November 9, 2017 • 36 mins
Four years ago, Jesse was hit by a car and nearly died. Now he wants to find the driver. And thank him.
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Kaitlin Roberts.
Editing by Jorge Just, Alex Blumberg, and Wendy Dorr.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Saidu Tejan-Thomas, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Kate Bilinski.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, and Edwin, with additional music by Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Charles Smith, Visager, Graham Barton, and Katie Mullins. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm updating all my contacts and my iPhone. Yes, okay,
and I just have you down as Jackie. Yeah, and
it makes me realize I don't actually know your full
name is? What is Jackie short for?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It's short for Jackie.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, but I mean, like what Jackie, Jacqueline.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Jacqueline No, John, it's short for Jackie. And you know
that because you've known me since I'm five?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Why do I have in my mind that the full
name is jack Arandack jack Arondack Cohen. And what's your
middle name?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I don't have one.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Mother mustn't have loved you very much, you know what.
Let's give you a middle name right now?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Why Jackie Stewart, Jackie Lynn, Jackie jack Jackie Jack Cohen.
And I don't care Jackety Jack's bratt sat on a
candlestick from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
(01:12):
Heavyweight Today's episode, Jesse. Most lives are like parallel lines,
one life existing alongside another, divided only by an apartment
(01:34):
hallway or a cubicle wall, close but never touching. So
I will just ask you to start from the very beginning, Okay,
lines that are parallel don't have endings or beginnings. Lives do, though,
and so do stories. And this story begins in the
(01:54):
summer of twenty thirteen in a town just outside Portland, Oregon.
Jesse had just graduated college and was spending the summer
working in a lab. His life was music festivals, dancing,
getting stoned, and eating as much mac and cheese as
he could. In other words, he was a typical American
twenty one year old whose life was on course.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
And then one day, it's a half day at work,
left the house, got a cup of coffee, was riding
my bike, stopped in this little park to sip on
the coffee before I headed in, And that's the last
thing that I really remember about that day.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Later people will tell Jesse that he plugged an earbud
into his ear, turned on some LCD sound system, got
back on his bicycle, rode to the same four way
intersection that he always.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Did, and rolled out into the intersection and was te
boned by a guy going forty five.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Lines that are perpendicular meet at a right angle, touching
but only once and then never meeting again. As he
lay split out in the middle of the street, Jesse's
heart stopped for a while.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
He was legally dead, and then I came to with
a tracheotomy down my throat, trying to throw up, and
suddenly I was in a hospital room.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Suddenly was actually seventeen days later, seventeen days in a
coma that he woke from, unable to breathe on his own,
with half his body paralyzed. Everyone was saying it looked
like he'd never walk again.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And I don't think people realized I was with it
enough to hear them say those things. Having a surgeon
say to your mom, like you might as well get
rid of his car insurance because he's not gonna ever
drive again. It just seemed like I wasn't gonna look anymore.
(04:00):
I wasn't going to be with anything pretty anymore. My
life I had dreamed about is no longer. Having to
use a bedpan as a twenty one year old, and
the embarrassment that comes with not being able to control
your bladder and having a nurse have to clean you up.
(04:21):
It just feels like, Okay, I'm in pain, I'm causing pain.
My parents aren't going to have a normal life now.
A lot of what I was saying was about trying
to get someone to end my life. I was like,
if it's not going to be a good life, like
I don't want life.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Every day was like this, the same dark thoughts day
after day after day. And then one day Jesse felt
his eyes move independently of each other. His head and
arms began to flail. He thought, this is it. I'm
actually going to die, like.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Oh, I'm getting what I wanted. And the first emotion
that came up was just anger, like this sucks.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
As Jesse began the process of dying, he lost the
ability to hold onto that anger. It was like he
no longer had the strength, and so it let go.
His dying brain started letting everything go, what was happening
around him, all his fears for the future, and with
all that gone, past memories flooded in happy memories, playing
(05:35):
guitar for his younger cousins Emial of Savice in Lima,
camping with his girlfriend in the rain, and drinking champagne
as their tent slowly filled with water.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
I think it was rather spontaneous, though I don't remember
putting like one and one together. I think it was
like this this rush that happened in a matter of moments,
all of the people that had ever wished well for me,
or all of the hospital visitors I had made me
(06:07):
realize that I had a really fortunate life.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Jesse ended up surviving, and with his new life came
in appreciation for all the things he'd never noticed before.
The blue of the sky through the hospital window looked
bluer somehow, the touch of a friend's hand at his
bedside stirred his heart in a deeper way. When he
was helped outside, the world below his feet felt like
a strange and beautiful planet. Even the most familiar things
(06:39):
were new again.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
If I had an apple that day, it was like
the first time eating an apple. Every day got better
and better, and it was easier and easier to see
a life forward. And so every day now is kind
of like a second chance.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Think that this kind of instantaneous spiritual transformation would have
an expiration date, that before long he'd be back to
watching Bachelor in Paradise in bed with a bucket of
Colonel Sanders on his lap and various dipping sauces neatly
laid out across a pillow, just like everybody else. But
for Jesse, these new feelings didn't fade. Over the next
(07:20):
five months, as his doctors put him back together and
taught him how to walk again, Jesse'd come to see
that life before the accident, the life he tried so
hard to hold onto, wasn't a life lived very deeply,
that it was actually kind of superficial. It was a
life distracting him from what was good about living, and
so to mark the end of one life in the
beginning of another, he changed his name, going from Jesse,
(07:44):
a favorite moniker for TV uncles, to Gavanna, Sanskrit for
giver of light. Four years later, Givanna's life looks quite
different from Jesse's. Jesse was always rushing thinking about the future,
but Gavanna, helped by a cane, move slowly. While Jesse
(08:08):
enjoyed dancing in loud music, Givanna, deaf in one ear
leans him close when spoken to. In spite of living
with constant pain, he likes this new life better than
the old one. In fact, he's grateful for it, which
is why Gavanna often finds himself thinking about the man
who gave him this new life. That is the driver
(08:28):
of the car that hit him.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I've always wanted to meet him. I've always wanted to
sit down across from him and tell him, like, I've
become increasingly grateful for being hit by that car, and
I want to I want to thank him for like
(08:52):
showing me how beautiful life can be, but I also
want to say sorry, really yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Up until this moment, I was with him the idea
of being curious and wanting to meet the driver that
I kind of got, but wanting to thank him apologize
to the guy who ran you over. Giovanna was acting
like Jesus, and for people who give out the Jesus vibe,
like say, Jesus, it doesn't usually end so well. An
(09:25):
eye for an eye is what my wrathful Hebrew Lord instructs.
