Sometimes I Call You Even Though I Know You Canât Answer. Itâs a Symbol, I Think . . .
Anthony Nocera
When I was younger I had problems with phonetics. When I first wrote that, I typed it all in capitals. Like I was yelling or REALLY EXCITED about my illiteracy. Trouble with forming words and correlating them to meaning, with reading and comprehension. I couldnât follow stories. It stemmed from an inner-ear problem that affected my ability to hear.
My mother took me to a doctor and said, âIs this why heâs slow to pick up reading?â
âYes,â the doctor said. I, of course, couldnât hear him. But he nodded, so I put two and two together.
âWhat are you talking about?â I asked.
âWEâRE TALKING ABOUT YOUR READING!â Mum shouted so I could hear.
âYES!â the doctor shouted, âYOUâRE SLOW!âË
*
âHave you seen Call Me by Your Name?â he asked.
I was sitting with a friend in a loud bar. He got the drinks. Beer. I hate beer, but I drank it anyway, making âahâ noises after every sip to hide the fact that it tasted like a foot to me. It felt intimate, though, despite all of the noise. We made conversation in the pockets of quiet when we could.
I said, âYeah.â
âMy first time was exactly like Call Me by Your Name.â
âHow so?â
âI was sixteen, and we were camping down by the beach and me and my friend were in a tent and I remember weâd been swimming all day, yeah . . .âHe trailed off, and his eyes lingered on the distance like he was back on that beach looking at the way the water ran down his friendâs body like tears, or like sweat, or ropes of cum, and how the muscles moved underneath his skin like they were moving just for him. âYeah, and we had this moment in the water when we swam together, swam into each other and we both felt something. And later that night, when we were in the tent, we just started to touch each other and kiss, and then I was balls deep for days.â
âThat sounds . . . romantic.â
âIt really was,â he said. âIâm glad you think so. When did you see the film?â
âWith my boyfriend a few weeks ago.â
âThatâs right, you have a boyfriend.â
âYeah.â
âHowâs it going? Are you two in love?â
âI think so . . . I guess.â
âDonât you know?â
âI donât know how you could ever definitively know.â
He nodded. âThat movie, it just . . .â He took a sip of beer and I did too, to make it seem like I was keeping up. âGood, isnât it?â
âLove it,â I said. âAnd I love beer. Ah!â
âBut that movie, itâs just like my life . . . you know? Itâs so beautiful. It explained so much to me.â
âHow do you mean?â
âI saw myself in it,â he said. âWhat I wanted and all that.â
âLike your life corresponds to it?â
âNo, but it . . . talks to it,â he said, and I thought how nice it would be to talk to something, to be in conversation but not have someone talk back.
He told me that his first experience set the tone for his entire sexual existence. He said, âSex for me is, like, sunny, you know? Total euphoria, man. I just bliss out.â
*
A film studies lecturer once told me that quite often films tell us how to watch them in their opening moments. They show us how to read the film, how to understand it, the lens through which we should examine whatâs being considered by the work. For example, at the beginning of Christopher Nolanâs Memento, a polaroid photo un-develops â itâs shaken into blankness â signalling to the viewer that this is a film in which parts will be told backwards. In the opening sequence of Catherine Hardwickeâs Twilight, a predator chases a deer through the woods and the perspective shifts back and forth between the predator (a vampire, Edward Cullen we assume) and his prey. Itâs an opening that says: âThis is a film that is going to play with the notion of the gaze; itâs going to tinker with ideas about watching and being watched.â
I thought about my first sexual experience, my sex, my gaze, and how it was much more like William Friedkinâs movie Cruising, an â80s slasher movie set in New Yorkâs gay leather scene. It begins with a severed arm floating in a river. This opening said, âBeing homosexual is dangerousâ or âTo be gay is to get hurtâ. After we made out for about an hour, he, my first lover, just turned his back on me. I asked him, âWhere did you go?â and he said, âSomewhere elseâ; I took it as a challenge to get his attention again. I kissed his spine, each and every vertebra until I got low enough to make him stir and turn back around.
âHow was that?â
âIt was good,â he said, âI suppose.â
We had sex and it was okay, I guess. He inserted the tip of his penis into me and came immediately, groaning, âOh my god, yes, yes.â Then he collapsed on top of me and asked, âWas it good for you, Anthony?â I should have rolled over and turned my back on him, and gone somewhere else during my deflowering, but I just silently nodded, and he asked me to leave as he tossed a condom on the floor, and I watched his cum ooze out of it as I packed up my things.
