Wow

I’ve just finished reading André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, and I must say that I’m pretty much speechless.  I started reading it a few days ago, and although I was initially drawn in, I admit to having previewed more than a few pages of it on Amazon.com a few months ago.  I was very moved by the book but able to pace myself in order to avoid reading it all in one go.

And then I got towards the end.

This book touched me in so many ways that I am having a hard time processing all of them.  It’s like Aciman took a page from my life.  It’s like he snapped a picture from my falling for L. and turned it into a novel for everyone to read.  I mean, granted L. and I were never as blissfully involved as Elio and Oliver, but I was just as in love.  And since that time in my life, I have yet to meet a man that I don’t compare to him, nor have I been able to extinguish the hope that someday he’ll return to me.  Everything about Aciman’s book was so brutally honest that I was honestly blown away.  I want to feel again what I once felt, but know simultaneously, as Elio points out, that it is in situations like these–where one can no more go back that move forward–that I must simply allow myself to exist, and let myself be changed.  Let myself be touched and changed.  I hope that J. or JT or anyone else can help me do that.

Speaking of J.:  I think that I fall in love too easily.  I don’t know yet if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but there is something to be said about it.  Perhaps it is a virtue:  I’m able to give myself wholeheartedly to people or things which makes me valuable.  I am able to sincerely feel for another human being in a short time, meaning that I am open and trusting.  Or perhaps I am simply naive.  Perhaps my slick shoes are a sign that I am actually insincere, that my feelings are fleeting and relative, and that I will “love” any guy who shows the vaguest signs of reciprocation.  Not that I’m promiscuous, (this is officially number 3) but emotionally I’ve been seriously in love with more men and women than I can count.

Enough.  Now sleep.

~ por Dante en Mayo 25, 2008.