Call Me By Your Name

Stuck inside or shall I say, more precisely, buried in lament within; the Neapolitan tune were these sad, smoldering words, “From the mouth where flowers once blossomed only worms emerge”. Who was Elio to Ulliva ? Was it a late night ice cream longing that was far, too long to get to, but worthwhile the ride ? Of course, what else if not it ? Except that kitchen had peaches prepared. Tiny, creamy blobs of our hero freshly sandwiched, glinting in live Italian sun.

Sorry for leaving you hapless, because unless you know it, it’s not funny. If you would like to seek for the moral before the tale; a dividing duo what swelled in passionate action, later succumbed to abundance in compunction. Nearing the end of the book, where intimacy multiplied, referred in plethora as ghost spots, limned to me as some of the deeply lacerated, yet carrying, keepsake moments.

What more could be a beautiful thing, never bereft of exemplifying and jeweling when it comes to adoration in soliloquy. Is that what makes the world of love a dashingly colorful place ? Raking my emotionally harmonized fingers down the word lane of the heated teenage life of Elio, I felt like falling in rhythm into the swoon-ray where Oliver, only him, thriving in immortality. Wilted feet to splashy wetness; romance to queer fascination; careful pretension to distinct acceptance. Why search when you can see ? It’s all love-making in the making, a swim in the treacly waters.

Oliver deep inside Elio…

Elio, can you feel the rock dancing when our lips amalgamate ? Elio, does your Later! transmogrifies to So soon! in consciousness ? Elio, are those starkly hangouts with your girlfriends a furtive visage ?Elio, why is it that you charm like a muvi star, like partially submerged shining peppercorns in some kind of exotic dish ? Elio, what’s floating in that head while you lay afloat in your orle of paradise; may I wish that I dangle in you, at least transiently ?

Why does it tickle me when I call you by my name ? Is it because you had me and now you can have me ? You sure doesn’t like it pointed out and I truly hold dear of your deadpan gaze, what hides forth a million-fold of fondness. From billowy shirt and bathing suit; within my dream, to uvula stimulation and PDA; away from my dream, how lucky to let Pasquino, the lampoonist and whole of starry Rome witness what we had for each other in that interminable, eventful night.

Oliver gradually, not suddenly…

The aplomb American whose arrival chimed a sparkle in the summer home, did host a debaucherously thrilling party in the world of Elio, a daydream of blossoming fascination. What came as trenchant, though misconstrued, conversations, refuted clever Elio’s all of badly woven conceptions. And, what surfaced as conviviality in the beginning, turned up as product of a poorly nurtured devotion or a perfunctorily exercised bond or an absolute absence of rapport, through the wearing and clearing of time, made them the barter lovers, just as it was meant to be, far from being amorphous.

Picturesque moments are where Oliver & Elio resting on their bed after drudgery, lying on Monet’s Berm to break the barrier and touring Rome to empty out their brimming wishes. Years from these beautiful moments, would there be an awakening in them, flared from a casual evening reminiscence, to look for one another from any of the many ghost spots ?

Some people try to remember things, but fail and some others try to forget things, to fail again. What would it become, some decades after, when people think, decades before; unforgettable memories has been made ? A souvenir to cherish or just gifts of regret ? To smile not to cry when people and their tangible feelings part; suffused majorly across the goodbye lines, where they waft in pale hope.

Did they see me gazing ?

What a glorious time it is, to let a novel novel like this, breathe in the lambent of queer love, that erects the beacon of change & acceptance by setting fiction as a ground for egalitarianism. I am happy that I read this construct of intelligence and enlightening. A fortnight replete with happening, in numerous shades of evanescent dreams. What remains is the Oliver who lives within Elio, swaying and fading, in waves and rainbows.

Not with desire, but with feeling…

When I'm with you, I become Oliver. Call me by your name, lightly as a murmur and wait for me as you tread, though I'm sure I won’t reach up to you, for all I long for is to have your scent light my way forward.

She always wept because she slept alone, Now she sleeps among the dead - a Neapolitan song refrain they both sang in euphoria. The San Clemente hours.