VOGUE (Italy)

L'UOMO

- By Ivan Cotroneo Born in Naples in 1968, Ivan Cotroneo now lives in Rome. As well as being a translator and author ( Un bacio, 2010), he has worked as a s creenwrite­r with Ferzan Ozpetek, Maria Sole Tognazzi and Luca Guadagnino, among others. He has also

L’uomo, the man, realised what was happening to him one morning in June, when it was already too late. He had made himself the life he wanted, and year after year he had decided his list of priorities, as if it were one of the countless lists strewn around on sticky notes that he used to fill his days. His list of priorities included a theory of absolute values and practical personal goals, the most important of which - the one that encapsulat­ed all the rest - was: be happy trying not to hurt others. Someone somewhere in the course of his 47 years had probably told him that wellbeing lies in control, in always being able to decide which is the right choice, or the least harmful, or the one that leaves the fewest victims in its wake. Someone else must have spoken to him about risks, and he himself must have scoffed at his male and female friends who waffled on about happiness, acceptance, and what they would have nonetheles­s called a lack of choice. After all, he had always detested people who made fools of themselves by overindulg­ing in drink or drugs. When he had dabbled in such things, they had always left him feeling unfulfille­d and frustrated, with the slightly harrowing sensation that he was missing something that everyone else seemed to have: the ability to expose themselves without worrying about ridicule. He had always hated expression­s like “loosen up”, “let yourself go” or “go with the flow”, and his idea of rest and relaxation had always entailed a controlled and planned activity. At university, when he was 22 years old, he was obliged to read The Beast

in the Jungle by Henry James, the story of an old man who didn’t realise what he had missed in his non-life until it was too late. The book had left him totally indifferen­t and unperturbe­d. So he didn’t understand how this had happened to him, when he had started searching for it - because obviously he must have gone searching for it at some point - and above all he didn’t understand when he had allowed it to happen. Only for an instant did it occur to him that concepts such as allowing and searching were entirely meaningles­s now, in the world where, from that morning onwards, he would have to get a move on. He got out of bed and went to the kitchen for a coffee .

It had happened, he thought, and it was like an incomprehe­nsible cross between a terrible biblical curse and the definitive salvation from everything that had always prevented him from being happy.

He had f allen in love.

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