More yes than no

• Steve opens at 1:09am Monday the thirteenth ("not Friday the thirteenth — make of that what you will"), diagnosing his failing self-preservation instinct: no sleep discipline, "maximum mess" indoors and out, easier because he barely lives indoors at all. • He's just watched The Rest Is Science and types Hannah Fry at length. First Five (clever = Five), then corrects — Five, Six and Seven are all cognitive. He tries sexual Five, then a Two-ish doting quality, then after a chat with Céline lands on Seven wing Six. The Six shows in her talking about being "the dork, the nerd." Steve: "the seven has the dork on the right and on the left they've got the... cork. Or the fork, who is the eight. But they don't have the dork." • The thesis is the Seven–Five pairing as chemical accident. He gropes for the metaphor — burger, cheese, gherkin — then lands on the marinara pizza: the channel is the content carrier, Hannah and Michael the tomato and cheese. A Four or Six couldn't do it. "It's like a perfect cognitive left-right... bam bam bam, idea idea idea." A Six would be "stultifying." The tagline gives it away: expand your mind (Five), tickle and tease you (Seven). • Why he loves it: he has little access to Seven unstoned — partly why he gets stoned — but plenty to Five. He riffs on comedy as delivery volume, comedians as people who just keep hitting you, "like a big joke dildo," and calls Fry and Stevens "content ambassadors" in polyphonic, contrapuntal Seven-Five rhythm. Best metaphor: like owning your own frozen yogurt soft-serve machine, on tap — triggering real covetousness about the £175 Ninja Mr Whippy despite already owning a churner. The channel is "the best kind of Doom Scroll." • The crush takes a hit: Hannah is almost six foot. This spirals into redheads — Juliet, a Scottish doctor, four or five years in his early thirties, pale, Lily Cole-ish, stunning, and yet he never liked her natural odour: "not grossed out, but it didn't feel like home." His father is ginger; it skips a generation. Also snags on naming a son after yourself: a Four wouldn't, a Five wouldn't, but it means something different for a Three than a One. • The date: Patricia, a Polish psychologist — fifteen years forensics, now chronic pain at Guy's and St Thomas's, daughter of a mayor tied to Solidarity. "Her credentials are good. Five-wise, those are the credentials I like." She's his height, and he spent the evening testing how that felt. Fine. Presence isn't height — it's whole physicality. • Dominant metaphor: dating as property viewing. The phone call with Pol was the estate agent showing photos; the date was the viewing. "It's not perfect. That's not ideal, is it. But you like this section, and that section." He marvels at the absurdity of spending twenty minutes somewhere before committing to twenty years. He insists he means it metaphysically, not acquisitively. • The box he didn't know he needed ticked: he mentioned filming content, said he'd probably never share the channel — "it's like sharing a diary" — and she said "oh go on." He invokes de Botton: rather than the "you who never arrived in my arms, beloved," just give them the diary. "This is how I'm crazy, this is how I'm weird." She found it amusing and interesting. "And us men — we want to be found to be amusing and interesting." • After the disaster seven months ago — a counselling student, a One, who wanted a soft Rogersian Nine and was annoyed to get Steve — he'd sworn off. Five years of near-monasticism have left him unsure what a girlfriend even is. He wants someone roughly his age (she's 48–49), hates that this feels primal and possibly misogynistic, can't argue it away. • The closing position is deliberately unromantic and better for it: "It's not like I'm going, oh Pol, she's the one. You can only really just say there's more yes than no."