Read Online A Carlin Home Companion by Kelly Carlin - Free Book Online

lots of people into your life, and with these people comes genuine admiration, and with genuine admiration come gifts, and during the early seventies, most gifts came in the form of drugs. Therefore, if not all, then most of the people who came into our lives at some point handed my dad a little packet of white powder. Although I was meant not to, I usually saw the exchange, but never acknowledged it. I mean, what could I possibly say as I waved at folks leaving our house? Thanks for coming by. Oh no, it’s fine. I like it when you bring all those drugs into the house. My life is way more fun when Mom and Dad stay up for days and nights, and end up arguing right outside my door at 3:00 A . M . I mean, what else could I possibly be doing? Sleeping? No, no, really.
    The upside of Dad’s cocaine use (strangely, there was an upside, even for me) was that he’d be up at all hours doing all kinds of stuff, and I could hang out with him. One night I found him in the living room on the floor surrounded by piles of nails, screws, washers, bolts, paper clips, and rubber bands. He was sorting them. He had a little cabinet with about fifteen little drawers in it, and he’d created a system that involved the size, color, and use of each object. He was in his joy. Sorting his stuff was such a joy for him that it ended up becoming the source for one of his most famous routines: “A Place for My Stuff”: “That’s all I want, that’s all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff … That’s all your house is—a place for your stuff.” My dad believed all was right in the world when, and only when, there was a list, a pile, a folder, or a Ziploc bag to contain the chaos of his life.
    Even his ideas needed to be contained. Everywhere in our house, for as long as I can remember, there were pads and pens in every room so that when an idea popped into his head, it had a place to go. He would then collect all those notes, organize them into themes, place them in folders, and then build his bits from there. This is how he did fourteen HBO specials of groundbreaking comedy over a forty-year span—he wrote his shit down. Anyway, that late night when I saw him hovering over the piles of nails, screws, washers, bolts, paper clips, and rubber bands, I happily plopped down, learned his system, and got to the task at hand.
    Other times in the middle of the night, I’d find him immersed in music. Like my parents, I was a bit of a night owl. I’m not sure why. It might have just been my nature, or it might have been nurture—having spent my first few years on the road. But during this time I suspect that it was because some part of me was always subconsciously on alert for any problems that might arise between my parents. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d stand by my door to listen to see if my mom was awake. If I didn’t hear her I’d sneak into the living room, and if I was lucky, there’d be my dad bopping his head to an unknown beat that only he could hear through his headphones. I’d stand and watch him until finally he’d notice me and say, “Kel, Kel, you gotta hear this.” He’d then place the headphones on my ears. I never knew what to expect. Would it be the groundbreaking sound of the albums Tubular Bells or Switched-on Bach or the bluegrass soul of Doug Kershaw? Or maybe even Harry Nilsson singing, “You’re breakin’ my heart/you’re tearing it apart/So fuck you”? I’m guessing that not many other ten-year-olds in my neighborhood were being turned on to Harry Nilsson by their parents.
    I always listened intently, trying to understand what exactly it was Dad loved about each piece of music he shared with me. I so wanted to be in his head, to understand his world. When Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” came out, my dad played it over and over again on the big stereo in the living room at full volume.