Even if you don't want to, you have an obligation
take an eyeball for later. You never know it might
come in handy, and to show extra piety, maybe grab
a fistful of eyelash. But at the very least, saith
the Lord. If a guy almost kills you, make him
beg for your forgiveness. You sincerely don't feel like you're
(09:52):
looking for an apology.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I don't blame him for what happened that day. We've
all been late to work, We've all on yellow lights,
like every day that I'd drive on a busy street
with intersections going over thirty. I kind of can imagine
what it would be like for a bicyclist to suddenly
be there.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Givanna says that the driver was never found guilty of
any crime. He wasn't drinking, he wasn't on his phone.
In the end, no fault was ever determined.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
I don't need an apology from him. I think the
only person that can really tell him it's okay, the
only person that maybe he would believe that it's okay
as me.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
And you're not afraid that it feels like a little
too grand, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
I can see that, like, oh, you're trying to love
everybody because you want people to look at you and
like praise you. But the whole point of loving everyone
is almost a selfish thing, because loving people feels good,
giving the people feels good. I don't know why we
(11:02):
would almost shame people for wanting to be that generous.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I think by we, Givanna is politely saying me that
I'm shaming him for acting how people should act. But
I'm more hung up on how people do act, or
at least how I act, which is kind of grabby.
So I want to know if there's anything the driver
can provide for him.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I think the only thing I want from him is
maybe for him to explain that day to me. I've
always been curious about what happened that day.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Givanna doesn't remember anything about that day and knows almost
nothing about the driver, so his mind fixates on the
few bits of information he has. First the police photograph
of the accident. In it, the driver gazes into the camera,
stunned and helpless as Javannah lies bleeding on the street. Second,
the phone call when a policeman called him up with
(12:01):
the news that Javanna would survive, the driver broke down weeping.
And the third thing, the driver's name, Christian. I begin
my search for Christians in the Portland area, and it
turns out to be harder than I'd imagined. So I
start combing through databases, the special kind that require log
(12:25):
in names and service fees. Why do you need money,
Alex Bloomberg asks, while picking his teeth clean of chia seeds.
I want to find a man named Christian, I say, why,
he asks, laughing, as he good naturedly jabs and elbow
into Lisa Chow's ribs. So you can also find a
man named Jewish and a man named Muslim and record
(12:48):
them walking into a bar for your podcast. No, I say,
gnashing my teeth so I can repair the past and
win a damn Peabody award and start getting some respect
around here. Of course, I only say that last part
to myself. The last thing I need is to be
exiled back to Canada, to wander sub zero streets while
(13:10):
drinking frozen milk from a bag, dancing for Canadian nickels,
and begging strangers for podcasting opportunities. Alex takes a sip
of his kombucha and, as he rushes off to a
business meeting, says he'll venmo me the money, and I
pretend to know what that means. I order the police
(13:31):
report of the accident, and while I wait for its arrival,
I continue my online search for Christian. I try pseudonyms,
name variations, anything I can think of. Still no dice. Desperate,
I turn to something called a phone book, which it
turns out is kind of like Facebook, but without photos
of your high school gym teacher's new SKA band. From there,
(13:54):
I get even more old school, actually telephoning the telephone
numbers from the telephone book. Oh, hi, is Christian there.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I know I can't help you. No, we lived here
like that.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
And ventilating department. I'm not able to come to the
phone right now, Mom and somebody else.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Okay, But after several weeks have failed attempt, Hello, Hi
is Christian there?
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Well, I'm sad.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I finally get through to Christian's childhood home. But when
I explain that I'm calling about the car crash and
about Gavannah wanting to meet Christian, his stepmom gets on
the phone.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
We have a lot of concern for Chris on this.
I hear you. I hear you. He has suffered from
PTSD because of that accident. We don't want to make
that any worse. I just say to stave go diving
back into that.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Even after all these years, Christian's parents are still worried
about him. They won't give me his phone number, but
they do agree to pass along my message. So over
the next few months, I check in with them periodically
to see if there's any news to report. Hello, well,
I there, This is Jonathan Goldstein calling back. We spoke
last week weeks ago. I was last week, any movement,
(15:22):
any new news, write him a note and ask him.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
Let me grab a pen here, let me grab well here,
Let me have you a talk to my husban. I'm
going to put my wife on the phone because of
actually again, I'll pass it. I'll let him know you
call it, and I will pass on that you called again.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Eventually I begin feeling like a trusted friend of the family.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Right it's mister, is the silver Stein?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Goldstein? For months I wait to hear from Christian. In
the interim, I discover something called fidget spinners wind Haven, Tornado, fidget,
Golden snitch, Harry Potter, fidget, you name it. To mitigate
(16:09):
my anxiety. I passed the days spinning them. How do
these fidget spin so easily? I wonder? And why is
this sensation between my thumb and index finger more satisfying
than all of my personal relationships and career accomplishments Stacked
end to end, you might call a circle a line
(16:37):
that's lost its way forward, neurotically retracing its footsteps, making
loop after loop after loop after loop after loop after
and then one day after an evening of dervish like spinning.
(16:59):
I emerge from an underground fidget den in the back
room of a Chinatown foot massage parlor, fingers blistered and
eyes squinting at my phone in the cruel noontime sun.
