Don’t face the pandemic without consulting your horoscope! Trust Madame Sophia and the science of the stars to guide you through the COVID-19 crisis. (P.S. This is not a real horoscope. Just saying.)
Aries
(March 21-April 19)
Aries likes a good challenge. This month will take you places where you have never been before, namely the very back of the closet in the guest room. That is how bored you will be: You will finally finish unpacking a stack of boxes you stashed there “temporarily” when you moved in nine years ago. There you will find a pile of take-out menus for restaurants you never actually got around to visiting, from restaurants that are no longer open, in a town where you no longer live. You will pick up a menu from an Italian place, remember that one guy who invited you to go there on a date with him, and you will imagine sheltering in place with him, happily enjoying lasagna and red wine every night, instead of eating chips straight out of the bag with the guy you blew him off for. You will feel regret.
Taurus
(April 20-May 20)
Taurus is ruled by Venus and needs love. Specifically, Taurus needs a tall, handsome, mysterious stranger. But you will not meet such a man this month. Or maybe you will, but you can’t tell whether he’s really mysterious, because when everyone is wearing a mask, everyone appears mysterious. It’s hard to tell if anyone is handsome, because everyone has really bad #coronahair right now. So at best, you may meet someone tall. But you cannot get closer than six feet away, so good luck getting anywhere with the tall dude.
Gemini
(May 21-June 20)
This is a good month for all you Geminis to embrace your inner baker. Your competitiveness will come to the fore, and you will find fulfillment in posting pictures of your #coronabaking on all your social media. You will start with a simple batch of chocolate chip cookies, but will ratchet up your game after your arch nemesis, Jennifer, posts some kind of complicated poppyseed cake she claims her Polish grandmother taught her to make. That’s bull, and you know it, but you go one better and post a picture of Baked Alaska. You claim your Alaskan aunt taught you to make it ages ago, although you in fact got it by googling “what is a fancy thing I could bake.” You taste your Baked Alaska and it is crap because you used the ancient freezer-burnt bubblegum-flavored ice cream your ex-boyfriend liked. You found this worthless crap (the ice cream, not the ex) in the back of the freezer right behind the bag of frozen okra. You kicked your ex to the curb about two years ago. It wasn’t because he had the palate of a 12-year-old; it was because he had the maturity of a 12-year-old. The yucky ice cream he left behind was hard and gross and full of ice crystals. But you do not care. All that matters is, like the ex himself, the dessert looked deceptively swoon-worthy on Instagram. Nobody need ever know that the reality did not live up to the image.
Cancer
(June 21-July 22)
As a highly intellectual Cancer, you savor this unexpected opportunity to catch up on your reading. You appreciate good literature and would totally read more if you had more time. Well, now you do, so you pick up a copy of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which you were assigned to read in a college literature class, but didn’t have time to read due to a lot of really good parties that were happening your junior year. Now is the time! Read the first four pages. Become irritated. Put it down. Pick up a romance novel and get very deeply into the story of Vanessa and Xavier. Wow, that Xavier sure knows how to please a woman. Your last hook-up, Chuck, should totally read this book and see how Xavier does it. Squint at the picture of Vanessa on the cover. You could absolutely look that good with professional makeup and a really well-engineered push-up bra, you decide. Xavier would, without a doubt, want to woo you and do you. Heck, he’d probably dump Vanessa for you! Take a bottle of wine, a box of cookies and the book into your bedroom. Lock the door. Don’t come out until you, Vanessa and Xavier are all satisfied.
Leo
(July 23-Aug. 22)
Passionate Leos love spring! It is a time of renewal. A time to get outside and enjoy the warm spring air. A time to get outside and reconnect with friends! But not this year. Get your butt back inside, Leo. You can look out the window. You can people watch from there. Well, there are hardly any people out, but you can watch for the mail carrier, or possibly you’ll spy a squirrel. Yes. You can sit by your window, watch squirrels scamper about, and envy the little sons of biatches for their freedom. Then, realizing you are jealous of a squirrel, take a whole bag of cashews into bed and cry bitter tears. Afterward, when you feel a bit better, share your cashews with the squirrels. They are your only friends now.
