Heavyweight - #12 Jesse

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

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

Hi, how are you? I'm updating all my contacts in 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. What is Jackie short for? It's short for Jackie.

No, but I mean like what? Jackie. Jacqueline? No, John, it's short for Jackie. No, but I mean like what? Jackie. 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 Jackarondack? Jackarondack 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 Spratt sat on a candlestick. Brat sat on a candlestick. From Gimlet 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 2013 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 21-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 t-boned by a guy going 45. Lines that are perpendicular meet at a right angle, touching, but only once, and then never meeting again. As he lay splayed 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 17 days later,

17 days in a coma that he awoke 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 going to ever drive again. It just seemed like I wasn't going to look pretty anymore. I wasn't going to be with anything pretty anymore.

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 21-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. 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 on to 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, a meal of ceviche 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 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 an 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. You'd 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'd tried so hard to hold on to, 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 and the beginning of another, he changed his name, going from Jesse, a favorite moniker for TV uncles, to Jivana, Sanskrit for giver of light. Four years later, Jivana's life looks quite different from Jesse's. Jesse was always rushing, thinking about the future. But Giovanna, helped by a cane, moved slowly. While Jesse enjoyed dancing and loud music, Giovanna, deaf in one ear, leans in 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 Giovanna 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 thank him for showing me how beautiful life can be. But I also want to say

sorry. Really? 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-y 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 run yellow lights. Like, every day that I drive on a busy street with intersections going over 30, I kind of can imagine what it would be like for a bicyclist to suddenly be there.

Giovanna 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 is 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 to people feels good I don't know why we would almost shame people for wanting to be that generous.

I think by we, Giovanna 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. Giovanna 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 Giovanna lies bleeding on the street. Second, the phone call. When a policeman called him up with the news that Giovanna 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 login 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 an 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.

Hello? Hi, is Christian there? from the telephone book. Hello? Hi, is Christian there? No, I can't help you. Nobody lives here like that. Hey, this is Carol. This is the heating and ventilating department. I'm not able to come to the phone right now. I'm bothering somebody else, okay?

But after several weeks of failed attempts... Hello? Hi, is Christian there? Well, I'm his dad. I finally get through to Christian's childhood home. But when I explain that I'm calling about the car crash and about Giovanna 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 hate to see him 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? Hello? Hello? Hi there, this is Jonathan Goldstein calling back. We spoke last week. A couple weeks ago, I was...

Last week. Any movement? Any new news? Write him a note and ask him to give you a text. I'll send him a text. Let me grab a pen here. Let me grab a pencil. Well, here, let me have you talk to my husband. I'm going to put my wife on the phone because I'm actually... Well, again, I'll pass it on. I'll let him know you called again.

And I will pass on that you called again. Eventually, I begin feeling like a trusted friend of the family. Correct? It's Mr... Is it Silverstein? Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein. For months, I wait to hear from Christian. In the interim,

I discover something called fidget spinners. Windhaven Tornado Fidget, Golden Snitch, Harry Potter Fidget, Golden Snitch, Harry Potter Fidget, you name it. To mitigate my anxiety, I pass the days spinning them. How do these fidgets 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 loop after loop after loop. And then one day,

after an evening of dervish-like spinning, I emerged 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 Giovanna 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 Giovanna, 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, Christian's decided it's something he wants to do. Lines that meet, intersect, and then grow further apart are called perpendicular.

Lines that re-intersect? There is no name for such a thing. Up until this point, I'd been mostly caught up in Giovanna'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 2001 and someone who enjoys thoughtfully chewing on the arm of his eyeglasses.

And a friend suggested that I get another degree and go back and start professionalizing my interest in that topic. I liked Matt right away. From the moment we shook hands, I felt like he 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 Giovanna 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 may 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. Giovanna 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 in families, even in loving relationships, and couples, you see that all the time. But as we talk about how eager Giovanna 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. 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 Giovanna 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 bowl 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 setup? I mean, so, I should say that I'm going to put... In Portland, Matt and I prepare the hotel room for Giovanna and Christian's arrival. So that an already dicey situation isn't made dicier by us all having to sit crisscross applesauce on my unmade hotel bed,

I've rented a suite with chairs and a couch. Yeah, that's good. And 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 preempted

by a tentative knock at the door. Hello. Giovanna arrives first. Come on in. Thank you. at the door. Hello. Giovanna arrives first. Come on in. Thank you. This is Matt. Hi. Giovanna's tall and thin, with long red hair and a beard.

The clothing he's wearing is robe-like, Jesus-like. His movements 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 School's 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. 1105, 1110, 1115, 1120. 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 Feng Shui, which I don't even know what that...

Christian! Hi. Hello. Christian, I'm Jonathan. Jonathan? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Come on in.

Hello. Christian, this is Giovanna. Giovanna. Christian enters the room. He's solid looking and crew-cutted, 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 opposite one another. Christian with his hands on his knees, Giovanna sunk into his chair. For a while, they quietly watch each other. Giovanna 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.

Giovanna passes it around, and we each smell it. When we're done, the room returns to silence. Matt looks from Christian to Giovanna. 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'd know immediately. Was that? I would know immediately.

Yeah? Why? 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 Giovanna can't remember anything about it, some kind of exchange needs to happen so that Giovanna 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 needed to be in class

around 12 o'clock. So I woke up early and I had a pretty nutritious meal. I had oatmeal, a little bit of milk, and then ate that. Then I was just driving to school. 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 Honda Civic. And you thought you were fine. small Honda 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 moment 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. Someone yells at me, call 911. Call 911, get help. I tried to call 911 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 we got the emergency responders on the phone, they're 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,'re trying to fight for you um i was over your body and i was looking down at you and i was just trying to cheer you on 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 after a few hours going to my dad and being like, a bad thing happened. I cried with him for a long time. Then 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 to know how you are and how you've been. 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, 50% at fault.

And I've been wanting to tell you for a long time that I'm sorry, and 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 with my heart that I love you. I love you too. Christian gets up on his feet. Giovanna rises too.

And then they meet and it's Christian, not Giovanna, 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 Giovanna, 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 feel like you could pick me up, Giovanna says. I probably could, Christian 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 Giovanna how he thought it all went, and he'll say that, more than the talking or even the sense of sorrow he'd 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 them. 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. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Christian sets off to find his girlfriend at the parade, and shortly after, Giovanna leaves too, 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 in a bun. Is that Giovanna? Matt asks. I don't think so, I say. He looks too young. But as we get closer, we see that it is Giovanna. Out in the sunshine, shopping with his friends. He's not Jesus-y at all. He's just a kid. Our eyes meet, but only for a second. And then, we all continue along our separate paths. guitar solo Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit

Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried Or felt around for far too much From things that accidentally touched Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts. Editing by Jorge Just, Alex Bloomberg, and Wendy Doerr. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Devin Taylor, and Jackie Cohen.

The show was mixed by Kate Balinski. Music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, and Ed Wynn. Additional music credits for this episode can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme music is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. And our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. We'll have a new episode next week. Parallelograms of light On walls that we repainted white