Like most other holidays across the globe, Valentine’s Day has been commercialised to no end. The celebration, held initially to commemorate a saint executed by Roman Emperor Claudius II Gothicus, has metamorphosised into a race. With higher stakes than ever in post-COVID Hong Kong, singles flock to dating apps like gamblers finding their prize pony at the Jockey Club.

The act of searching for love – not even factoring in the parameters of sexuality – is a bleak one in the big city. Third spaces have dwindled to hidden pockets in the alleyways of Central that cost upwards of a hundred dollars to gain access to, and most happy relationships I’ve personally witnessed seem as if they were formed in some prehistoric age.

We are all in the mood for love, but love is a concept so unique to each individual person that it’s impossible to satisfy every possible requirement. In his self-titled autobiography, Roland Barthes states that ‘the subject who utters the phrase I love you is like the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.’ As in, a relationship changes, and so do the words carrying it, with love and language entwined to shed continuously.

As an agender person, it’s been difficult for me to articulate my identity with potential partners clearly. My selfhood seemed almost like a void, a parasite that existed in the flux of clear labels and bordered expectations. Any sort of intimacy was short-lived save for one similarly transmasculine partner; I grew bored. In a pool where straight men are looking for their cool girl, where lesbian or bisexual women are looking for their ultimate cottage-core sapphic life partner, I take a sip and move on.

We see The Lovers under the perfection complex they embody as simply as a pair of glass slippers and turtledoves. Still, the fantasy of romantic totality isn’t something altogether divorced from or at once from reality. Love is a performance vested not in illusion but in choosing to be with a person and engage in simple acts with them. 

I may have been content to do the laundry and taxes with someone in another life, but I am far too invested in dipping my toes in the art world, blurring the lines between phenomenology and play. Too many people in Hong Kong forget they are young and have the entire world at their feet. Chasing paychecks, partners, or the pretence of one or the other is a respectable hustle— I am merely content to create and engage in pleasure for my writing’s sake while sharing my love with friends in less obvious forms. 

To love… and the many guises it takes.