Borrowed Time
Deciding the direction of this site’s first piece was more difficult than I had anticipated. Though I wanted to avoid academic prose and methods, I did not want to write some culture industry drivel. And, to complicate matters, there were several obscure interests and questions I had been hoping to work through and address, but I was unsure if such a piece would be fitting for a blog premiere. Alas, after working through some hesitations, I began writing on the scene from Call Me by Your Name in which Perlman talks with Elio. In part, I wrote on this scene because I both loved the tenderness of the scene and found the commentary on it ultimately unsatisfying. Most of the scene’s commentators wrote in reference to fatherhood and family; which, apart from being boring, I found to be a strange hermeneutic for a film on queer love. Therefore, in a sense, I wrote what I wanted to read.
However, writing on this scene meant I would have to write on love. And writing on love is the epitome of beating a dead horse. What can be said that has not already been said? There are countless essays, articles, poems, books, and songs on love and odds are I’m not going to say anything original. Fortunately, in my case, those who try to be original are hardly that. Novelty is a great effect of writing but a poor cause. Similarly, a survey of books published on love in the past twenty years would lead one to the conclusion that men have a resistance to writing on intimacy and love, especially queer love. I thought it would be worthwhile to resist that socialized resistance. If nothing else, my musings introduce others to a beautiful scene that deserves to be watched and contemplated.
The following scene, which I quote at length, comes towards the end of Call Me by Your Name. If you prefer, you can watch the scene.
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Professor PERLMAN is sitting in his usual place. On his lap are proofs of his latest book. He is drinking. ELIO comes into the room to say good night. His father puts away his manuscript with a toss and lights a cigarette – his last of the day.
PERLMAN
“So? Welcome home. Did Oliver enjoy the trip?”
ELIO
“I think he did.”
PERLMAN takes a drag from his cigarette, then pauses a moment before speaking.
PERLMAN
“You two had a nice friendship.”
ELIO
(somewhat evasive)
“Yes.”
Another pause, and another drag on his cigarette.
PERLMAN
“You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special, what you two had was.”
ELIO
“Oliver was Oliver.”
PERLMAN
“‘Parce-que c’etait lui, parce-que c’etait moi.’” (Because he was he, because I was I)
ELIO
(trying to avoid talking about Oliver with his father)
“Oliver may be very intelligent – ”
PERLMAN
(interrupting his son)
“Intelligent? He was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good, and you were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.”
ELIO
“I think he was better than me.”
PERLMAN
“I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you, which flatters the two of you.”
In tapping his cigarette and leaning toward the ashtray, he reaches out and touches Elio’s hand. PERLMAN alters his tone of voice (his tone says: We don’t have to speak about it, but let’s not pretend we don’t know what I’m saying).
PERLMAN (CONT’D)
“When you least expect it, Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember: I am here. Right now you may not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything. And perhaps it’s not to me that you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something you obviously did.”
ELIO looks at his father, then drops his eyes to the floor.
PERLMAN (CONT’D)
“Look - you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, to pray that their sons land on their feet. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it. And if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out. Don’t be brutal with it. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
ELIO is dumbstruck as he tries to take all this in.
PERLMAN (CONT’D)
“Have I spoken out of turn?”
ELIO shakes his head.
PERLMAN (CONT’D)
“Then let me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you two had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. Remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. Pain. Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.”
PERLMAN takes a breath.
PERLMAN (CONT’D)
“We may never speak about this again. But I hope you’ll never hold it against me that we did. I will have been a terrible father if, one day, you’d want to speak to me and felt that the door was shut, or not sufficiently open.”
ELIO
“Does mother know?”
PERLMAN
“I don’t think she does.”
But the way he says this means ‘Even if she did, I am sure her feelings would be no different than mine.’
——————————
After a blissful and painful summer spent with Oliver in northern Italy, Elio is devastated and confused by Oliver’s departure. With Oliver gone and the summer coming to an end, Perlman, who is Elio’s father and Oliver’s past academic advisor, sits with Elio. And in a manner that is as abrupt and unprompted as it is loving, Perlman advises Elio.