It's then that I see I've received an email Hello.
The subject heading reads, will you be available Friday to
talk on the phone? Thanks Christian. After the break Christian.
(17:26):
On Friday, Christian tells me about life since the accident,
the depression, the panic attacks. He tells me about waking
up in the middle of the night, scared to death
but not sure why. He tells me how he'd begun drinking,
about feeling empty, how sometimes when he's driving he feels
so anxious and lost that he finds it hard to
breathe and has to pull off to the side of
(17:47):
the road. But what surprises me most is when Christian says,
almost word for word, the same thing that Javanna said,
not just that he's changed as a result of the crash,
but that his whole life is different. After the crash,
he dropped out of school. He had his own business,
but gave that up too. Like Giovanna, Christian feels like
(18:09):
a completely different person, and like Javanna, Christian was also
advised by the people closest to him not to revisit
that day, not to meet with the man from the accident,
that such things simply aren't done. And yet in spite
of all that, Christians decided it's something he wants to do.
(18:32):
Lines that meet intersect, and then grow further apart are
called perpendicular lines that reintersect. There is no name for
such a thing. Up until this point, I had been
mostly caught up in Giavanna's story, but in talking with Christian,
I start to worry about his trajectory too. I needed
to talk with someone who knew more about this stuff
(18:53):
than I did. I needed to talk to a real therapist,
and so I reached out to a grief and couples counselor.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
My mother was a therapist, and when she passed away,
I started working with grieving children as a volunteer.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Matt has a calm way of speaking, like a cross
between hal from two thousand and one and someone who
enjoys thoughtfully chewing on the arm of his eyeglasses.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
And a friend suggested that I get another degree in
go back and start professionalizing my interest in that topic.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I liked Matt right away. From the moment we shook hands.
I felt like you could see right through to the
deepest recesses of my mind. I felt naked before this
man's keen psychological gaze, the breeze goose pimpling the nude
flesh of my psyche. I quickly caught Matt up on
the Christian and Javanna situation about the meeting we were
(19:43):
planning and asked what he thought.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, I guess it sounds dicey, like this could go
really wrong. You know, this was a really traumatizing thing
for these people, and they they come at it with
feelings that have not been worked through, and that could
be a disaster.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Matt says, you never really know what you're going to
feel until you actually step foot in the room. Christian
could become re traumatized, Javanna could get angrier than he anticipated.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
You just don't know. I mean, it means facing something difficult,
and people would much rather ignore something difficult, even you know,
even in families, even in loving relationships and couples. You
see that all the time.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
But as we talk about how eager Javanna and Christian
are to meet each other. Matt admits that it's possible
this plan might not be disastrous, that it might actually
be good, that there was something even potentially beautiful about it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
If you're given the opportunity to face the source of
this event that had so much meaning, it's a tremendous
opportunity for reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Matt offers to speak to Christian and Javanna on the
phone separately, just to assess how emotionally prepared they are
to face each other. He also says it'd be advisable
to have an actual therapist on hand when they meet,
and lucky for me, I had just the one. So
you want to go to Portland, I'd love to. You
(21:23):
want to travel with your therapist to Oregon, Alex says
when I ask him to pay for Matt's airfare. He's
not my therapist, I say, blushing, He's a friend. It's
for a story, a business story. Matt and I can
even share a hotel room. Might actually be better stay
up late gossiping about the story. The business story, I
(21:45):
mean Alex's bull of chia seeds arrives and he cuts
me off, agreeing to vimeo me the money, so I
don't know, what do you think of this set up?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I mean, so I should.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Say that I'm in Portland, Matt and I prepare the
hotel room for Javanna and Christian's arrival. I mean, and
then this puts some money equal footing that you know
that they're both down chairs and they don't have to
sit side by side of it, so that an already
dicey situation isn't made diceier by us all having to
sit crisscross apple sauce on my unmade hotel bed. I've
rented a suite with chairs and a COUCHU.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah, that's we're both over there kind of.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I expend my nervous energy by arranging and rearranging the furniture.
Working in such close proximity, I can't help catching wisps
of Matt's aftershave, a masculine, leathery scent that recalls grandfather's
barbering strop. So I would, just, if you're comfortable with it,
I would ask.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You to sit.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
On the couch with me. Yeah, okay, would that be okay?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Our exchange is preempty by a tentative knock at the door. Hello, Hello,
Gavanna arrives first come on in thank You.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
This is man time.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Gravanna's tall and thin, with long red hair and a beard.
The clothing he's wearing his robelike Jesus, like his movement
slow and careful. So Christian is on his way. I
believe he might be a little bit late because of
the parade as it happens today is Portland's Rose Bowl Parade.
I keep waiting for the sound of Alice Cooper's Schools
(23:31):
Out for Summer, performed on tubas and snare drums to
fade into the distance, but it never does. It's like
the parade route this year is stuck in a spiral
of endless laps around our hotel. Outside the window, life
in all its obnoxious splendor, was going on at this point.
(23:52):
Christian still hasn't arrived. Eleven oh five, eleven, ten, eleven, fifteen,
eleven twenty. It begins to set in that Christian might
have had a change of heart and may never show,
and I'd have to return to Gimlet with my tail
between my legs, scamper over to Alex's treadmill desk and
admit he was right and I was wrong, and how
He's always right? He and Lisa chow because they understand
(24:15):
the quote financial risk of flying a therapist across the country,
renting this whole dumb hotel suite, arranging furniture according to
the laws of FENSHUEI which I don't even know at
that are Christian, Hi clue, Christian.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Christian?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
This is Jivanna.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Christian enters the room. He's solid looking and crew cut
it wearing jeans and running shoes. He looks like the
amiable guy in a sports bar whose voice rises easily
above the din when ordering a beer. Standing side by side,
these two young men could not seem less alike. Once
they've taken each other in, they sit down in armchairs,
(24:59):
op at one another, Christian with his hands on his knees,
Givanna sunk into his chair. For a while, they quietly
watch each other. Givanna pulls out a small bottle of
sandalwood oil that he keeps around his neck. He explains
that it's the oil burned in ashrams to maintain a
deep level of meditation and body awareness.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
So I don't know if anyone else wants to smell this,
but I treat it very preciously.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Givanna passes it around and we each smell it. When
we're done, the room returns to silence. Matt looks from
Christian to Javanna. He wonders aloud what it might have
been like had they met under different circumstances.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Imagining you two coincidentally running into each other and then
kind of figuring it out who each other was.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
I know immediately was that I would know immediately. Yeah,
I'll never forget your face.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
It was the most transformative day of both their lives.
