Rajneesh took Tonín as his husband

Many years later, I watched the movie Call me by your name (Dej mi své jméno), which portrays the story of Elio and Oliver – a story taking place somewhere in northern Italy (that Italy seems born for love) – while watching it, I crossed my arms and legs and kept the story at a distance. I noticed it instantly […]

I entered into a major process – I cried from morning till night for perhaps 14 days. An unresolved theme of love opened up inside me.

I began to realize that the mockery with which I used to taunt older women watching soap operas in my childhood was more than just a reflection of myself at that moment. I knew I couldn't go on like this.

And so I honored within myself all loves – from nursery school, childhood ones, through unrequited, platonic ones, to truly the first great loves.

Who knows why my name is Antonín Deliš today? I loved the actress Martina Delišová, who once graced the stages of Prague theaters and shone as Sonechka in A Tale of Sonechka directed by Helena Glancová.

That performance was important to me for several reasons, among other things because it also featured Věra Kubánková, who later portrayed the character of the grandmother in my short film of the same name.

And to be complete, the role of the young Marina Tsvetaeva was played by the excellent Martina Longinová.

Love works wonders – and in my life that holds true a hundredfold. For a fraction of love, I would go to the ends of the earth. From the perspective of Miss Marple, an old maid, it would certainly be foolish – I can't get her assessment of the maid who became a victim of a crime out of my head – because, as Miss Marple said, she was naive – perhaps that's why Hercule Poirot is closer to my heart, having fallen in love twice in his story – with a girl from Belgium – who perhaps didn't even have a name and later with Countess Rosakoff.

And why did I wander off like that? Because love runs like a thread through my life, sometimes deeper, and the older I get, the more I search for it like lost veins. And to return to the story of Elio and Oliver – I also bought the book.

Looking back, I smile, but at the time when I lay on the bed and opened it – my eyes resting on the first word „Later“ (translated as Později – Uvidíme se později), I sobbed my eyes out. And every time I thought I could finally start reading – it happened all over again. For three days, I just opened and closed the book.

André Aciman simply wrote a timeless book for gays, even though I think the theme of first love isn't about whether it's about boys or girls – but it is just as good a story as, say, Romeo and Juliet, only new – fresh – untraditional – and above all – insidious in its simplicity.

Into the estate of an Italian professor and his educated wife, who spend the summer together with their seventeen-year-old son Elio, they invite an American student a little older than Elio – who takes his room, forcing Elio to temporarily spend the summer in the „extra room“.

And I haven't read a book in a long time that captured an „Italian lazy summer“ so well, where anything can happen and no one bats an eye. And it is precisely Elio's father's speech at the end that crushes the fragile bones of Rajneesh – a speech about how at a certain age no one will even glance at you anymore or want to caress your body…

And that led me to honor my loves, and it happened in the year of our Lord, when thanks to that I made the good decision to publish the book Poslední noc v New Yorku – because this very book showed how important it is to acknowledge and honor experienced and lived-through loves – which are reflected from beginning to end in my story Poslední noc v New Yorku.

So why did Rajneesh actually marry that Rajneesh? You see, that's perhaps the point—Rajneesh didn't marry Rajneesh. Rajneesh married Tonín.