Skin everywhere, as phrased by Alexandria-born American writer André Aciman in his hugely popular 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name, a little too Millennial-ish, said a reader, meaning too youngish, to which I replied, “But the narrator is only 17 years old.”
The phrase kind of sums up what summer is like to me, particularly during Holy Week, particularly when I was 17 myself and spending every Holy Week some place where clothes were optional, I mean clothes that provided less coverage than enough to keep things private. It’s one of the blessings of being Catholic. You have a whole week during which there is nothing to do, even if you were raring to do something, like watching a movie or eating at restaurants or playing bowling or drinking at pubs and bars and bistros. For up to three long days, from Maundy Thursday to Black Saturday, everything shuts down, so you go where you can do nothing without dying of boredom. You go to the beach.
At an editorial meeting, we were discussing Easter projects and the Holy Week issues for the newspaper and my boss said, “There are only two things to do during Holy Week…” and before he could finish his sentence, I interjected, “Either belo or bikini,” belo being the Tagalog word for religious veil.
But that’s just how it is, especially at a time meant for reflection, when we confront ourselves with questions of good and evil, not that there is anything wrong with stretching out on the sand and under the sun, as naked as possible, to soak it all up. Either we visit the churches or we soak up the sun, though some people manage to do both. Personally, I’ve never done any Visita Iglesia. I was least Catholic when I was in Catholic school. In my days in the sun, those years I spent young and free, I was more hedonistic and a little arrogant, questioning my own faith, questioning God, the very existence of Him (I’m not sure I’m using the right pronoun). There was a time I considered myself an atheist, though I have always had God in my life, either to praise or to protest against.
The only real breakthrough I’ve ever had was around the time I was 28 when, from a long meditation, in which I felt a sensation akin to levitation, I emerged with the realization that my only problem with God was hell—and so I decided there was no hell and from then on, as if the wintry gloom just suddenly gave way to the eternal sunshine of warm summer days, I’ve been happy and free, unafraid of God’s judgment, secure in His love for me that not even the devil can take away from me, not that I still believe in the devil, that pop culture phenomenon with horns and bad teeth. I’m still Catholic, though I don’t go to mass—at least I pray the rosary every single day, never forgetting to express my gratitude for divine intervention to which I attribute everything, including my privilege to question God’s existence.
There comes a day when my skin just wants to breathe and get out of my clothes. —Anthony T. Hincks
So skin everywhere. I don’t know what’s wrong with that. The only reason I’m always all covered up is because I have nothing to show. If I had biceps to die for, I’d show them. I’d walk around in a sleeveless shirt. If I had a six-pack, I’d be on the beach more often or I’d wear a crop shirt, but that’s so Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1985 or Prince in Under the Cherry Moon in 1986. There was an attempt to revive it in 2016 when it appeared in the alpha comedy Everybody Wants Some!!! starring Tyler Hoechlin, but, well, whoever tried it must have lost his shirt.
It’s different for Call Me By Your Name, which was adapted into film in 2017 by Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino and to great effect, receiving widespread critical acclaim and several accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award for Best Picture and BAFTA Award for Best Direction, as a result of it.
Summer in Call Me By Your Name is as delicious as ripe fruit, like maybe apricot, if we were to limit it to the movie set, the northern Italian countryside, or mango, if we were to transport that season in the sun to some exotic location in the Philippines, which would have been as worthy a set for a movie like that, especially in 1983, the year the summer in the movie unfolded (1987 in the novel), also the year I was almost 17, my hormones all raging while I made fond memories of summer in the water, under the trees, insects buzzing around me, with fresh, bountiful fruits to bite into or drink from or luxuriate in throughout the long hours of a sunshiny afternoon that stretched out interminably.
Other than shooting to great fame as a result of the movie’s success, which was first released at Sundance in 2017, the stars of Call Me By Your Name, Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer dressed in summer costume designed by Guilia Piersanti, a designer at French fashion house Celine, became the heroes of summer 2018 fashion, from Prada to Missoni, which brought back short shorts and billowy blue shirts and loose oxfords and, as the Aciman has put it in the 2007 novel, skin everywhere.
Fast forward to 2022, and skin everywhere is still the height of summer fashion, but now it is literally everywhere, pumping and grinding and shaking on Reels every minute. If you ask me, it’s not a pretty sight, at least not always. Worse, I’m beginning to entertain the possibility of hell again.
This story first came out on March 31, 2018.