And since Christian can't forget anything about it and Javanna
can't remember anything about it, some kind of exchange needs
to happen so that Javanna can reclaim the day and
Christian can finally lay it to rest. Christian takes a
deep breath and begins, I.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
Was going to school. I had an easy day. I
was needed to be in class around twelve o'clock, so
I woke up early and I had pre nutritious meal.
I had oatmeal, a little bit of milk and innate that.
Then I was just driving the school, and then.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
That's where I met you.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Throughout the day, this language will recur. Christian never says
when I hit you or when we crashed. It's almost
always when we met, as in when two lines meet
without agency, as though drawn by the tremulous hand of
a child holding down a ruler in math class.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
So when we met, I remember there being a really
large car in front of me, and I've processed this
moment in my head over and over again. How that
car in front of me blocked the view of my
car because I have a really small on a civic
and you thought you were fine.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
That's how I've understood it, too, is that we didn't
see each other. I guess until it was too late.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I saw the moments when you hit my windshield.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
According to the police report, earbuds were found lodged in
the windshield. The impact of the crash had caused the
roof of the car to cave in.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
For some reason, I was able to get the car parked,
and I rushed to you. Some one yells at me,
called nine one one, called nine one one, get help.
I tried to call nine one one, and I couldn't
do it. I tried over and over and over to
type numbers in the phone, and I was in shock.
(28:22):
Somebody else said they got we got the emergency responders
on the phone. There on the way. We all just
huddled around you, and you were going I think, in
and out of consciousness, and we were trying to cheer
you on. Just stay with it, stay with it. And
everybody around us were we're trying to fight for you.
(28:48):
I was over your body and I was looking down at.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
You, and it was just trying to cheer you.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
All the paramedics came and they were able to get
you in the ambulance and everything, and then I just
remember I just wanted to run away. I just wanted
to get out of there, run away. And one of
the police officers stayed with me and kept me calm,
(29:15):
and I remember, uh, after a few hours, going to
my dad and being like a bad thing happened, and
I cried with him for a long time. Then we
he we prayed for you, and my family prayed for you.
That's pretty much what I remember from that day. It
was very scary for me. I was very worried about you.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I wanted to meet you because you're kind of like
a fable in my head until now, like you're the
man who sent me on this second half of my life.
I've wanted I wanted to know how you are and
how you've.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Been You wanted to let Christian know I know that,
like you were okay too.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Yeah, I think I'm okay as well. Yeah. I don't
know what happened at that intersection, and I can only
believe that I'm at least, if not more, of fifty
percent at fault. And I've been wanting to tell you
for a long time that I'm sorry, that it's all right.
(30:40):
The things I experienced later in the hospital and in
my recovery were very beautiful for me, and I wouldn't
have gotten to experience a lot without that accident. And
it leads me to believe my heart that I love you.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I love you too. Christian gets up on his feet.
Gavanna rises too, and then they meet and it's Christian,
not Givanna, who initiates it. It isn't a half hug,
(31:32):
one of those awkward, one armed things that men do,
but a full on embrace. Later, when I speak to Gavanna,
he'll tell me that Christian didn't strike him as the
huggy type, but that the hug he gave felt like
the hug of someone who'd been saving up his hugs.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
I thought you could pick me up.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I feel like you could pick me up, Gavannah says,
I probably could, says. They sit back down, but continue
to touch each other's fingers from across the coffee table.
They look at each other without saying anything. They stay
quiet like this for what feels like a long time. Later,
I'll ask Jirvanna how he thought it all went, and
(32:16):
he'll say that more than the talking or even the
sense of sorrow, he shared, he was actually touching Christian.
That felt the most powerful, that made him feel the
most connected.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
I think we probably should have met a lot sooner.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
Yeah, I feel like lawyers hash things out before the
people get to him. If I could do it over,
we would have met a lot earlier. I'm happy I
came today.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Only one line has to alter its course, even the
tiniest bit, and eventually two parallel lines will meet. It
could take forever, only happening at some theoretical infinity point,
or it could take four years and happen in a
Portland hotel room.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
You'll be safe, you too, and okay.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Christian sets off to find his girlfriend at the parade,
and shortly after Javanna leaves two to meet up with
friends outside. It's Saturday morning. And the streets of downtown
Portland are bustling in a cab. On our way to lunch,
Matt and I pass a group of young guys on
a street corner. They're carrying shopping bags and look like
they might be discussing where to eat. At the center
(33:41):
of the group is a tall, thin redhead, his hair
and a bun. Is that Javanna? Matt asks, I don't
think so. I say he looks too young. But as
we get closer we see that it is Javanna, out
in the sunshine, shopping with his friends. He's not Jesusy
at all. He's just the kid arise meat. But only
(34:03):
for a second, and then we all continue along our
separate paths.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Now that the Fernitures return into its goodwill home, Now
that the last month's rant is scheming with the damage
to potty, take this moment to deserve.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Man too felt from the Thames.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
A Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein
along with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts,
editing by Jorge just, Alex Bloomberg and Wendy Door. Special
thanks to Emily Condon, Devin Taylor and Jackie Cohen. The
(35:29):
show was mixed by Kate Bolinski, music by Christine Fellows,
John K. Sampson, and Edwich. Additional music credits for this
episode can be found on our website, Gimletmedia dot com
slash Heavyweight. Our theme music is by the Weaker Bands
courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email
(35:50):
us at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia dot com. We'll have a
new episode next week.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Niway garrol O grams on bills.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Are we repeated?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
H
Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm updating all my contacts and my iPhone. Yes, okay,
and I just have you down as Jackie. Yeah, and
it makes me realize I don't actually know your full
name is? What is Jackie short for?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It's short for Jackie.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, but I mean, like what Jackie, Jacqueline.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Jacqueline No, John, it's short for Jackie. And you know
that because you've known me since I'm five?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Why do I have in my mind that the full
name is jack Arandack jack Arondack Cohen. And what's your
middle name?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I don't have one.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Mother mustn't have loved you very much, you know what.
