Skip to content

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 at age twenty-five, in late 2032 or early 2033, and had become his primary nutrition source by age thirty-three. 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 served both sensory comfort and warmth. Because Charlie had persistent cold intolerance, his frequent hoodies and layers provided practical temperature management rather than comfort alone. He 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.

From young adulthood onward, Charlie favored Lush’s Dirty for its clean, sultry character, Karma for its bright patchouli, and Breath of God for its meditative quality. For performances, he layered solid perfumes with incense and leather scents. He used peppermint essential oil when nauseated and lavender when seeking calm, adapting fragrance to what he could tolerate rather than using the same products through every flare. Logan could recognize that Charlie had been in a room from the scent he left behind.

Maison Margiela Jazz Club was his go-to cologne; its warm tobacco, vanilla, and rum associations felt closely connected to his musical identity. He chose YSL La Nuit de L’Homme for evenings and performances, Le Labo Tonka 25 for the earthy sweetness he wanted on special occasions, and Replica By the Fireplace for smoky, chestnut warmth in winter.

His Bath & Body Works collection followed season and mood. Year-round favorites included Mahogany Teakwood in High Intensity strength and Gingham Legend for everyday freshness. Eucalyptus Spearmint was a particular choice on migraine days when most scents made him nauseated. In summer, he used Coconut Sandalwood, Ocean Driftwood, and Mango Mai Tai hand soap; Logan had vetoed the full-strength Mango Mai Tai fragrance. Fall favorites were Sweater Weather candles, Leaves in candle form only, and Marshmallow Fireside. Winter brought Twisted Peppermint hand sanitizer, Fireside Flurries, and ‘Tis the Season.

Charlie kept a candle stash under the bed that Logan pretended not to notice and a rotating tray of three-wick candles on their coffee table. Logan teased him about the collection and bought his favorites during semiannual sales. The products were small sources of comfort and pleasure whose importance both men understood without often discussing it.

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. His cold-weather clothing included an oversized bright-pink puffer jacket. Charlie knew the jacket’s bulk looked dorky on his compact frame and cared about that somewhat, but he loved its color and warmth more. 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, throughout his adult life without taking it off. The small crucifix rested at his collarbone on a thin chain, usually beneath his clothing and warm from his skin. It connected him with family, Puerto Rican heritage, and the grandmother who had recognized and supported him early. He touched or held it before performances and during prayer, grief, fear, gratitude, or emotional exposure. The movement of his hand toward his throat became habitual enough for Logan to read his emotional state from it.

Logan gave Charlie a silver Pandora charm bracelet for his nineteenth birthday in 2026. Charlie wore it continuously on his left wrist for the rest of his life. A saxophone, a music note, a heart, and later charms marked birthdays, anniversaries, milestones, and private jokes. Their accumulating weight and stories made the bracelet a record of his life with Logan. Charlie turned it during emotionally exposed conversations and performances; the charms clinked against his wrist, one another, and nearby surfaces as he gestured.

Handmade tour beads, threaded on leather cord, came from fans and from cities where the band had played. Charlie could recite the origin of each bead and welcomed being asked. They formed a portable archive of his career and the people he had met along the way.

His stainless-steel medical-alert bracelet was customized and scuffed from years of wear. He made it recognizably his, incorporating its medical function into his personal style rather than treating the two as separate concerns.

His rings included a silver thumb ring, assorted bands, and pieces from festivals or received as gifts. He spun and twisted them and clicked them against surfaces or one another. Their faint metallic percussion was part of the sound of sitting close to him as well as a source of tactile regulation.

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