For the next few weeks I kept thinking about the cum oozing out of the condom and how it felt loose when he was using it and I called my mum in a panic and screamed, âWhat if I have AIDS?â
âDid you use protection?â she said, coolly.
âYeah, I did, but what if it happened anyway?â
âWell,â she said, âdid he seem AIDSy?â
âWhat is AIDSy?â
âI donât know . . . Was he wearing a lot of leather? Did he look menacing and have a handlebar moustache?â
âNo. What the fuck?â
âIâm just asking the questions that need to be asked.â
âI donât think that needed to be asked!â I said.
âAnyway, you donât have AIDS.â
âHow do you know?â I said.
âBecause, Anthony, if you had HIV youâd be thin.â
*
The film begins with a title card that reads, âSomewhere in Northern Italyâ. Itâs an opening that says, âThis is a fantasy. This is a romance.â I wondered what my opening said about me, what the opening of my sex life was trying to tell me. Probably: âThis is not going to go wellâ or âItâs only going to get worseâ or âThis will make you anxious, you will be unnecessarily stricken with panicâ. Or maybe, âYou didnât think it was possible to sprain your arsehole, but it is, and you willâ.
*
âYou should know,â my friend said as the bar quietened down again. He took a sip of his beer and so did I.
âDelicious,â I said.
âThe beer?â he asked, and I nodded.
âKnow what? What should you know?â
âWhether youâre in love or not,â he said. âYou should know where you stand. It should be definitive. You should be sure.â
*
Call Me by Your Name is interesting in that it takes male queer desire and wanting, traditionally associated with violence, corruption, infection and monstrousness (if it was depicted at all) and places it within the language of mainstream feminine desire.
One of the first texts I studied at uni was âRipe Figsâ by Kate Chopin: a short story about a girl, Babette, and her godmother waiting for figs to ripen from hard little green marbles into soft, supple fruit before they go and visit their family. The ripening of the figs and the waiting symbolises adulthood, sexual maturity and how everyone needs time and patience to ripen.
I remember a girl in my tutorial hated the text. âWomen arenât fruit,â she said.
âItâs a symbol,â said the tutor.
âIâm no palm reader. I donât need to understand symbols,â she said.
*
In Call Me by Your Name, Elio and his sexuality â and his coming to terms with it â is the ripening fruit, the fig that Chopin was writing about; he is the apricots that Oliver, the older, handsome lover, gobbles down by the basketful, heâs the nectar that Oliver drinks and is re-energised by every morning. I think itâs very romantic to be eaten. Especially when you start to soften towards someone. Like Elio does with Oliver.
Well, Elio, youâre not the only one who is a piece of fruit, I thought. When I was eighteen I used to go on camming sites and jerk off with people halfway across the world. When one of them saw my naked body and I told him I didnât have a dildo, he said, âGet a banana from the kitchen and fuck yourselfâ. And I did as he said: I waddled to the kitchen with my hard-on painfully bouncing around and grabbed the smallest banana from the fruit bowl and then sat in front of my computer screen with my legs in the air and tried to fuck myself with it. I didnât really know what I was doing so I just kind of lifted the banana like a dagger and rammed it into myself. And it just hit the wall of my arsehole so hard that the skin of the banana loosened, and the fruit shot out the other end onto my bed and I just lay there, yeah, I just lay there looking at the ceiling and used my leg to subtly close my laptop.
*
It wasnât the first time fruit had entered my bedroom. When I was fourteen, or thirteen, young and ripening like an apricot or a fig, I decided that I wanted to stick something in my arse. After watching a lot of porn, I wanted to see what it was like. I googled âwhat to put in your arse that isnât a penisâ and came upon a Yahoo! Answers page that said to use a vegetable that is penis-shaped and to microwave it until it feels human. I determinedly grabbed the most manageable, slimline carrot I could find out of the vegetable crisper and put it in the microwave for two minutes. When I took it out, I felt it sear into my skin and I threw it down and looked at the long cylindrical burn across my palm.
I wonder what a palm reader would have seen. I googled it and apparently a long cylindrical burn across your palm from a makeshift dildo is a symbol for being a fuckwit. And for dying alone, probably.
I looked at Elio and his ...