Four.

There's a Steve Madden tote bag in the recesses of my home hiding what remains—thank you, Carole Radziwiłł.

A decade ago, I began collecting Hello Mr., the self-proclaimed magazine “about men who date men.” I discovered one of their earliest issues as a coffee table book in someone’s apartment (memory fails me, but I’ve narrowed it down to having been either a friend of a friend’s or a hookup’s) during my third year of college, and I became quite taken with the magazine because it represented unspoken possibilities that I’d not yet found realized both in the wider world and within my own life.

I thought Hello Mr. was beautifully curated. Its images were simple yet evocative, and its essays gave me a glimpse into the headspaces of other LGBTQ+ men. (Although I have no qualms about referring to myself as a gay or queer man, I hesitate to apply such labels liberally to others given each individual’s personal relationship to the terms.) I was a baby gay who didn’t yet know how to behave, and I was very much in the early stages of constituting my sense of self. I didn’t know who or how I wanted to be, but the voices within Hello Mr. gave me examples of who or how I could be—and affirmed that the me I already was was not so alien after all.

Although it ran for only ten issues, Hello Mr. published and interviewed the likes of Alexander Chee and 黃家奇 (partner of the late 任航). Because the magazine had only just launched in 2012, mere months before I chanced upon it, I felt poised to begin amassing my own collection of something original, something important and artistic and beautiful, that I could use to decorate my space, to give visitors hints about my inner world, and to demonstrate that I was learned yet interesting yet stylish. I purchased the issues already extant and read voraciously. I read and reread again. I had only just experienced my first romantic relationship, and I subconsciously came to rely on Hello Mr. (and HBO’s seminal television show, Looking) to give me some sense of validation that what I was doing was right and natural.

But, the beginnings of my self-discovery weren’t limited to curating my media consumption. I took advantage of the flexible control I exercised over my college curriculum to study scientific racism, ethnomusicology, neocolonialism, and the like, and I grew increasingly disillusioned with mainstream LGBTQ+ media as I read more and more and more. The works that I so idolized suddenly rang hollow, because, frankly speaking, the lives and experiences depicted within were so far removed from my own. Despite our shared commonality as a minority group, despite the fact that certain works here or there did at least somewhat resonate with me, there was almost nothing that spoke to me in totality as a gay Asian American man. I wanted something that conversed with my soul, and, within Hello Mr., I only ever found fragments of such conversations.

One such fragment was an essay, published within one of the magazine’s first four issues, on what remains after a breakup: items left behind by ex-boyfriends, memories made physical of what once was. As I processed my breakup with Henry, that was the one essay that kept returning to me. Written with this theme, the piece included testimonials from random men about the belongings that they kept as well as their symbolism. So, in the wake of my own, in the aftermath of the ending to the one relationship I wanted so badly to go on forever, I took stock. I reached out to all the men who’d ever dated (and still maintained an open connection with) me to talk. And, then, as I excavated my belongings, so too did I excavate myself.

In chronological order, from my ex-boyfriends, this is what I(‘ve) kept.

From Alberto:
The first and only love letters anyone’s ever written me, a pair of pants (later returned), and photo strips

From Wayne:
Sketches and notes, a personally-designed cap, a bespoke etched wood lamp, a cardboard cutout of Mariah Carey, a pair of flip-flops (later broken and trashed), and photo strips

From Jun:
A custom handmade Surskit plush doll, his old set of Cardcaptor Sakura cards, assorted kitchenware (disproportionately spoons, to my continuing chagrin), one or two errant pieces of underwear, and photo strips

From Henry:
Skincare products, a Uniqlo shirt, an AirPods case in the shape of a Digimon Digivice, bathmats (later disposed), a cover sheet for my foldable couch, winter outerwear, and photo strips, so many photo strips

As I sorted through, I was an emotional mess. Some items only made me smile, resurfacing fond memories; others only upset me to no end, and I made plans to rid myself of those offending items forever. Unsurprisingly, it’s the photos that gave me the most pause. I’m sentimental to a fault, so I’ve never tossed or destroyed any of the photos I’ve ever taken with any of these men, reasoning that they still remain worthy tokens memorializing the time and love spent and developed together; throwing them away would feel too much like casting aside those past iterations of my self.

