Forty.

On the subject of brevities, wherein our lives touch one another's and leave each other irrevocably changed.

There's a set of playing cards that I want. They're indistinguishable from any typical deck, save for the eye-catching image printed onto each card: a reproduction of individual paintings by Mark Rothko. I don't pretend to be any sort of expert on art, but I like his. For a variety of reasons, his works mean something to me.

Daily Rothko, self-declared to be the most popular fan page of Mark Rothko across the internet, once described Rothko as an ecumenical painter. They reasoned that Rothko invites people to look at his work with as little input or influence from their creator as possible, even going so far as to leave many of his creations untitled.

Rothko is an ecumenical painter. He wants everyone to look. He names nothing in his paintings. He offers no intellectual distractions or influences. He literally would not have it any other way.

Rothko explained in March 1947 to Betty Parsons—a gallerist now famed for having supported women artists, LGBTQ artists, and artists of color—his rationale as she exhibited his work: "The pictures will be without titles—only identified by numbers. Risking the charge of affectation I am omitting titles because they would inevitably mislead the spectator, and delimit the meanings and implications latent in the work." Born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz to a Jewish family in present-day Latvia in the early 1900s and later emigrating to the United States, Rothko went on to briefly attend and drop out of Yale University (citing its elitist and racist attitudes) before moving to New York City in his twenties and enrolling at Parsons School of Design. His now-signature abstract paintings were developed later in his life as an attempt to confront and convey basic, essential human emotions.

I always thought of Rothko as one of those classically renowned artists universally known for their ubiquity, famous because they're famous. And, until I met Wayne, my second boyfriend, art was just something deeply moving and meaningful because it was supposed to be. Wayne taught me how to see, truly see, art, but someone else taught me (how) to see Rothko.

Twelve decades after Mark Rothko was born, I lost my relationship with Henry, the fourth boyfriend of mine who was until he wasn't. It was partly my fault: I lashed out at him pretty dramatically after a frustrating birthday, and he decided that that was a deal-breaker for him. So began what my friends termed my first visceral experience with heartbreak. Some of them asked if I'd never before experienced being dumped; others were totally bewildered by the drastic, morose change to my personality because they never had an inkling that I even liked him all that much. Now years removed from the event, I still can't say definitively that I did or didn't, but I had wanted to find out and I was denied that chance. I've since had an infinite amount of thoughts and counter-thoughts about our breakup, but in the moment it was simply an all-encompassing grief that shook me to my core.

As I reeled, I attempted to cope by forcing myself to meet and hook up with new men. If Henry wouldn't want me, fine, but I would prove to myself that I was desirable. Henry had told me that he wanted to move on; naturally, in response, I wanted to move on first.

Predictably, it didn't work. I missed him, and I was so depressed that I couldn't even hook up anyways because all I did was sit around and mope and cry. With the first few guys that I did meet—Nate, Max, and Lee—we didn't bump purses. Instead, we played volleyball, perused Henry's father's LinkedIn profile, and watched Happy Together in the rain. Embarrassingly, even with these new potential suitors all I could talk about was Henry. (I'd argue that I'm fine now, and that I was a fundamentally different person at that time, but here I am still writing about the one man from all those years ago.) I impressed nobody, not even myself.

Months after the breakup, when I was finally capable of intercourse again, I pushed myself into a string of one-night stands because I sought the comfort of being wanted. To my (foreseeable) dismay, I only felt worse. My skills were still intact and I could get the guys off, but I felt hollow. I was a shell of myself going through familiar motions, a ghost retracing all the steps I'd walked when I was alive. If I came across as troubled, my flings never told me. Maybe they were just exceedingly polite.

One of those guys was Fred. He lived in a West Village apartment just steps away from where I'd had my first ever Valentine's Day dinner a decade earlier (with Alberto), and I like to think that he rather enjoyed my presence.

Over the course of our, well, intercourses, I came to understand Fred as a deeply cerebral and emotional being. He was around my age, and he'd said that he was a writer, which tracked. From his mannerisms to the way that he spoke, he seemed to draw from a well of melancholia deep within him, the depth of which actually somewhat shaking me out of my own sad reverie because, despite however unhappy I thought I was, I did not—and do not—conceive of myself being as foundationally depressed as he appeared to be.

