cmbynquote cmbyn armiehammer callmebyyourname timotheechalamet cmbynbook cmbynfilm elioperlman cmbynmovie elioandoliver andreaciman elio aciman callmebyyournamebook cmbynedit book italy acimanbook aesthetic bookworm callmebyyournamefilm cmbynlocations cmbynquotes corcordium sanclementesyndrom selamore summer1983 parallellife novel cmbynaesthetics callmebyyournamebook
.
That day, after we landed, my mother desperately tried to make it up to me, speaking to me so sweetly and so amicably that we made peace soon enough. Yet the real damage was not in the cutting words she wished she hadn’t spoken and that I would never forget. The damage was to our love: it had lost its warmth, its spontaneity, and become a willed, conscious, rueful love. She was pleased to see I still loved her; I was pleased to see how readily both she and I were fooled. The two of us were aware of being pleased, which intensified our truce. But we must have sensed that being so easily reassured was nothing more than a dilution of our love.
She hugged me more often, and I wanted to be hugged. But I didn’t trust my love, and I could tell, from the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t looking, that she didn’t trust it either. — 'Enigma variations'
#cmbyn #callmebyyourname #cmbynmovie #cmbynquotes #cmbynbook #cmbynlocations #callmebyyournamebook #cmbynquote #andreaciman #acimanbook #aciman #corcordium #italy #summer1983 # #armiehammer #selamore #elioandoliver #elioperlman #sanclementesyndrom #aesthetic #book #ghostspots #bookworm #cmbynfilm #callmebyyournamefilm #parallellife #enigmavariations
.
“Are you happy you’re back?”
⠀
He saw through my question before I did.
⠀
“Are you happy I’m back?” he retorted.
⠀
I looked at him, feeling quite disarmed, though not threatened. Like people who blush easily
but aren’t ashamed of it, I knew better than to stifle this feeling, and let myself be swayed by it.
⠀
“You know I am. More than I ought to be, perhaps.”
⠀
“Me too.”
⠀
That said it all.
#cmbyn #callmebyyourname #cmbynmovie #cmbynquotes #cmbynbook #cmbynlocations #callmebyyournamebook #cmbynquote #andreaciman #acimanbook #aciman #corcordium #italy #summer1983 #timotheechalamet #armiehammer #selamore #elioandoliver #elioperlman #elio #sanclementesyndrom #aesthetic #book #novel #bookworm #cmbynfilm #callmebyyournamefilm #parallellife#twentyyears
What Once Was: “My Room is now Your Room. I’ll be next door. We have to share a bathroom- it’s my only way out.” #cmbyn #cmbynquote #callmebyyourname #elioandoliver #elioperlman #oliverandelio #shareabath #andreaciman #lucaguadagnino #timotheechalamet #armiehammer #somewhereinnorthernitaly #callmebyyournamemovie #villaalbergoni #northernitaly #moviescenes #cinematography #shotonfilm #cmbyn_thearchive #cmbynscenes #callmebyyournameandillcallyoubymine
.
“And you,” I asked, “what moment?”
⠀
“Rome too. Singing together till dawn on Piazza Navona.”
⠀
I had totally forgotten. It wasn’t just a Neapolitan song we ended up singing that night. A
group of young Dutchmen had taken out their guitars and were singing one Beatles song after the
other, and everyone by the main fountain had joined in, and so did we. Even Dante showed up
again and he too sang along in his warped English.
⠀
“Did they serenade us, or am I making it up?”
⠀
He looked at me in bewilderment.
⠀
“They serenaded you—and you were drunk out of your mind. In the end you borrowed the
guitar from one of them and you started playing, and then, out of nowhere, singing. Gaping, they
all were. All the druggies of the world listening like sheep to Handel.
⠀
One of the Dutch girls had
lost it. You wanted to bring her to the hotel. She wanted to come too. What a night. We ended up
sitting in the emptied terrace of a closed caffè behind the piazza, just you and I and the girl watching dawn, each of us slumped on a chair.”
.
He spoke about his two boys who
were right now playing in the living room with my mother, eight and six, I should meet his wife, I
am so happy to be here, you have no idea, no idea.
It’s the most beautiful spot in the world, I said,
pretending to infer that he was happy because of the place.
You can’t understand how happy I am
to be here. His words were breaking up, he passed the phone back to my mother, who, before
turning to me, was still speaking to him with endearing words. “Ma s’è tutto commosso, he’s all
choked up,” she finally said to me.
⠀
“I wish I could be with you all,” I responded, getting all
worked up myself over someone I had almost entirely stopped thinking about.
Time makes us
sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.
.
“Your best moment?” he finally interrupted.
⠀
I thought awhile.
⠀
“The first night is the one I remember best—perhaps because I fumbled so much. But also
Rome.