Let's give you a middle name right now?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Why Jackie Stewart, Jackie Lynn, Jackie jack Jackie Jack Cohen.
And I don't care Jackety Jack's bratt sat on a
candlestick from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is
(01:12):
Heavyweight Today's episode, Jesse. Most lives are like parallel lines,
one life existing alongside another, divided only by an apartment
(01:34):
hallway or a cubicle wall, close but never touching. So
I will just ask you to start from the very beginning, Okay,
lines that are parallel don't have endings or beginnings. Lives do, though,
and so do stories. And this story begins in the
(01:54):
summer of twenty thirteen in a town just outside Portland, Oregon.
Jesse had just graduated college and was spending the summer
working in a lab. His life was music festivals, dancing,
getting stoned, and eating as much mac and cheese as
he could. In other words, he was a typical American
twenty one year old whose life was on course.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
And then one day, it's a half day at work,
left the house, got a cup of coffee, was riding
my bike, stopped in this little park to sip on
the coffee before I headed in, And that's the last
thing that I really remember about that day.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Later people will tell Jesse that he plugged an earbud
into his ear, turned on some LCD sound system, got
back on his bicycle, rode to the same four way
intersection that he always.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Did, and rolled out into the intersection and was te
boned by a guy going forty five.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Lines that are perpendicular meet at a right angle, touching
but only once and then never meeting again. As he
lay split out in the middle of the street, Jesse's
heart stopped for a while.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
He was legally dead, and then I came to with
a tracheotomy down my throat, trying to throw up, and
suddenly I was in a hospital room.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Suddenly was actually seventeen days later, seventeen days in a
coma that he woke from, unable to breathe on his own,
with half his body paralyzed. Everyone was saying it looked
like he'd never walk again.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And I don't think people realized I was with it
enough to hear them say those things. Having a surgeon
say to your mom, like you might as well get
rid of his car insurance because he's not gonna ever
drive again. It just seemed like I wasn't gonna look anymore.
(04:00):
I wasn't going to be with anything pretty anymore. My
life I had dreamed about is no longer. Having to
use a bedpan as a twenty one year old, and
the embarrassment that comes with not being able to control
your bladder and having a nurse have to clean you up.
(04:21):
It just feels like, Okay, I'm in pain, I'm causing pain.
My parents aren't going to have a normal life now.
A lot of what I was saying was about trying
to get someone to end my life. I was like,
if it's not going to be a good life, like
I don't want life.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Every day was like this, the same dark thoughts day
after day after day. And then one day Jesse felt
his eyes move independently of each other. His head and
arms began to flail. He thought, this is it. I'm
actually going to die, like.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Oh, I'm getting what I wanted. And the first emotion
that came up was just anger, like this sucks.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
As Jesse began the process of dying, he lost the
ability to hold onto that anger. It was like he
no longer had the strength, and so it let go.
His dying brain started letting everything go, what was happening
around him, all his fears for the future, and with
all that gone, past memories flooded in happy memories, playing
(05:35):
guitar for his younger cousins Emial of Savice in Lima,
camping with his girlfriend in the rain, and drinking champagne
as their tent slowly filled with water.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
I think it was rather spontaneous, though I don't remember
putting like one and one together. I think it was
like this this rush that happened in a matter of moments,
all of the people that had ever wished well for me,
or all of the hospital visitors I had made me
(06:07):
realize that I had a really fortunate life.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Jesse ended up surviving, and with his new life came
in appreciation for all the things he'd never noticed before.
The blue of the sky through the hospital window looked
bluer somehow, the touch of a friend's hand at his
bedside stirred his heart in a deeper way. When he
was helped outside, the world below his feet felt like
a strange and beautiful planet. Even the most familiar things
(06:39):
were new again.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
If I had an apple that day, it was like
the first time eating an apple. Every day got better
and better, and it was easier and easier to see
a life forward. And so every day now is kind
of like a second chance.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Think that this kind of instantaneous spiritual transformation would have
an expiration date, that before long he'd be back to
watching Bachelor in Paradise in bed with a bucket of
Colonel Sanders on his lap and various dipping sauces neatly
laid out across a pillow, just like everybody else. But
for Jesse, these new feelings didn't fade. Over the next
(07:20):
five months, as his doctors put him back together and
taught him how to walk again, Jesse'd come to see
that life before the accident, the life he tried so
hard to hold onto, wasn't a life lived very deeply,
that it was actually kind of superficial. It was a
life distracting him from what was good about living, and
so to mark the end of one life in the
beginning of another, he changed his name, going from Jesse,
(07:44):
a favorite moniker for TV uncles, to Gavanna, Sanskrit for
giver of light. Four years later, Givanna's life looks quite
different from Jesse's. Jesse was always rushing thinking about the future,
but Gavanna, helped by a cane, move slowly. While Jesse
(08:08):
enjoyed dancing in loud music, Givanna, deaf in one ear
leans him close when spoken to. In spite of living
with constant pain, he likes this new life better than
the old one. In fact, he's grateful for it, which
is why Gavanna often finds himself thinking about the man
who gave him this new life. That is the driver
(08:28):
of the car that hit him.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I've always wanted to meet him. I've always wanted to
sit down across from him and tell him, like, I've
become increasingly grateful for being hit by that car, and
I want to I want to thank him for like
(08:52):
showing me how beautiful life can be, but I also
want to say sorry, really yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Up until this moment, I was with him the idea
of being curious and wanting to meet the driver that
I kind of got, but wanting to thank him apologize
to the guy who ran you over. Giovanna was acting
like Jesus, and for people who give out the Jesus vibe,
like say, Jesus, it doesn't usually end so well. An
(09:25):
eye for an eye is what my wrathful Hebrew Lord instructs.
