He wants to get to know me before he can commit to a meeting. He calls every night asking me how I’m getting on with the other men on the page how many of them I’m going to meet, how much more I look forward to meeting him than to meeting them.
        What I find out in our phone conversations: He is an accountant but works out four times a week and his life ambition is to open up his own gym. He has slept with fifty-two women. His ex enjoyed bringing other men into bed for threesomes. His nipples are pierced and he wants to get his penis pierced soon.
        This is more information than I need and I’m about to call off our date, but the moment I take my phone I receive the following text: ‘I need to tell you that I used to be a woman. This is your chance to cancel.’
        We meet on Piccadilly Circus. He is tall and muscular but bouncy and fidgety. I cannot decide if he looks like a somewhat feminine man or a very masculine woman.
        He gets lost on the way to the Italian restaurant he wanted to take me to. We wander around SOHO for twenty minutes until I drag him into Taro’s in Old Compton Street.
        Over raw fish and jasmine tea I learn where in his lower belly his balls used to hide, how the doctors constructed a penis out of his female genitals, how the hormones got rid of the breasts, how he doesn’t grow a beard but has hair on his chest. He lifts his shirt to prove it, earning us funny looks from waiters and other guests.
        After desert he brings out his mobile. He smiles, plays around with it, pushes some buttons, holds it at an odd angle, smiles some more. Then he shows me the mini movie he just made of me.
        I feel as uncomfortable as I feel flattered and ask him to find a pub with me to watch the European cup finale Greece against Portugal.
        He watches the game and I watch the other men in the pub.
        They spill their drinks and smell of beer.
        They slur their words and burp.
        They make rude comments when their team plays badly and animal sounds when they score.
        They all grow beards and their dicks aren’t remodelled vaginas.
        The next morning I write an ‘it was a pleasure meeting you but I’m sure you agree there was no chemistry’- mail.