By: Nancy Webb
If you told me a year ago that I would be in a committed relationship with the audiobook of André Acimon’s sensual novel turned critically-acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name, I would have laughed in your face. Now I wake up every morning feeling like the luckiest woman on Earth. Why? Because I have abandoned the physical touch of flesh-and-blood men for the soft caress of Armie Hammer’s voice describing a tender coming-of-age dalliance, over and over again.
At first I thought I would miss the tactility of holding a lover’s body in my arms, but it turns out that 7 hours and 43 minutes of Hammer’s velvety baritone is enough to keep me warm on the coldest nights until the day I die.
My friends think I’m crazy for devoting my life to a mere recording of an American actor’s dramatic reading of a stunning gay love story, but I say they’re crazy for slogging it out in the world of dating human men with their tiresome bodies, unscripted words, and ghastly insistence on existing beyond a strictly sonic form. What the Call Me By Your Name audiobook and I have transcends the physical realm, unlike my friend Caitlyn’s relationship with her sentient flesh-boyfriend Ryan—what a snooze!
Sometimes I just want to scream it from the rooftops: I’M IN LOVE WITH A DISEMBODIED AURAL EXPERIENCE AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT!
People say that I’m delusional, trapped in a fantasy world, that I’ve got severe auricular abrasions from never removing my headphones. But I can’t hear them because I’m irreversibly coupled with a sensorially-rich love story set in northern Italy and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