There were so many photos of us. I looked at each, refreshing my memory of every moment captured within those images by reading the captions I’d written on the back. It’s long been a practice of mine to provide handwritten context (date, location, and a rough sketch of that day’s events) on the flip side of each for posterity, and doing so has never not come in handy whenever I decide to look back through time. I obsessed over the pictures of me with Henry, including extra copies of the ones I had printed and laminated at a FedEx shop around the corner from my FiDi apartment, where I’d explained to an employee that I was going through a rough patch with him and that he needed to be reminded that he loved me. (Sympathetic, she had nodded and agreed because, as she said, so too did her boyfriend.) I’d mailed the originals to him with a handwritten letter in which I accepted blame for every fight we’d ever had, because I no longer had my pride, because it was worth it to debase myself if it meant that he would come back, that he wouldn’t give up on us as I had begged him to do, because I loved him. I fucking loved him and I wanted the world for us, and I would have done anything—even hiring or somehow engaging his favorite Indonesian pop star—if it meant that I could save us, because he was the one that I wanted more than I’d ever wanted anyone in my whole life. He was the one that was supposed to last forever.

Although I’d earlier returned most of his possessions to him, at which point we’d had conversations that I originally thought were fruitful, I confess that I didn’t return his winterwear on purpose—mostly because they were too heavy to carry on either of the two trips I made to his apartment during the aftermath, but also because I had still harbored hope that he would one day come to his senses. As my year without water went on, that hope crumbled away, only to be replaced by bitter acceptance.

The guys in Hello Mr. discussed preserving these physical remnants of their past relationships as a meaningful exercise; to them, it was better to have loved then lost than to have never loved at all. Ardently, vehemently, obstinately, I disagree.

I don’t discount how lucky I’ve been to have experienced the loves that I’ve had. I don’t regret some of them, and even then I regret only one of them to the point that I would so stubbornly object to that adage.

I regret Henry.

I was not—am not—better off to have loved him, to have been loved by him, and then to have lost him, than I would have been had I never loved him at all.

My friends would say that my life now is eons improved from the life I had before I met him. I counter that that improvement was made not due to him, but despite him: I had no choice but to survive, but to press onward. I was so lost without him and, without exaggeration, I almost died. I withered away; my friends nourished me back to life.

I remember, week after week, apologizing to my therapist. Objectively, my life did get better: I landed a fantastic new job, I moved into the apartment of my dreams, I took myself on vacations around the world, I was making new friends and I was letting myself partake in every activity I’d wanted to but never let myself do. Yet still I apologized to my therapist because still I yearned, still I wished that things would work out, still I couldn’t quash in entirety the hope that he would return. Still I talked about him. I felt like a broken record, I’d say over video conference, laughing, but this was the one subject that bothered me to no end, to which I kept subjecting my poor therapist, because there truly was nothing else in my life that felt worth our weekly sessions. I talked about my childhood, I talked about the people I’ve lost, but it invariably always came back to him: my grief was additive. I apologized for boring my therapist; this was the one wound that wouldn’t heal.

To this day, I’m still divesting myself of his belongings. As I do that, I also shed the mental baggage whose dead weight I’ve been carrying. Although I didn’t, won’t, dispose of all that remains, every tangible reminder of the life we once shared, I’m allowing myself to leave some things behind. I’ve made my peace with letting go of them so that the worst memories can begin to fade. Slowly, inexorably, I’m moving on.

I never purchased another copy of Hello Mr. Upon vacating my apartment on Tompkins Square Park, all those years ago, I left my four issues in the building lobby. I wondered whether someone else would chance upon them.