⬆️ DAD⬆️ audio ------------------------------------- ⬇️MOM⬇️ words
What is your first memory of Charlie?
I have more than one.
I was shucking oysters at a bar on Saint-Laurent in Montreal.
It was deep Montreal winter, so cold!
I wanna say it was late January and I was shucking oysters with my boyfriend from Prince Edward Island.
We had two cases of oysters that we were sharing with this lively crowd and he was very excited to introduce me to this woman who he met through his bike-trip-guiding days and sure enough she showed up.
She came with her brother Charlie and I don’t really remember Charlie but I remember meeting her and she had this beautiful smile and I saw how much my boyfriend liked her!
SO … the second time I met him, I did not even see his face. I just heard his voice as I was driving up Spadina (Toronto) going North.
It was a very hot Summer day like the kind of hot that you can see the flicking heat waves off of the concrete.
I was driving with the windows rolled up of my boyfriend‘s car. I think we were having a fight. We were like in a heated conversation. I don’t remember about what - but we were listening to house music, Mark Farina mushroom jazz.
And all of a sudden we stopped at a light and I suddenly heard this knock on the window on the driver side — Gabe rolled down the window and this guy said “hey buddy your car is on fire!” 🔥
And I’m over here thinking 🄵𝑼ck (the music was pretty loud) but I heard that! and Gabe asked, “WHAT?” and he’s like “yeah I can see flames flicking from underneath your car”.
And so we drove off and Gabe pulled into a one-way street - the wrong way - cause we just thought we better get out of the car right away.
We pulled into this one-way street, got out, shut the door, walked away like maybe 20 yards and the car exploded like in the movies!!
Everyone around us scattered - thank goodness that guy knocked on our window.
The car got removed by flatbed truck and that was that.
It wasn’t until probably 2 1/2 years later …. I had broken up with Gabe … I was in a new relationship with this man, Charlie, and we were at a cocktail party; talking in our own circles but we could just about hear each other.
I remember hearing Charlie have a conversation.
I guess I wasn’t super interested in my conversation. I was paying attention to his.
He was talking about “things that happened in real life that you see in movies - like police chases and and cars blowing up”
And he said, “oh I saw a car blow up once in front of my eyes.”
And he explained the story of seeing a car with flames coming from underneath and knocking on the window and I remember feeling this crazy pit in my stomach.
And my face went bright white (yes, even whiter).
I went over and tapped his shoulder and I said oh my gosh.
I was in that car, that was me.
Yeah.
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