What about a situation without judgement or rejection, where we could both be what we are for a moment without our roles to govern us?
Humans are funny things, aren’t we. We spend childhoods and adolescences being instructed and conditioned to believe in a story. Then we spend our adulthoods struggling either to attain that story, or wondering why it isn’t what we thought it was.
It’s so difficult to talk about what I mean here without resorting to millennial-sounding nonsense about labels and boxes and identity fluids. And so many do find a kind of learned comfort within their roles and the labels. It is impossible to deny that there is comfort to be had in knowing you fit into a particular box and also belong there.
But there is also a quiet nagging that accompanies certain boxes. Certain labels. The comfort sought out by an identity that perhaps doesn’t fit as well as it seems to on others. Or ideas that fit less well over time and which seem only to grow louder with age.
One of the joys (that’s the most accurate word I can imagine) that comes with my work is offering someone a safe and intentional space to step out of their own box and walk around a little bit. To be present and excited for them and with them; whether it’s their first such experience or a reflection of something remembered but long suppressed.
The trouble is, the longer we live within our boxes, the more we begin to shape ourselves to the box itself. It should be the other way around, but it isn’t. In moments of great need or especially dark hours of the night we might try to escape these boxes for a time. But these decisions are often made in haste and bring unnecessary risk.
What if there was a way to plan a vacation, of sorts?
A trip away from the confines and the rules of “real” life, in the hands of someone with whom we could be a touch more real than we are every other day.
Fly me to you rates include my travel costs to you (or to our shared destination) and back home again. Accommodations can be made in my name to persevere discretion. And in our time together, we won’t worry about how society might label us, or how to box ourselves in. What is shared is ours alone. Messages exchanged are never logged and are later permanently deleted.
If you know why Call Me By Your Name is really a story about Elio’s father (no matter what the author now lamentably disclaims), I hope you will find a way to make contact.
