Loving Degree Zero

By Haoran Xia
December 29, 2025


1.
The concept of “degree zero” comes from Barthes’s Writing Degree Zero. As a semiotics scholar, Barthes does not define “degree zero” as zero degrees Celsius in the natural sciences. Rather, he conceptualizes “zero” as a kind of intermediate state: a condition that escapes binary frameworks, that does not belong to an “either/or” opposition, but exists independently as itself—an autonomous in-between. Such a state often requires the object (if we take writing as an example: writing itself as the subject, and the reader who receives it as the object) to completely detach from the symbols attached to the subject—politics, culture, history, the opinions of others, memory, and so on—in order to understand the subject from an objective perspective in context. It is precisely through this de-symbolizing process of contextualization that the degree zero of the subject is materialized, and so is an intermediate state.

2.
And what is the degree zero of love?

3.
First of all, the love I refer to here, and the discussion around this “love,” is only limited to romantic love.

The degree zero of love is an ideal state of love, almost utopian. 

Yet because love requires an object, this degree zero must come from both ends: both must simultaneously be in an intermediate state. It is like two people standing on a scale — the needle must rest at zero, not a tiny more, not a tiny less.

This kind of intermediate state in love is almost impossible.

Its impossibility stems not only from the instability and complexity of an individual, but also from the foundational nature of the relationship between “I” and the “other”: at our core, we are strangers. Thus, for “I” and the “other” to reach degree zero would mean achieving an absolute state between us. In math, such absolute state could be expressed as one hundred percent (100%). Interestingly, when a number reaches its maximum value, at another level it returns to zero — to the origin. This also means that such a degree zero of love (the ideal state of love) is an impossible state. In Bataille’s terms, this is the impossibility of love.

4.
But what if — I know that life and reality themselves do not allow space for “what if”— but, what if:

You and I met just as we were coming of age.

We are both shaped by family and society into men defined by traditional masculinity. We both play ice hockey. We come from two completely different worlds. We are drawn to each other’s instantly: I like your reservedness and restraint; you like my optimistic attitudes and openness.

To everyone else, we are each other’s only rivals. Off the rink, we are each other’s solace. We hug, we kiss, and we have sex; we grapple and play against each other, and we whisper cheek to cheek; we hold on yo each other on the coldest nights and express our desire and feelings on the darkest nights. We never quite understand why we are so deeply drawn to one another—perhaps because of admiration, or perhaps because of jealousy. But in this brutal, homophobic world, we both understand that this relationship could only exist on the ice rink: we could only be rivals, never lovers.

Days and nights pass, seasons change, our relationship only exist within the form of text messages. Meeting twice a year has become a routine. Every time we see each other, every time we hold each other, it feels like the last minute of this relationship. So whenever you are by my side, I wish I could absorb every part of you into my body.

Every time we meet, we address each other by surname — until that one time, when you called out my first name, and I answered instinctively with yours. Our eyes met, and in that moment my body felt, intimately and unmistakably, the total warmth of your body. Only then did we realize that we had already fallen in love, for so long.

We are filled with courage, and the love for each other, putting hockey, honor, and the whole world behind us.

You take a hold of me. I catch you right here in the moment.

I take you to a cottage by the lake in the country of Ottawa. We sit quietly, watching the campfire, listening to bird chirping. I listen to you as you speak of your mother’s tragic death; you are sobbing — so strong and vulnerable at the same time — while confessing your love to me in your native language.

We are both victims of masculinity.

Ice hockey made us who are me, and at the same time, destroyed us completely.

We hide our true selves. And we are truly exhausted.

We thought none of this would lead anywhere. 

But you see me, and I see you. I look at you, and you look at me, as if step by step, from opposite ends of the rink, we walk toward the center line — a space that belong only to us. 

And this is our degree zero of love.

5.
This is the story of Heated Rivalry. Of course, it is indeed a “what if”: a fictional story.

I can’t remember the last time something made me completely lose my capacity for objective analysis — perhaps it was Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II, or perhaps Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask. After finishing Heated Rivalry, I fell into an emotional breakdown.

I had assumed Heated Rivalry would be a low-budget streaming series that used sex and sports as gimmicks to attract queer audiences. Instead, it turned out to be something on the same level with Normal People: a story about intimacy, growing up, masculinity, and love. And, of course, its most precious quality lies in its queer story.

This story brought me back to the me fifteen years ago — the timid boy who sweared awkwardly, who played basketball clumsily on the playground, only trying to fit into the straight guys group. It also brought me back to the me ten years ago, terrified of coming out yet equally terrified of losing the person I loved, living my life within a fear I constructed for myself. It reminded me of the courage required to come out: a kind of “all or nothing” courage; a courage to stand against the world; a naïve, romantic, even somehow a bit of childish kind of courage. A courage with a classical quality: unconditional commitment, a willingness to sacrifice for the one you love (“I” and “the other”).

It also reminded me of the quality that love is supposed to have: an almost unreal happiness. A quality I had, and lost completely.

As I watched Shane and Ilya’s story, it felt as if the past fifteen years of my love life slid past me. My first love that completely changed me. All the boys I had a crushed on but never engaged with. All the boys I kissed, had sex with, held tight, and eventually became strangers to. And all the boys who hurt me, left me, betrayed me. Regardless of how things ended, they all became strangers in my life; my relationship with them now exists only in the basis of language. Their bodies, words, thoughts, and smells have all turned into words: words I speak with a neutral, objective tone.

It also felt like I was the me before coming out again — the cautious, calculating version of me; the version who was constantly afraid of being caught, of being disapproved of, of being laughed at, of being cursed. And my fear only existed simply because — I like boys. I didn’t understand why liking someone could turn me into an enemy of the society. My parents’ disastrous marriage had already distorted my understanding of intimacy, and the homophobic culture forced me to bury the very idea of love deep inside, as if it were a dark secret between me and myself. My east asianess, and my East Asian family, made it even more challenging to articulate this secret.

It felt as though I were reliving all my trauma, staring at myself in front of a shattered mirror.

I feel sorry for that boy who endured all these traumas, and I deeply mourn the love I lost.

6.
Heated Rivalry is a love story.

It is a story about two people who are brave enough to challenge the world; and who eventually fall in love with each other with an open heart.

It is romantic, bitter, heart-fluttering—almost like a fairy tale.

It tells an almost impossible love story, and yet even within this impossibility, it creates space for possibility. 

It offers love a space, a way out — where two people have the chance to know each other, to understand each other, to become intimate, and then, fall in love. The beauty of love lies in its restraint quality, in its uneasiness: moments of wanting to reach out but pulling back only because of the inconvenience; moments when, even if all is ruined in the end and nothing is expected in return — the confessions of the warmest “I love you;” moments when hearts are open and left only with bravery and confirmation: it is us or nothing.

This is the degree zero of love.