looked unconvinced, but he said, ‘One of my mates from school plays, I think. Well, when I say mate, more someone I know. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen pictures of dice and shit on his Insta feed. I’ll ask and see if he has any ideas.’
For Robbie to make such a concession was pretty good going, and as much help as I was going to get from him, so I thanked him and we both turned back to the sandwich platters. Then my phone buzzed, then buzzed again – a double notification. I reached for it and flicked the screen to life.
Is it feeling kind of like groundhog day there, Aquarius? asked the astrology app.
And Tinder had a message for me, too. Well, an image. An image of a penis that looked almost uncannily like a potato. A dodgy, misshapen one that would have been on a one-way street to the compost, had it turned up in my kitchen.
‘You’re not wrong,’ I told Stargazer grimly.
Seven
Is that romance making your heart beat faster, Aquarius, or did you just run up the stairs?
Over the next couple of weeks, I spent many, many hours on Project Pisces. Just narrowing down my pool (gettit?) of potential dates to those who had actually been born between February 19th and March 20th was my first challenge. It felt kind of rude and abrupt to ask someone their zodiac sign as soon as I’d matched with them – but then, if I was going to do this thing systematically and scientifically, as I’d promised myself I would, I couldn’t go wasting my time and theirs exchanging chit-chat with blokes who were born under the sign of Sagittarius, when I was only going to get around to dating them in several months’ time – could I?
So I kept my approach pretty simple. I got a match, maybe a bland ‘How’s it going?’ message (or maybe a dick pic, but I was getting so used to those that they barely registered – the ‘delete, block, ignore’ sequence was so ingrained now, I was sure I could do it in my sleep), and I replied cheerfully with a ‘Hope you don’t mind me asking, but what’s your star sign?’
Helpfully, some guys already had theirs listed on their profile, and that made it easier, although I didn’t swipe right on every Pisces man – of course not. There were just as many of them, it seemed, who had pictures of themselves with some poor drugged tiger in Thailand, or with their ex-girlfriend’s face half cut off at the edge, or wearing a baseball cap backwards, and I had standards to uphold.
The responses I got to my question varied. A high number thought it was hilarious to reply informing me that they’d been born under the sign of the ram, bull or goat, and therefore – you guessed it – they were horny. Delete, block, ignore. Some asked, ‘My what?’ in which case I’d ask the question again, and helpfully tell them that if they told me when their birthday was, I could work it out myself. And, of course, a high proportion simply ignored my question and never messaged me again.
Lying on my bed with Frazzle purring on my feet, I asked myself over and over again whether all this was worth it, and whether I shouldn’t find some other way to spend hours and hours of my leisure time, like training for a marathon or painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or something. But I’d set myself this challenge, embarked on this project, and now I felt strangely compelled to carry on with it.
By the end of April, I was regularly exchanging messages with Mitchell, who met my criteria but was working away in Glasgow for a couple of weeks; Rich, who was a nurse working in accident and emergency and whose shifts seemed to have been planned to coincide with my time off; and Paul. Pisces Paul – it had a nice ring to it. His pictures showed a nice-looking guy with glasses and a beard, he lived in South London too, and soon he suggested that we should meet up one evening in a local park for a glass of wine, as the weather was so nice.
At first, when he’d suggested it, I’d fleetingly thought, In a park? What’s wrong with a pub, like normal people go to on dates? But I’d dismissed the thought – the early May weather was glorious, the cherry trees laden