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Charlie Rivera (Preferences and Trivia)

Carlos Santiago “Charlie” Rivera carried his Puerto Rican and Nuyorican identity into his music, clothing, jewelry, and daily surroundings. His preferences also changed with the practical effects of chronic illness, including gastroparesis, ME/CFS, migraine, and sensory overload.

Food and Drink

Gastroparesis progressively limited Charlie’s oral intake. A GJ tube became necessary around 2031–2032 and later provided his primary nutrition. Food nevertheless remained part of his cultural memory: the smell of alcapurrias from the carts on 82nd Street was among the details he associated with Jackson Heights.

Before gastroparesis sharply narrowed his oral intake, Charlie favored Reina’s arroz con gandules, pernil, Christmas pasteles, tostones with garlic mojo, alcapurrias, bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches without ketchup and with extra salt, and properly made café con leche. He disliked olives.

Charlie learned Puerto Rican cooking from Reina and could prepare her core recipes without written measurements. He continued cooking for other people after he could no longer eat many of the dishes himself.

Charlie made café con leche with a stovetop moka pot and disliked pod coffee. He also objected to ketchup on bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches.

Music

Charlie’s listening ranged across jazz, salsa, reggaeton, Latin trap, classical music, R&B, hip-hop, and pop. His playlists reflected both professional listening and personal associations rather than a single genre boundary.

Artists he returned to included Bad Bunny, Héctor Lavoe, Celia Cruz, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Bon Iver, Nujabes, and Nils Frahm. Selected Taylor Swift songs also appeared on personal playlists despite Charlie’s reluctance to discuss that preference around some friends.

Bad Bunny’s 2026 Super Bowl halftime performance had particular significance for Charlie. Hearing Spanish and Puerto Rican musical traditions on that stage moved him to tears, and he responded strongly to the performance’s use of the light-blue Puerto Rican flag and its movement among reggaeton, salsa, bomba, plena, and orchestral textures.

Charlie named several pieces of equipment after musicians: his tenor saxophone was Celia, his drum pad was Tito, and his MacBook Air was Chispa. His feeding pump was named Selena.

Charlie rejected smooth jazz as jazz and objected when Bad Bunny’s work was reduced to “just reggaeton.” His recurring karaoke choice was Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” which he performed with choreography from both standing and seated positions.

Colors and Textures

The light-blue Puerto Rican flag carried personal and cultural meaning for Charlie. During the 2026 halftime show, he recognized the flag immediately and connected it with the one kept by his grandmother Lourdes and displayed by his mother.

Charlie favored warm and saturated colors, including gold, deep red, burnt orange, hot pink, electric blue, and rainbow combinations. Red, white, blue, and the light-blue Puerto Rican flag also appeared in his clothing, accessories, and homes.

Soft, worn clothing could serve as a practical comfort. Charlie repeatedly wore Logan’s oversized Howard University hoodie; by his Juilliard junior year, its cotton had softened through repeated washing and use. During flares, he avoided tags, prominent seams, rough collars, and stiff clothing and chose loose, soft garments instead.

Charlie preferred warm, layered, lived-in rooms with color, photographs, instruments, candles, and works in progress over stark minimalism.

Scents

A lavender candle was part of Charlie’s Juilliard dorm environment during his junior year. Charlie collected candles and had preferences about wax, wicks, and scent throw. Food scents could also evoke specific places, including sofrito, café con leche, alcapurrias, and arroz con gandules in his associations with home and family. He also favored lavender, Logan’s detergent, and the wood-and-rosin smell of practice rooms. He disliked hospital antiseptic.

Shows, Films, and Reading

Charlie watched ‘’The Big Bang Theory’‘, ‘’Brooklyn Nine-Nine’‘, ‘’Schitt’s Creek’‘, ‘’The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’‘, and ‘’Jane the Virgin’‘. He also watched ‘’Love Island’’ with active Spanglish commentary.

