built my story about the world to fit that picture. I convinced myself that I wasn't pursuing a career in showbiz because I didn't want to be a cog in the machine. I guess it was easier to believe that than to admit that I was afraid and had no confidence. It's always easier for me to reject something than have it reject me.

*   *   *

During this period my mom was also forging a new path. She'd opened an Equity-waiver theater with our family friend John Batis (the limo driver/actor/director who'd saved my dad's life back at Dodger Stadium). I decided that in that safe environment, I'd give performing another shot. I joined Mom's Park Stage Theater troupe, and wrote and performed a monologue for our premiere show. It was about a Beverly Hills teenage girl who'd run away and become homeless in hopes that her rich and successful parents would realize that she was gone and come looking for her. Can we say a cry for help?

Right before I took the stage on opening night, I had a panic attack and peed my pants a little. For the entire eight minutes on stage, all I could think about was if anyone could see the pee stain on the back of my dress. Oh well. At least it wasn't vomit.

After that I quit acting for good. Between my panic attacks, my fear of rejection, the chip on my shoulder, and the pee on my dress, I was done.

*   *   *

After Andrew and I got married, Dad politely pressured him to get serious about no longer being financially dependent on him. Andrew opened a car repair shop in Santa Monica—Automotive Enhancement. Dad “loaned” him the money to open a state-of-the-art, full-service repair shop for high-end cars—BMWs, Jaguars, Mercedes, and the like. It cost more than one hundred thousand dollars to outfit the place with every gadget, tool, lift, and diagnostic machine one could dream of (so much for that “financial independence”). I was excited because it was exactly what Andrew needed—a regular job where he had to focus and be responsible. I knew if he just put his time and energy toward something, he would be successful at it. He was so damn intelligent and could build or fix just about anything. I did everything I could to support him by becoming the bookkeeper and shop manager. We opened our doors in the fall of 1986, and things went well. Andrew seemed to be keeping his nose clean—literally—and I no longer felt like a freeloader.

After about nine months of things humming along, Andrew began hanging out with a new client who owned a Bentley. I began to notice some new behaviors, like Andrew closing the door to the office more often, staying late with this new client, and lying about little things. It was funny that he actually believed that, after all these years, I couldn't tell when he was high or lying. But what was happening really wasn't funny. I couldn't believe that after finding some sense of stability and normality in our lives, he was starting to use again.

I had already quit doing coke full-time. I'd had a few slips here and there, but between my panic attacks and trying to manage Andrew, Elliot, the business, and the house, quitting cocaine forever was a walk in the park. Because I now wanted to stay clean, I spent less and less time around Andrew and our business. But this only gave Andrew more freedom to do what he wanted, and his using escalated. I confronted him about it, but he played the whole thing down. I felt my future slipping away, and so I began to fight for my life. I screamed at him. I cajoled him. I bribed him with sex (which was really difficult since I was beginning to hate him). I even threw dishes a few times. Nothing reached him.

Feeling hopeless and crazy, I found my only haven at my parents' house, away from Andrew. But because I wasn't willing to tell my parents what was really going on, it wasn't much of a relief. It was still better than being at my own house. Things had never been perfect at my house, but now, by the end of 1987, they'd become unbearable.

I'd always been the one to clean, shop, cook, and care about how our home looked. Andrew never lifted a finger to do anything. He treated me just like he treated every waiter or clerk he ever encountered—he told you what to do or what he wanted, but he couldn't be bothered to do it himself. There was rarely a “please” or “thank-you” involved, only entitlement.

Andrew also never felt it necessary to actually get up and throw anything away. He either didn't throw the thing away (meaning it would sit eternally wherever he had left it until I did something with it), or he would toss the thing from across the room into the trash. The second technique was his favorite, especially in the bedroom. From a lying-down position in bed, he would toss a half-full can of Diet Coke into the trash. This would result in the can banking off the wall, leaving a patina of Diet Coke on it.

