Call Me By Your Name

by André Aciman

I decided to get under the covers. I loved the smell. I wanted to love the smell. I even liked the fact that there were things on the bed that hadn’t been removed and which I kept kneeing into and didn’t mind encountering when I slipped a foot under them, because they were part of his bed, his life, his world.

From this moment on, I thought, from this moment on—I had, as I’d never before in my life, the distinct feeling of arriving somewhere very dear, of wanting this forever, of being me, me, me, me, and no one else, just me, of finding in each shiver that ran down my arms something totally alien and yet by no means unfamiliar, as if all this had been part of me all of my life and I’d misplaced it and he had helped me find it. The dream had been right—this was like coming home, like asking, Where have I been all my life? which was another way of asking, Where were you in my childhood, Oliver? which was yet another way of asking, What is life without this?

“Parce que c’�tait lui, parce que c’�tait moi,” my father added, quoting Montaigne’s all-encompassing explanation for his friendship with Etienne de la Bo�tie. I was thinking, instead, of Emily Bront�’s words: because “he’s more myself than I am.”

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!” I couldn’t begin to take all this in. I was dumbstruck. “Have I spoken out of turn?” he asked. I shook my head. “Then let me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most