Films he revisited included ‘’Coco’‘, ‘’In the Heights’‘, and ‘’West Side Story’‘, as well as documentaries about musicians. He generally avoided medical dramas, with ‘’Scrubs’’ as an exception.

Charlie preferred audiobooks to sustained print reading and gravitated toward memoirs and biographies of musicians.

Style and Appearance

Charlie’s presentation included bright or glittered clothing, eyeliner, rings, mismatched earrings, bandanas, and customized mobility and medical equipment. His everyday clothing often included oversized hoodies, joggers or other soft trousers without restrictive waistbands, and easy-on sneakers. For formal events and performances, he wore tailored, wheelchair-compatible pieces, bold colors, and statement accessories. He often combined expressive accessories with soft clothing that accommodated fatigue, pain, mobility devices, and feeding-tube access.

Signature Items

Charlie wore a silver crucifix from his paternal grandmother, Lourdes. He often touched or held it before performances and during prayer, grief, fear, or emotional exposure.

Logan gave Charlie Rivera a Pandora charm bracelet for Charlie’s nineteenth birthday in 2026. Charlie turned the bracelet on his wrist during emotionally exposed conversations and performances, and its charms accumulated over the course of their life together.

Sensory Preferences

Charlie’s auditory attention extended to ordinary environmental sounds. The radiator in his Juilliard room hummed in B-flat, a pitch he identified without deliberate analysis.

His sensory tolerance varied with illness and fatigue. Severe flares could reduce his tolerance for light, sound, movement, speech, and sustained activity, while controlled music remained central to both his work and regulation.

Charlie sought warmth through blankets, heating pads, layered clothing, sunlight, and proximity to Logan. He also used weighted blankets and other forms of steady pressure. He had difficulty with layered conversations and competing sound sources, sudden noises, and fluorescent lighting. Music he selected remained easier to tolerate than uncontrolled environmental noise.

Habits and Routines

Charlie woke gradually during significant ME/CFS fatigue. The process could take thirty minutes or longer, with an early period of semiconscious movement and little or no functional speech before he became fully alert. People close to him learned not to treat this transition as immediate wakefulness.

He also used jewelry as repetitive tactile input. He turned his bracelet, spun rings, or clicked metal pieces together while thinking, speaking, and performing.

Charlie held his phone in his left hand and typed primarily with his right thumb. He slept on his left side, hummed tonal fragments while thinking, and shifted or bounced his legs while seated. He also spoke to named equipment such as Celia, Selena, and Chispa during routine use.

Comfort Items and Spaces

Logan’s Howard hoodie, Lourdes’s crucifix, and Logan’s bracelet remained recurring comfort items. Practice and recording spaces also gave Charlie controlled access to the sound, instruments, and working arrangements around which much of his life was organized.

Social Media

Charlie used social media frequently and informally. His posts included music clips, Spanglish commentary, selfies, Pride material, medical humor, photographs of food he cooked, and candid images of Logan and other people close to him. He also read replies and comments even when doing so exposed him to ableist responses.

Hobbies and Skills

In addition to music and cooking, Charlie collected candles, drew portraits and studies of faces and hands, and braided hair. His sketches appeared in margins, on loose paper, and in sketchbooks. He braided hair for family members and younger musicians in his orbit.

Opinions and Pet Peeves

Charlie rejected the idea that money or expensive equipment was equivalent to talent. He also objected to gender rules around colors, glitter, emotion, clothing, and presentation.

His recurring pet peeves included people talking during live music, strangers patting him on the head, and people describing ordinary disabled life as inspirational.

Trivia

Charlie had a strong sympathy-vomiting response. Seeing, hearing, or smelling another person vomit could trigger gagging or vomiting even when he was trying to provide care.

He sometimes slept beneath a large pile of blankets even in warm weather; Logan called the arrangement “the burrow.” Charlie also cried readily in response to music, films, family moments, illness, grief, and joy.

Characters Character Preferences Charlie Rivera