Intuiting that Elio is confounded by the past six weeks, Perlman says, “if there is pain, nurse it… We rip so much out of ourselves to be cured of ourselves faster.” Let the memories of Oliver, in all their pain and joy, linger. It would be too easy for Elio, a young man, to move on with life, to forget about Oliver, to callus himself to the love felt and given. Perlman, it seems all too well, knows this. “Right now there is sorrow. Pain,” Perlman tells Elio, “don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.” Do not turn your back on this time and cynically distance yourself from it. If desire remains, do not stomp it out, but let it burn and smolder for as long as needed.
There is a haunting sweetness and melancholia in Perlman’s voice, he speaks from a place of pain and love. He has felt his body and heart change. And the situation, fraught as it is, could have been disregarded or avoided by Perlman. Return to the book manuscript, plan for the fall semester, reinvest himself in recent archaeological finds, Perlman could have effortlessly offered a pleasantry, continued with his manuscript, and let Elio walk through his study. Yet, he leans into Elio’s difficulties and gives him the advice he wishes someone would have given him. Or the advice he wishes someone would still give him.
Perlman’s remarks, like the best of literature and film, drive us into thought. Feeling a superficial or trivial appreciation for Perlman’s kindness is an errand anyone can run, but probing the tenderness of the moment, letting the scene’s details and accents wash over you, is demanding. Of course, given today’s overproduction of media and printed matter, most of which does little more than react or numb, many scenes and chapters do not merit such reflection. But this moment does.
Feeling and giving love, especially when that love is less than socially palatable, is dangerous. It can fuck you up and make your heart worn out. This world does not allow for fragile moments of love to be gently held and cared for in the way Perlman does. People do not have the time or space to reflect on their past love and loves. Money and time march on, demanding our reverence and damning those who disobey. We are forced to rip out so much out of ourselves in order to persist. This world makes brutes of us all. There are few opportunities for us to sufficiently open love’s door.
Perlman is wise enough to know that Elio is irresolute. And like many who are irresolute, Elio might as well keep his chin up and masquerade as if love were never fragile or ephemeral. Such masquerading takes less time, effort, and care than wrestling with what happened that summer with Oliver. Ignoring what makes us feel is profitable and in our interests. Elio knows as much. Perlman’s words hold Elio in his tenuous state and make possible a heart that does not become worn out.
Part of what struck me about this scene, as inconsequential as it may sound, is that I feel myself getting older. Having recently turned twenty-seven, an age that is still young, I palpably notice that I’m the youngest I will ever be and much older than I used to be. I’m no longer in high school or college, I’m flying through my youth and have a newfound awareness of time. Perlman saying that “our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once” registers with me in a manner it would not have when I was fifteen or nineteen. There are limited years on what my body will be able to do. The hoop days, everything hot and heavy, it will come to an end. This world is as cruel as it is sadistic and, though I do not want it to be the case, limits what a heart can do. The musings written here might help the reader as much as they help the writer avoid being thirty and bankrupt.
If I were Perlman, I worry I would have kept reading my manuscript and answering to the day’s duties, not bothering myself with a potentially tense conversation. ‘Elio will take care of himself, he is a smart boy,’ I’d tell myself. But Perlman, in throwing the manuscript aside and allowing Elio and himself to share an intimate moment, illustrates what care and love are good for.
The point of this is not to rehash trite clichés of ‘embrace the moment’ and ‘be intimate with one another.’ Though clichés such as those, which are prima facie so obvious and monotonous, actually signify profound truths about life.
Rather, the point is to look at this scene and see in it an instant that could have passed all too quickly, but instead became the pivotal moment of Elio and Perlman’s relationship. Due to Elio’s penchant for being temperamental and evasive, the conversation requires of Perlman a certain level of courage and humility. The conversation could be poorly received; Elio could distance himself from his father’s intrusiveness. A man expressing intimacy and weakness with another man is discouraged, imagined as effeminate. Perlman is aware of such social taboos, but chooses to show that he is far from the whole person he may be capitulated as. He is tired, beaten down, but nevertheless willing to talk with Elio. He admits he never found a love like Elio’s, that something always held him back. Perhaps it’s the recognition of such failures that goaded Perlman into conversation. In place of waiting for our own failures to accumulate, which they inevitably will, recognizing Perlman’s failures may be enough to provoke us towards further humility and courage to love.
Elsewhere in Call Me by Your Name, it’s noted that Elio and Oliver “were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.” Certain moments can only be borrowed once and it would be a shame if we were to let them pass as we continue onto the next line of our manuscripts, oblivious to how we might put our work away, take another drag of a cigarette, and let love’s door open.