⠀
There is a spot on via Santa Maria dell’Anima that I revisit every time I’m in Rome. I’ll
stare at it for a second, and suddenly it’ll all come back to me. I had just thrown up that night and
on the way back to the bar you kissed me. People kept walking by but I didn’t care, nor did you.
⠀
That kiss is still imprinted there, thank goodness. It’s all I have from you. This and your shirt.”
⠀
He remembered.
#romancmbynlocations #cmbyn #callmebyyourname #cmbynmovie #cmbynquotes #cmbynbook #cmbynlocations #callmebyyournamebook #cmbynquote #andreaciman #acimanbook #aciman #corcordium #italy #summer1983 #timotheechalamet #armiehammer #selamore #elioandoliver #elioperlman #elio #sanclementesyndrom #aesthetic #book #novel #bookworm #cmbynfilm #callmebyyournamefilm#rome
.
One summer, nine years after his last letter, I received a phone call in the States from my
parents. Finally his voice came through.
⠀
“Elio,” he said. I could hear my parents and the
voices of children in the background. No one could say my name that way.
⠀
“Elio,” I repeated, to
say it was I speaking but also to spark our old game and show I’d forgotten nothing.
⠀
“It’s Oliver,”
he said. He had forgotten.
#cmbynmovie #cmbynquotes #cmbynbook #cmbynlocations #callmebyyournamebook #cmbynquote #andreaciman #acimanbook #aciman #corcordium #italy #summer1983 #timotheechalamet #michaelstulbarg #selamore #elioandoliver #elioperlman #elio #sanclementesyndrom #aesthetic #book #novel #bookworm #cmbynfilm #callmebyyournamefilm#sorrow#memory
I looked at the faces of the other applicants. This one wasn’t so bad. I began to wonder what
turn my life would have taken had someone else shown up instead. I wouldn’t have gone to Rome.
But I might have gone elsewhere. Wouldn’t have known the first thing about San Clemente. But I
might have discovered something else which I’d missed out on and might never know about. Wouldn’t have changed, would never be who I am today, would have become someone else.
I wonder now who that someone else is today. Is he happier? Couldn’t I dip into his life for a
few hours, a few days, and see for myself—not just to test if this other life is better, or to measure
how our lives couldn’t be further apart because of Oliver, but also to consider what I would say
to this other me were I to pay him a short visit one day. Would I like him, would he like me,
would either of us understand why the other became who he is, would either be surprised to learn
that each of us had in fact run into an Oliver of one sort or another, man or woman, and that we
were very possibly, regardless of who came to stay with us that summer, one and the same person
still?
And then I did what I’d been meaning to do all along that night in my father’s study. I
pretended not to know who this chap Oliver was. This was last Christmas. Pavel was still trying
to persuade us to host his friend. Summer hadn’t happened yet. Oliver would probably arrive by
cab. I’d carry his luggage, show him to his room, take him to the beach by way of the stairway
down to the rocks, and then, time allowing, show him around the property as far back as the old
railway stop and say something about the gypsies living in the abandoned train cars bearing the
insignia of the royal House of Savoy. Weeks later, if we had time, we might take a bike ride to B.
We’d stop for refreshments. I’d show him the bookstore. Then I’d show him Monet’s berm. None
of it had happened yet.
.
“Then what is it?” he asked.
How was I ever going to explain to him, or to myself, why I couldn’t go to his home and
meet his family, though every part of me was dying to? Oliver wife. Oliver sons. Oliver pets.
Oliver study, desk, books, world, life. What had I expected? A hug, a handshake, a perfunctory
hail-fellow-well-met, and then the unavoidable Later!? The very possibility of meeting his family suddenly alarmed me—too real, too sudden, too
in-my-face, not rehearsed enough.
Over the years I’d lodged him in the permanent past, my
pluperfect lover, put him on ice, stuffed him with memories and mothballs like a hunted ornament
confabulating with the ghost of all my evenings. I’d dust him off from time to time and then put
him back on the mantelpiece. He no longer belonged to earth or to life.
All I was likely to
discover at this point wasn’t just how distant were the paths we’d taken, it was the measure of
loss that was going to strike me—a loss I didn’t mind thinking about in abstract terms but which
would hurt when stared at in the face, the way nostalgia hurts long after we’ve stopped thinking of
things we’ve lost and may never have cared for.
#cmbynmovie #cmbynquotes #cmbynbook #cmbynlocations #callmebyyournamebook #cmbynquote #andreaciman #acimanbook #aciman #corcordium #italy #summer1983 #timotheechalamet #michaelstulbarg #selamore #elioandoliver #elioperlman #elio #sanclementesyndrom #aesthetic #book #novel #bookworm #cmbynfilm #callmebyyournamefilm#sorrow#memory