Between Always & Never

He must have known exactly what I was feeling. What made me blush in the end was not the natural embarrassment of the moment when I could tell he’d caught me trying to hold his gaze only then to let mine scamper to safety; what made me blush was the thrilling possibility, unbelievable as I wanted it to remain, that he might actually like me, and that he liked me in just the way I liked him.

Up until now, I have stayed mostly silent and perused through the amazing content that has been created for this very special work of art. Call Me By Your Name is truly an enigma and in a league of its own. I stumbled across this gem by complete accident and have never been as happy to have found something as transformative as this novel and subsequent film. In my relatively short life, I have only felt such powerful emotion about a work of art a handful of times. It has allowed me to embrace an enourmous part of my being that makes me whole and one that I cannot continue to suppress—I am a gay man. As many others have pointed out, it has changed some aspect of my being but I am still not sure of what that may be. In the film, Oliver says it best: “The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing, so that we cannot encounter them twice, but that some things only stay the same by changing.” I changed. But stayed the same in the process. The biggest takeaway about this entire experience is that love is shared not between two men, two women, or a mixture of the two—love is shared between two beings.

“I’m not telling anyone. There won’t be any trouble.” “I didn’t mean that. I’m sure I’ll pay for it somehow, though.”

There are people in our life who are meant for the journey but not for our lifetime.