Fred once commented on my own disposition, telling me that he wished he could experience life with as much lightness and untethered nonchalance as I seemed to do. Because I knew the truth, I didn't want to respond. Instead, I pulled him into my arms, peeling off his clothes one by one and nuzzling his skin, buying myself time when I was actually busy thinking up a storm. He didn't know that I was critically discontent as a result of my separation from Henry, but I didn't want him to know. My immiseration wasn't any of his business. I wanted to keep him at an arm's length, away from the emotional messiness that was my reality, because I wasn't there to be vulnerable and I didn't see him as a dating prospect. It was supposed to be just sex.

Fred's apartment was supposed to be my reprieve from the outside world; I would escape my troubles by escaping into him. I was astrally projecting a false hologram of myself to be there with him, where I pretended to be someone I wasn't, while my true self had been excised and left behind in my apartment to wallow—I was cosplaying insouciance. Fred's comment, therefore, confirmed for me that my costume was foolproof. So, to distract him from approaching the truth, I looked around his home for something topical, something to which I could deflect.

My eyes landed on the framed prints he had on his walls. They were oversized blocks of colors, predominantly red and instantly recognizable as works by Mark Rothko. I pointed them out and asked him to tell me about them because I knew only that they were of great repute.

I lucked out. Fred, as it turned out, was a studied fan of Rothko's works, and it was ergo quite easy to direct our conversation away from me. I spooned Fred as he explained to me how a Rothko painting should be perceived and why, half-listening as I kissed his neck because I wanted to see if I could turn him on so much that he could no longer keep up his lecture. Between the hitches in his spoken words and breathing made arrhythmic (by my ministrations), I was simply relieved that we were no longer talking about me.

Two years later, on February 14th, I crawled out of Jim's bed into a taxi bound for the airport. I had a flight to catch. I had plotted a last-minute trip to Paris and begged Stephen to meet me there because I didn't want to be alone. Stephen, ever reliable, was my ideal companion for this trip not least because I knew he loved me; by then, he had spent the majority of a decade living in Europe, meaning that I could count on his judgment when it came to deciding how to spend our time in France.

I needed to visit a very special exhibition before it ended. Fondation Louis Vuitton had mounted an historic retrospective, bringing together from collections all over the world approximately one hundred and fifteen works by Mark Rothko.

Stephen was by my side as I immersed myself in the exhibit. I moved between pieces slowly, trying to absorb as much detail as I could. In the ensuing years since my very brief dalliances with Fred, I found myself increasingly drawn to Rothko's art. Fred had taught me that Rothko's abstract works must be viewed with great patience as the colors gradually reveal themselves through layers upon layers. Certain colors were chosen to evoke certain emotions, part and parcel of Rothko's "desire for wordless dialogue with the viewer." As I stood there, meditative, staring into each individual piece, I peered into myself. I was a jumble of emotions.

Rothko, Mark. No. 7. 1951, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France.

I would later learn that my favorite, No. 7, was acquired at a Sotheby's auction for over $80 million. I suppose I have a certain Taiwanese billionaire to thank for granting me the privilege of experiencing this piece in person.

Why is it that I want the deck of Rothko playing cards so much? Is it because his art reminds me of my most consequential breakup and the tempest of emotions it engendered? Does it force me to recall my day-to-day misery and the lachrymose depths to which I descended when I first encountered his art? Maybe it's a reminder of the tiny interactions I've had, with the men who came into and left my life, that left me mutated. Maybe it's because it represents a period in time when my life felt like it was hanging in the balance, and because his art made me feel understood. Maybe it's because the paintings are aesthetically clean yet messy, a sort of controlled beauty. Maybe it's because it's taken on a life of its own. Rothko's art means something despite previously symbolizing nothing to me because I looked at it and decided that it meant something, but that's life, right? Nothing matters, so anything can matter; nothing has meaning, so everything does. So, insofar as art is subjective, Rothko's paintings are now an excuse for me to reflect.

When I moved into my current apartment, I told my friends that I'd one day like to commission them to recreate a Rothko each in their own styles for my walls. I don't have nine digits to spend, but that suits me just fine; I would much rather display the art of my closest companions because that means something to me, too.

Fred and I still follow each other on Instagram, I think. We don't interact. I doubt that he will ever read this but, if he does, I should thank him. Although I've subtitled this entry as us having left each other's lives irrevocably changed, I don't actually believe that I've changed his—but I'm grateful, all the same.