Call Me By Your Name

by André Aciman

You could never stare long enough but needed to keep staring to find out why you couldn’t.

Please, don’t hurt me, which meant, Hurt me all you want.

Let summer never end, let him never go away, let the music on perpetual replay play forever, I’m asking for very little, and I swear I’ll ask for nothing more.

I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him.

I respected and feared him and hated him for making me hate myself.

All I had to do was find the source of happiness in me and not rely on others to supply it the next time.

“Is it better to speak or die?”

Did I want to be like him? Did I want to be him? Or did I just want to have him?

“No. No one likes being alone. But I’ve learned how to live with it.”

“I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together—it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.” “But you’re doing it now—in a way.” “Yes, in a way—that’s how I always say things: in a way.”

It never occurred to me that I had brought him here not just to show him my little world, but to ask my little world to let him in,

Amor ch’a null’amato amar perdona.

“People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”

How I hated waiting and depending on the whim of others.

Say nothing and he’ll think you regret having written. Say anything and it will be out of place. Do what, then? Wait.

“Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine,”

It was not him I hated—but the thing we’d done. I didn’t want him looking into my heart just yet. Instead, I wanted to remove myself from this bog of self-loathing and didn’t know how to do it.

I liked being stared at with my eyes shut.

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.

He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn’t changed. Yet nothing would be the same.

Chiagneva sempe ca durmeva sola, mo dorme co’ li muorte accompagnata.

house, but without which you couldn’t possibly be you again. You lose it, as you always knew you would, and were even prepared to; but you can’t bring yourself to live with the loss.

And hoping not to think of it, like praying not to dream of it, hurts just the same.

Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember: I am here. Right now you may not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything. And perhaps it’s not with me that you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something you did.”

“Look,” he interrupted. “You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. 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!”

But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”

We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.

“I’m like you,” he said. “I remember everything.” I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.