Even if you don't want to, you have an obligation
take an eyeball for later. You never know it might
come in handy, and to show extra piety, maybe grab
a fistful of eyelash. But at the very least, saith
the Lord. If a guy almost kills you, make him
beg for your forgiveness. You sincerely don't feel like you're
(09:52):
looking for an apology.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I don't blame him for what happened that day. We've
all been late to work, We've all on yellow lights,
like every day that I'd drive on a busy street
with intersections going over thirty. I kind of can imagine
what it would be like for a bicyclist to suddenly
be there.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Givanna says that the driver was never found guilty of
any crime. He wasn't drinking, he wasn't on his phone.
In the end, no fault was ever determined.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
I don't need an apology from him. I think the
only person that can really tell him it's okay, the
only person that maybe he would believe that it's okay
as me.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
And you're not afraid that it feels like a little
too grand, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
I can see that, like, oh, you're trying to love
everybody because you want people to look at you and
like praise you. But the whole point of loving everyone
is almost a selfish thing, because loving people feels good,
giving the people feels good. I don't know why we
(11:02):
would almost shame people for wanting to be that generous.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I think by we, Givanna is politely saying me that
I'm shaming him for acting how people should act. But
I'm more hung up on how people do act, or
at least how I act, which is kind of grabby.
So I want to know if there's anything the driver
can provide for him.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I think the only thing I want from him is
maybe for him to explain that day to me. I've
always been curious about what happened that day.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Givanna doesn't remember anything about that day and knows almost
nothing about the driver, so his mind fixates on the
few bits of information he has. First the police photograph
of the accident. In it, the driver gazes into the camera,
stunned and helpless as Javannah lies bleeding on the street. Second,
the phone call when a policeman called him up with
(12:01):
the news that Javanna would survive, the driver broke down weeping.
And the third thing, the driver's name, Christian. I begin
my search for Christians in the Portland area, and it
turns out to be harder than I'd imagined. So I
start combing through databases, the special kind that require log
(12:25):
in names and service fees. Why do you need money,
Alex Bloomberg asks, while picking his teeth clean of chia seeds.
I want to find a man named Christian, I say, why,
he asks, laughing, as he good naturedly jabs and elbow
into Lisa Chow's ribs. So you can also find a
man named Jewish and a man named Muslim and record
(12:48):
them walking into a bar for your podcast. No, I say,
gnashing my teeth so I can repair the past and
win a damn Peabody award and start getting some respect
around here. Of course, I only say that last part
to myself. The last thing I need is to be
exiled back to Canada, to wander sub zero streets while
(13:10):
drinking frozen milk from a bag, dancing for Canadian nickels,
and begging strangers for podcasting opportunities. Alex takes a sip
of his kombucha and, as he rushes off to a
business meeting, says he'll venmo me the money, and I
pretend to know what that means. I order the police
(13:31):
report of the accident, and while I wait for its arrival,
I continue my online search for Christian. I try pseudonyms,
name variations, anything I can think of. Still no dice. Desperate,
I turn to something called a phone book, which it
turns out is kind of like Facebook, but without photos
of your high school gym teacher's new SKA band. From there,
(13:54):
I get even more old school, actually telephoning the telephone
numbers from the telephone book. Oh, hi, is Christian there.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I know I can't help you. No, we lived here
like that.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
And ventilating department. I'm not able to come to the
phone right now, Mom and somebody else.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Okay, But after several weeks have failed attempt, Hello, Hi
is Christian there?
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Well, I'm sad.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I finally get through to Christian's childhood home. But when
I explain that I'm calling about the car crash and
about Gavannah wanting to meet Christian, his stepmom gets on
the phone.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
We have a lot of concern for Chris on this.
I hear you. I hear you. He has suffered from
PTSD because of that accident. We don't want to make
that any worse. I just say to stave go diving
back into that.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Even after all these years, Christian's parents are still worried
about him. They won't give me his phone number, but
they do agree to pass along my message. So over
the next few months, I check in with them periodically
to see if there's any news to report. Hello, well,
I there, This is Jonathan Goldstein calling back. We spoke
last week weeks ago. I was last week, any movement,
(15:22):
any new news, write him a note and ask him.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
Let me grab a pen here, let me grab well here,
Let me have you a talk to my husban. I'm
going to put my wife on the phone because of
actually again, I'll pass it. I'll let him know you
call it, and I will pass on that you called again.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Eventually I begin feeling like a trusted friend of the family.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Right it's mister, is the silver Stein?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Goldstein? For months I wait to hear from Christian. In
the interim, I discover something called fidget spinners wind Haven, Tornado, fidget,
Golden snitch, Harry Potter, fidget, you name it. To mitigate
(16:09):
my anxiety. I passed the days spinning them. How do
these fidget spin so easily? I wonder? And why is
this sensation between my thumb and index finger more satisfying
than all of my personal relationships and career accomplishments Stacked
end to end, you might call a circle a line
(16:37):
that's lost its way forward, neurotically retracing its footsteps, making
loop after loop after loop after loop after loop after
and then one day after an evening of dervish like spinning.
(16:59):
I emerge from an underground fidget den in the back
room of a Chinatown foot massage parlor, fingers blistered and
eyes squinting at my phone in the cruel noontime sun.
It's then that I see I've received an email Hello.
The subject heading reads, will you be available Friday to
talk on the phone? Thanks Christian. After the break Christian.
