Hi, how are you.
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?
It's short for Jackie.
No, but I mean, like what Jackie, Jacqueline.
Jacqueline No, John, it's short for Jackie. And you know that because you've known me since I'm five?
Why do I have in my mind that the full name is jack Arandack jack Arondack Cohen. And what's your middle name?
I don't have one.
Mother mustn't have loved you very much, you know what. Let's give you a middle name right now?
How about that?
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 Heavyweight Today's episode, Jesse. Most lives are like parallel lines, one life existing alongside another, divided only by an apartment 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 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.
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.
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.
Did, and rolled out into the intersection and was te boned by a guy going forty five.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
Oh, I'm getting what I wanted. And the first emotion that came up was just anger, like this sucks.
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 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.
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 realize that I had a really fortunate life.
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 were new again.
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.
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 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, 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 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 of the car that hit him.
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 showing me how beautiful life can be, but I also want to say sorry, really yeah, yeah.
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 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 looking for an apology.
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.
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.
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.
And you're not afraid that it feels like a little too grand, you know what I mean.
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 would almost shame people for wanting to be that generous.
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.
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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, I get even more old school, actually telephoning the telephone numbers from the telephone book. Oh, hi, is Christian there.
I know I can't help you. No, we lived here like that.
And ventilating department. I'm not able to come to the phone right now, Mom and somebody else.
Okay, But after several weeks have failed attempt, Hello, Hi is Christian there?
Well, I'm sad.
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.
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.
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, any new news, write him a note and ask him.
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.
Eventually I begin feeling like a trusted friend of the family.
Right it's mister, is the silver Stein?
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 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 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.
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. 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 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 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.
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 than I did. I needed to talk to a real therapist, and so I reached out to a grief and couples counselor.
My mother was a therapist, and when she passed away, I started working with grieving children as a volunteer.
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.
And a friend suggested that I get another degree in go back and start professionalizing my interest in that topic.
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 planning and asked what he thought.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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?
I mean, so I should.
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.
Yeah, that's we're both over there kind of.
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.
You to sit.
On the couch with me. Yeah, okay, would that be okay?
Yeah?
Our exchange is preempty by a tentative knock at the door. Hello, Hello, Gavanna arrives first come on in thank You.
This is man time.
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 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. 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 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.
Christian?
This is Jivanna.
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, 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.
So I don't know if anyone else wants to smell this, but I treat it very preciously.
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.
Imagining you two coincidentally running into each other and then kind of figuring it out who each other was.
I know immediately was that I would know immediately. Yeah, I'll never forget your face.
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.
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.
That's where I met you.
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.
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.
That's how I've understood it, too, is that we didn't see each other. I guess until it was too late.
I saw the moments when you hit my windshield.
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.
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. 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. I was over your body and I was looking down at.
You, and it was just trying to cheer you.
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, 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.
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.
Been You wanted to let Christian know I know that, like you were okay too.
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. 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.
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, 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.
I thought you could pick me up.
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 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.
I think we probably should have met a lot sooner.
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.
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.
You'll be safe, you too, and okay.
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 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 for a second, and then we all continue along our separate paths.
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.
Man too felt from the Thames.
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 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 us at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia dot com. We'll have a new episode next week.
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