Find Me

by André Aciman

Perhaps he belonged to a generation that sought out what was a tad difficult to discuss, I to one where what’s obvious enough is left unstated.

“But you didn’t know you’d meet me.” “A meaningless detail. Fate works forward, backward, and crisscrosses sideways and couldn’t care less how we scan its purposes with our rickety little befores and afters.”

I did not venture to add anything more. So tonight was not in the cards, I thought.

I wanted us to kiss. Just kiss me, will you, if only to help me get over being so visibly flustered.

Elio, you are so you it hurts.

It felt as though we’d just been in bed together and he’d stopped talking to me and then simply vanished.

Perhaps he’d seen that sometimes it’s best to stop things when they’re perfect rather than race on and watch them sour.

Was I really trying to cut him off? Or was I enjoying this without wanting to show it?

He was trying to be playful, prodding, borderline flirtatious, and here I was coming off as mirthless, dour, and, worst of all, self-righteous.

“I thought so too at the time. But they’ve been together for years now. They were together before he started with me.”

Oliver. Always.

I wasn’t sure I wanted him to ask, yet I loved being asked.

“We haven’t spoken in ages, and I don’t know that we’re friends, though I’m sure we will always be. He’s always read me extremely well, and I have a feeling that he suspects that if I never write it’s not because I don’t care but because a part of me still does and always will, just as I know he still cares, which is why he too never writes. And knowing this is good enough for me.”

“Besides, how long ago was it?” he asked. I knew my answer would leave him totally stumped. “Fifteen years.” Suddenly, he stopped asking and went silent. As I expected, he had not figured that so many years could go by and leave me still attached to someone who had become an invisible presence.

“When I am alone—sometimes, yes. But it doesn’t intrude, doesn’t make me sad. I can go entire weeks without thinking of him. Sometimes I want to tell him things, but then I put it off, and even telling myself that I’m putting it off gives me some pleasure, though we may never speak. He taught me everything. My father said there were no taboos in bed; my lover helped me cast them off. He was my first.”

“Maybe because I never really let go or lose myself with others. After an instant of passion, I always fall back to being the autonomous me.”

“At some point in your life you will need to call him. The moment will come. It always does. But perhaps I shouldn’t be saying all this.”

“And by the way”—I hesitated before saying it but felt impelled to say it—“I’m not very good at beginnings.”

‘Because against a woman I still stand a chance, but against who you are, there’s nothing I can do. I cannot change you.’

“This?” I said, with a slight jeer in my voice.

Tease

How wonderful to have finally said exactly what was on my mind ever since Sunday: Don’t let me go home tonight.

All I remember hearing was the sound of the very old elevator grinding and staggering its way up to his floor as I kept hoping the sound would never end and the elevator never stop.

Elio my love. Time does not stop. You should know this by now.

I loved the way he kneaded my neck and shoulder blades.

Oliver Oliver Oliver

I hunched my shoulders, knowing he’d understand I meant I don’t know, maybe it’s not you, or the evening, who knows, just don’t stop.

“I’ve thought of you ever since we said good night outside the brasserie. I went to bed thinking of you, woke up thinking of you, and was in a trance all of Monday, basically kicking myself. I can’t even bring myself to believe you’re sitting under my roof.”

Had we, perhaps, slowed things down to a halt? Had I failed him? Were we changing our minds?

“Will you let me make you happy, just let me, I so want to.” “Do anything you want. You make me happy as it is.”

Why was I being pulled out of myself as though I’d been a prisoner whose jailer happened to be none other than myself and me alone?

Here the matter was slightly odd, and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t really want to get out of bed but didn’t know how to read, much less trust the look of surprise on his face.

Usually, I forget, or try to put away what happened at night, which isn’t difficult since things seldom last more than an hour or two. Sometimes it’s as though it hadn’t occurred at all, and I’m happy not to remember.

Even the way he’d kept rubbing and caressing my hand and then my wrist, asking for trust and little else when my eyes were shut, just rubbing my wrists, which he held down gently on the bed, the kindest gesture known to man.

I think I’m happy. That’s what I was going to say to him. I think I’m happy. I knew I should avoid saying this on our third evening, but I didn’t care. I wanted to say it.

“Don’t you say this to everyone?” “I do. And I have. But you and I have something very special, and for me totally unusual. If you’ll let me, I hope to prove it to you this weekend.” “A likely story,” I said. We both laughed. “The irony is that I may even succeed in proving it—and then where will we be?” He looked at me. “And that—if you care to know—is the part that scares me more than a little.”

We both smiled. It was moments of sudden and radiant intimacy like these that made me want to shout, It’s been years since I’ve been like this with anyone.

Life was like a waiting room at a doctor’s office and my turn never came.”

“Wrong. I know he’d approve. That’s not it. I think it would have made him happy to know I’ve been happy this whole week.” He stopped a moment. “Or is this too much pressure for those of your generation?”

He said so himself one day when he told me that it was far better to pay for a good half hour with a woman you might never see again than to spend time with one who leaves you more lonely after you’ve had a few minutes flouncing between her legs.

This landscape makes me happy, perhaps because I can feel it’s gloomier than I am.”

The person I knew was his second self. I suspect we have first selves and second selves and perhaps third, fourth, and fifth selves and many more in between.”

was trying to avoid touching on the future, but as a result must have sounded more fatuous than he would have wished.

“Fate, if it exists at all,” he said, “has strange ways of teasing us with patterns that may not be patterns at all but that hint at a vestigial meaning still being worked out.

our lives are nothing more than excavation digs that are always tiers deeper that we thought.

This flattered me but I did not want to appear to have seized what he was implying.

“Then maybe when you get to be my age and the dearth of things life has to offer becomes more evident by the day, maybe then you can start noticing those tiny accidents that turn out to be miracles and that can redefine our lives and cast an incandescent luster over things that, in the great scheme of things, could easily be meaningless. But this is not meaningless.”

“Yes, it is wonderful.” But he said it with a tone of nostalgic resignation verging on melancholy, as though I were a dish he was watching being taken away before he’d had his fill. Is this what happens when one is close to twice someone’s age: one starts losing people long before they’ve started looking elsewhere?

“Not a thing. But then this is what’s so scary—if you see my drift—precisely because there’s nothing wrong.”

I was hoping that something would lift this sudden cloud between us, but nothing came, and neither he nor I attempted to dispel it, perhaps because neither was quite sure what lurked behind it.

“See you in a bit,” I said, to which he gave that silent, wistful nod of his.

Later.

And then I simply found the courage. “I don’t need to go home. I don’t want to go home.” “Get back in,” he said. “I adore you, Elio, I adore you.”

“We’ll pretend we met tonight and that instead of walking away with your bike, you said, ‘I want to sleep with you, Michel.’ Would you have said it?” “I was on the verge of saying it. But no! You, sir, had to walk away!”

“Of course I’m thinking what you’re thinking. It’s what we’ve been thinking all along, isn’t it?”

“I still think our discovery is too neat, too easy,” I said. “Part of me doesn’t trust it. Let’s not rush to conclusions yet.”

You do not want this to end.