(17:26):
On Friday, Christian tells me about life since the accident,
the depression, the panic attacks. He tells me about waking
up in the middle of the night, scared to death
but not sure why. He tells me how he'd begun drinking,
about feeling empty, how sometimes when he's driving he feels
so anxious and lost that he finds it hard to
breathe and has to pull off to the side of
(17:47):
the road. But what surprises me most is when Christian says,
almost word for word, the same thing that Javanna said,
not just that he's changed as a result of the crash,
but that his whole life is different. After the crash,
he dropped out of school. He had his own business,
but gave that up too. Like Giovanna, Christian feels like
(18:09):
a completely different person, and like Javanna, Christian was also
advised by the people closest to him not to revisit
that day, not to meet with the man from the accident,
that such things simply aren't done. And yet in spite
of all that, Christians decided it's something he wants to do.
(18:32):
Lines that meet intersect, and then grow further apart are
called perpendicular lines that reintersect. There is no name for
such a thing. Up until this point, I had been
mostly caught up in Giavanna's story, but in talking with Christian,
I start to worry about his trajectory too. I needed
to talk with someone who knew more about this stuff
(18:53):
than I did. I needed to talk to a real therapist,
and so I reached out to a grief and couples counselor.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
My mother was a therapist, and when she passed away,
I started working with grieving children as a volunteer.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Matt has a calm way of speaking, like a cross
between hal from two thousand and one and someone who
enjoys thoughtfully chewing on the arm of his eyeglasses.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
And a friend suggested that I get another degree in
go back and start professionalizing my interest in that topic.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I liked Matt right away. From the moment we shook hands.
I felt like you could see right through to the
deepest recesses of my mind. I felt naked before this
man's keen psychological gaze, the breeze goose pimpling the nude
flesh of my psyche. I quickly caught Matt up on
the Christian and Javanna situation about the meeting we were
(19:43):
planning and asked what he thought.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, I guess it sounds dicey, like this could go
really wrong. You know, this was a really traumatizing thing
for these people, and they they come at it with
feelings that have not been worked through, and that could
be a disaster.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Matt says, you never really know what you're going to
feel until you actually step foot in the room. Christian
could become re traumatized, Javanna could get angrier than he anticipated.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
You just don't know. I mean, it means facing something difficult,
and people would much rather ignore something difficult, even you know,
even in families, even in loving relationships and couples. You
see that all the time.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
But as we talk about how eager Javanna and Christian
are to meet each other. Matt admits that it's possible
this plan might not be disastrous, that it might actually
be good, that there was something even potentially beautiful about it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
If you're given the opportunity to face the source of
this event that had so much meaning, it's a tremendous
opportunity for reconciliation.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Matt offers to speak to Christian and Javanna on the
phone separately, just to assess how emotionally prepared they are
to face each other. He also says it'd be advisable
to have an actual therapist on hand when they meet,
and lucky for me, I had just the one. So
you want to go to Portland, I'd love to. You
(21:23):
want to travel with your therapist to Oregon, Alex says
when I ask him to pay for Matt's airfare. He's
not my therapist, I say, blushing, He's a friend. It's
for a story, a business story. Matt and I can
even share a hotel room. Might actually be better stay
up late gossiping about the story. The business story, I
(21:45):
mean Alex's bull of chia seeds arrives and he cuts
me off, agreeing to vimeo me the money, so I
don't know, what do you think of this set up?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I mean, so I should.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Say that I'm in Portland, Matt and I prepare the
hotel room for Javanna and Christian's arrival. I mean, and
then this puts some money equal footing that you know
that they're both down chairs and they don't have to
sit side by side of it, so that an already
dicey situation isn't made diceier by us all having to
sit crisscross apple sauce on my unmade hotel bed. I've
rented a suite with chairs and a COUCHU.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah, that's we're both over there kind of.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I expend my nervous energy by arranging and rearranging the furniture.
Working in such close proximity, I can't help catching wisps
of Matt's aftershave, a masculine, leathery scent that recalls grandfather's
barbering strop. So I would, just, if you're comfortable with it,
I would ask.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You to sit.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
On the couch with me. Yeah, okay, would that be okay?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Our exchange is preempty by a tentative knock at the door. Hello, Hello,
Gavanna arrives first come on in thank You.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
This is man time.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Gravanna's tall and thin, with long red hair and a beard.
The clothing he's wearing his robelike Jesus, like his movement
slow and careful. So Christian is on his way. I
believe he might be a little bit late because of
the parade as it happens today is Portland's Rose Bowl Parade.
I keep waiting for the sound of Alice Cooper's Schools
(23:31):
Out for Summer, performed on tubas and snare drums to
fade into the distance, but it never does. It's like
the parade route this year is stuck in a spiral
of endless laps around our hotel. Outside the window, life
in all its obnoxious splendor, was going on at this point.
(23:52):
Christian still hasn't arrived. Eleven oh five, eleven, ten, eleven, fifteen,
eleven twenty. It begins to set in that Christian might
have had a change of heart and may never show,
and I'd have to return to Gimlet with my tail
between my legs, scamper over to Alex's treadmill desk and
admit he was right and I was wrong, and how
He's always right? He and Lisa chow because they understand
(24:15):
the quote financial risk of flying a therapist across the country,
renting this whole dumb hotel suite, arranging furniture according to
the laws of FENSHUEI which I don't even know at
that are Christian, Hi clue, Christian.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Christian?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
This is Jivanna.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Christian enters the room. He's solid looking and crew cut
it wearing jeans and running shoes. He looks like the
amiable guy in a sports bar whose voice rises easily
above the din when ordering a beer. Standing side by side,
these two young men could not seem less alike. Once
they've taken each other in, they sit down in armchairs,
(24:59):
op at one another, Christian with his hands on his knees,
Givanna sunk into his chair. For a while, they quietly
watch each other. Givanna pulls out a small bottle of
sandalwood oil that he keeps around his neck. He explains
that it's the oil burned in ashrams to maintain a
deep level of meditation and body awareness.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
So I don't know if anyone else wants to smell this,
but I treat it very preciously.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Givanna passes it around and we each smell it. When
we're done, the room returns to silence. Matt looks from
Christian to Javanna. He wonders aloud what it might have
been like had they met under different circumstances.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Imagining you two coincidentally running into each other and then
kind of figuring it out who each other was.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
I know immediately was that I would know immediately. Yeah,
I'll never forget your face.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
It was the most transformative day of both their lives.
