Godspeed, Carla
Another comedy friend is gone
Back in 2016, on one of the chaotic week-or-two comedy runs I used to go on, I dubbed a batch of shows “The Gracious Lesbians Tour” because, without planning to, I made plans to crash on the couches of three different non-heterosexual women in three different cities.
One of them was Carla, a middle-aged lady who lived with her dogs and cats in one of those areas that’s ten minutes from a highway but feels like the middle of a prairie. We hadn’t met yet, but I was closing out my run doing a Bernie Sanders benefit show she was putting on. She had a Hillary bit she did in full pantsuit costume, in addition to her regular standup and a Phyllis Diller act.
I was in Nashville the night before, and my plan was to drive as far as Cincinnati, crash with friends in the quasi-legal apartment associated with comedians there (I shouldn’t say more but if you know that scene, you know where), and do Carla’s show the next night. All was well until my battery died in Nashville and I had to wait for hours for AAA at the venue, then head north in a raging thunderstorm in an unreliable car.
It became evident that I wasn’t gonna get into town till after 2am, and logistically, this meant I couldn’t go to the aforementioned apartment. The weather made sleeping in my car at a rest stop less than appealing, and I was barely solvent as it was, so spending money on a hotel was not an option. I called Carla and asked if it was okay for me to show up in the middle of the night.
Carla’s stories are not mine to tell. Suffice it to say that given the life she’d led to that point, the idea of a stranger arriving at three in the morning to the remote house where she lived alone was not an optimal one. But thanks to our mutual friends who’d vouched for me in the first place, she took that chance, got up to let me in, and made it clear (in a way that still managed to be gracious and welcoming) that this hospitality was not lightly given.
Nor was it lightly accepted. But Carla was a great human being. I fell in love with her, the dogs, and with the room full of cats she’d saved in a last ditch effort, only to wind up stuck with them. We had a good time at her show and stayed in touch online. A couple years later, I got a chance to host a weekend at a nearby club while she was making a rare trip out of town, and I was able to dog-sit for her while not spending more on lodging than I made on the gigs.
There was another time, during the lockdowns, when she came through for me and revealed her loyalty and kindness, and when we talked then, she said she was laying low to protect her health and had more or less given up on the idea of performing. After that, she stopped using Facebook, and I didn’t talk to her again. Between my own family’s loss and the end of my traveling, there was a long gap in communications with some folks who I used to have an excuse to chat with all the time, and in that gap I lost the connection with people like Carla. I wish I hadn’t.
Carla passed away last week. From the sounds of things, it was a while coming and was not unexpected. Others were there toward the end, some of our mutual friends, people closer to her than me. I saw a lot of tributes from people who’d worked with her in the early 2010s, people who started around when I did, some of whom have also quit, and others still thriving in that hardscrabble flyover road comic life.
The fact that Carla dealt with so much unfair bullshit in her life, and chose the path of laughter, camaraderie and kindness anyway, is the ultimate testament to her character. Hers was a life well-lived despite the best efforts of the shittiest forces of this world. It was an honor to be even on the periphery of her light, to be entrusted with the housekeys and the pups and the cats, and to share a stage with her. I wish she had had more time, and more good times, and I selfishly wish I’d had more of them in her presence.