Most people would see this as disgusting and do something about it. And in my own way I did. I'd clean the wall. I'd move the trash closer to him. I'd suggest that maybe he could get up and throw it away. In the end nothing worked, and so I learned to endure the sound of the can hitting the wall—
Whack!
—and then falling into the trash—
Thump! Whack! Thump! Whack! Thump!

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't use. I couldn't leave. I couldn't run to my parents. So I ran to Shirley MacLaine.

I began searching for answers, and thankfully she had them. After reading her book
Out on a Limb
, I saw how simple it was to change the world around me—just think different thoughts about it. While Shirley was on an airplane in bad turbulence, all she did was picture the turbulence ending, and it did. If I thought enough positive thoughts about my life with Andrew, I could change him and myself and really get somewhere. This haunting feeling inside me that Andrew was crazy and I needed to get away from him—that wasn't real; it was just an illusion, a symptom of my own inability to cope with the choices I had made. I just needed to change my thoughts about the choices.

I went to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore looking for more answers and bought lots of books. Initially I was attracted to the Zen—or, as they say, the “chop wood and carry water”—philosophy because it was a path that uncluttered one's mind and life. With all the stuff in our house, I longed to be uncluttered. But I soon discovered that that kind of life took presence and consciousness, and I had neither. What I wanted was a magic wand. I became fascinated with Richard Bach and his book
Illusions
. I figured if he could learn how to walk through walls and understand that it's all just an illusion, the least I could do was walk through my life and see it all as an illusion. I studied Shakti Gawain's book
Creative Visualization
and attempted to creatively visualize my way out of my pain and confusion. I had my aura cleansed and my chakras balanced, but still felt the oppression of my marriage and life. I concluded that there must be something inherently wrong with me, so I went to a Rolfer.

A Rolfer is a body practitioner who manipulates and reshapes the soft tissue of your muscles in order to release locked-in emotions and habits of being. I understood the mind-body connection, and thought I'd give it a try. But, it was such a weird thing, really—you go to an office and pay another human being to push and rub on your naked body until you scream and cry, and the screaming and crying doesn't stop him like it should; oh no, it only encourages him because then he thinks he's getting the really bad stuff out. I really wanted to believe that if I screamed and cried enough, he would release every bad thought and feeling I ever had about myself and my life.

But there was just one problem: I was too embarrassed to scream and cry in front of him.

*   *   *

I had no idea how I had allowed all this stuff in my life to go on and to happen to me for so long. I knew I'd forsaken so much of myself for too many years. I'd even stopped listening to music for the last four years. I was brought up on the music of the sixties and seventies by my father, and it was that music that had bonded us so much at that time. Music had been a guide, a friend, and a teacher to me my whole life, and now it was gone. Today when I hear songs on the radio that are now considered to be eighties classics, I feel like I must have been in a coma or a kidnap victim—I've never heard these songs even once. In the late eighties, there was no music in my life.

About six months after the client with the Bentley showed up, Andrew went officially insane. He was so paranoid that he walked around our house wearing two handguns in holsters underneath his bathrobe. Years later, when I saw the scene in
Boogie Nights
with Alfred Molina playing the coke dealer walking around his house in a bathrobe, I turned away. There was Andrew. There was my past. Of course my past did not include a crazy Asian man lighting firecrackers in the living room. No, instead it included Andrew wearing his guns, with his entire body covered in scabs because he believed there were worms growing in it and he needed to dig them out.

And still, I told no one what was going on.

One week in early 1988, it all came to a head. Andrew and I'd been arguing for days because he wanted to lend his Bentley friend five thousand dollars to make a drug deal.

“We'd get the money back immediately,” he told me.

I replied, “No fucking way. That money is my savings, and I don't trust him or you.” A few days later he went ahead and did it anyway. I went to the shop and confronted him. He denied knowing anything about it.

“That's it. I'm out of here,” I said as I walked toward him to head out of the shop.