And since Christian can't forget anything about it and Javanna
can't remember anything about it, some kind of exchange needs
to happen so that Javanna can reclaim the day and
Christian can finally lay it to rest. Christian takes a
deep breath and begins, I.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
Was going to school. I had an easy day. I
was needed to be in class around twelve o'clock, so
I woke up early and I had pre nutritious meal.
I had oatmeal, a little bit of milk and innate that.
Then I was just driving the school, and then.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
That's where I met you.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Throughout the day, this language will recur. Christian never says
when I hit you or when we crashed. It's almost
always when we met, as in when two lines meet
without agency, as though drawn by the tremulous hand of
a child holding down a ruler in math class.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
So when we met, I remember there being a really
large car in front of me, and I've processed this
moment in my head over and over again. How that
car in front of me blocked the view of my
car because I have a really small on a civic
and you thought you were fine.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
That's how I've understood it, too, is that we didn't
see each other. I guess until it was too late.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I saw the moments when you hit my windshield.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
According to the police report, earbuds were found lodged in
the windshield. The impact of the crash had caused the
roof of the car to cave in.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
For some reason, I was able to get the car parked,
and I rushed to you. Some one yells at me,
called nine one one, called nine one one, get help.
I tried to call nine one one, and I couldn't
do it. I tried over and over and over to
type numbers in the phone, and I was in shock.
(28:22):
Somebody else said they got we got the emergency responders
on the phone. There on the way. We all just
huddled around you, and you were going I think, in
and out of consciousness, and we were trying to cheer
you on. Just stay with it, stay with it. And
everybody around us were we're trying to fight for you.
(28:48):
I was over your body and I was looking down at.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
You, and it was just trying to cheer you.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
All the paramedics came and they were able to get
you in the ambulance and everything, and then I just
remember I just wanted to run away. I just wanted
to get out of there, run away. And one of
the police officers stayed with me and kept me calm,
(29:15):
and I remember, uh, after a few hours, going to
my dad and being like a bad thing happened, and
I cried with him for a long time. Then we
he we prayed for you, and my family prayed for you.
That's pretty much what I remember from that day. It
was very scary for me. I was very worried about you.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I wanted to meet you because you're kind of like
a fable in my head until now, like you're the
man who sent me on this second half of my life.
I've wanted I wanted to know how you are and
how you've.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Been You wanted to let Christian know I know that,
like you were okay too.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Yeah, I think I'm okay as well. Yeah. I don't
know what happened at that intersection, and I can only
believe that I'm at least, if not more, of fifty
percent at fault. And I've been wanting to tell you
for a long time that I'm sorry, that it's all right.
(30:40):
The things I experienced later in the hospital and in
my recovery were very beautiful for me, and I wouldn't
have gotten to experience a lot without that accident. And
it leads me to believe my heart that I love you.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I love you too. Christian gets up on his feet.
Gavanna rises too, and then they meet and it's Christian,
not Givanna, who initiates it. It isn't a half hug,
(31:32):
one of those awkward, one armed things that men do,
but a full on embrace. Later, when I speak to Gavanna,
he'll tell me that Christian didn't strike him as the
huggy type, but that the hug he gave felt like
the hug of someone who'd been saving up his hugs.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
I thought you could pick me up.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I feel like you could pick me up, Gavannah says,
I probably could, says. They sit back down, but continue
to touch each other's fingers from across the coffee table.
They look at each other without saying anything. They stay
quiet like this for what feels like a long time. Later,
I'll ask Jirvanna how he thought it all went, and
(32:16):
he'll say that more than the talking or even the
sense of sorrow, he shared, he was actually touching Christian.
That felt the most powerful, that made him feel the
most connected.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
I think we probably should have met a lot sooner.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
Yeah, I feel like lawyers hash things out before the
people get to him. If I could do it over,
we would have met a lot earlier. I'm happy I
came today.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Only one line has to alter its course, even the
tiniest bit, and eventually two parallel lines will meet. It
could take forever, only happening at some theoretical infinity point,
or it could take four years and happen in a
Portland hotel room.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
You'll be safe, you too, and okay.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Christian sets off to find his girlfriend at the parade,
and shortly after Javanna leaves two to meet up with
friends outside. It's Saturday morning. And the streets of downtown
Portland are bustling in a cab. On our way to lunch,
Matt and I pass a group of young guys on
a street corner. They're carrying shopping bags and look like
they might be discussing where to eat. At the center
(33:41):
of the group is a tall, thin redhead, his hair
and a bun. Is that Javanna? Matt asks, I don't
think so. I say he looks too young. But as
we get closer we see that it is Javanna, out
in the sunshine, shopping with his friends. He's not Jesusy
at all. He's just the kid arise meat. But only
(34:03):
for a second, and then we all continue along our
separate paths.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Now that the Fernitures return into its goodwill home, Now
that the last month's rant is scheming with the damage
to potty, take this moment to deserve.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Man too felt from the Thames.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
A Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein
along with Khalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts,
editing by Jorge just, Alex Bloomberg and Wendy Door. Special
thanks to Emily Condon, Devin Taylor and Jackie Cohen. The
(35:29):
show was mixed by Kate Bolinski, music by Christine Fellows,
John K. Sampson, and Edwich. Additional music credits for this
episode can be found on our website, Gimletmedia dot com
slash Heavyweight. Our theme music is by the Weaker Bands
courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by
Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email
(35:50):
us at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia dot com. We'll have a
new episode next week.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Niway garrol O grams on bills.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Are we repeated?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
H
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