Virgo
(Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
Your natural Virgo love for people is frustrated by your inability to actually do very much to help them, so you will spend hours devising uplifting memes to post to social media. You realize these memes would look great on T-shirts, so you contact a manufacturer in China to churn them out, design and launch a website to sell them, and realize that you no longer care if your boss recalls you to work or not, because if this whole pandemic thing keeps going much longer, you’ll have so much money that you will never have to work again. You immediately scrap all those plans for the humanitarian things you’d always said you’d do if you were rich, and begin looking for property on a secluded Greek island.
Libra
(Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
Libras love harmonious relationships, and that cuts out 90 percent of the men out there. Dogs are a better alternative. But beware of looking at pictures of shelter dogs right now. You are in great danger of being taken advantage of by a sad-looking elderly basset hound, and if you end up with one sleeping in your bed, you have only yourself to blame. This isn’t on the stars; this is on you. You’ve been warned. OMG, those big brown eyes.
Scorpio
(Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
Dear, calm Scorpio, I have good news for you. This pandemic is the perfect opportunity to catch up on all your lost sleep, just like you’ve always dreamed of! Go about it in an orderly way. Set your alarm for 6 a.m. each morning so you can get a good start on your goal. Get up early, change into clean pajamas, rearrange your pillow into the desired shape and get right back into bed. Do not let anything distract you from your goal! You may feel the urge to learn a foreign language, read more books, organize your basement, clean your kitchen or write letters to old friends. Do not fall into any of these traps. Even if you are not sleepy, put the hours in. No goal is reached without significant sacrifice. If you have a downer partner or housemate who tries to discourage you by saying things like, “Get out out bed, you lazy piece of crap! You left a mess in the kitchen again,” know that every dedicated person has had things to overcome. Put the pillow over your head, and concentrate on reaching your goal. You are a winner!
Sagittarius
(Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
Some people will come out of the pandemic bragging about having mastered new skills, finished all the great Russian novels or completed an online course. Generally, a Sagittarian is the first to brag of new knowledge. But not now. You will scoff at these people who consider merely learning to code to be a major accomplishment, for you will have reached a goal which few others can boast of: You have used your time wisely and have learned how to reach orgasm using a completely different method than your old tried-and-true. It wasn’t easy, but you persevered and you are very proud of yourself. Unfortunately, you cannot tell anyone of your great accomplishment.
Capricorn
(Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
The stars have aligned in a way that will allow you to perfect your already strong selfie game. You will fill your phone and social media feed with hundreds of pictures of yourself, each featuring a completely different outfit, hairstyle, makeup job and expression. There is one picture of you with your hair down, wearing a wispy white dress and looking pensive as you cast your eyes longingly out the window. You feel this picture artistically expresses your inner feelings of sadness as you face the reality of the quarantine. There is another picture of you with your hair in braids, wearing your old parochial school uniform. It is not zipped up because you have gained a pound or 30 since then, but you figure out a way to pose that conceals that, mostly. You feel this look perfectly displays the dichotomy of what a good and traditional but also naughty girl you are. In yet another, you are seen with your hair pinned into a complicated and thickly lacquered updo, looking haughty in the maid of honor dress Brittanee made you pay $750 for. You were mad at the time, but now you are so glad to have that dress. You look amazing in it. Your selfie is so much better than the picture the professional wedding photographer took on the only other day you wore it. You look so good that you decide you want to be seen, so you make a coordinating mask out of an old silk scarf that really picks up the green in the dress, and you go to the only place you can go — the grocery store. It’s all worth it when you find a four-pack of toilet paper. You resolve to email a copy of this selfie of you, in which you look so fabulous and radiantly happy as you hold up your major score, to the toilet paper company. They are almost certain to ask you to star in a series of commercials for them.
Aquarius
(Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Obviously, waterbearer, it is up to you to set the Internet straight. Good heavens, what is wrong with all the people online? All of them are stupid. Fortunately, you now have time to explain to them exactly how wrong they are. You are surprised that not one of them is polite enough to thank you for pointing out the difference between facts and opinions. You spend hours crafting elaborate responses to cretins. They pretend to be unmoved, but you are pretty sure that some of them secretly have changed their opinions, thanks to you. They are just too embarrassed to admit they now understand they have been very, very wrong. What will happen if your boss wants you to return to work? You can’t possibly go now! There is far, far too much to be done. You had no idea the public had reached such a state of ignorance. You need a few more weeks of being laid off, you calculate. By then you will have managed to bring everyone around to your point of view.
Pisces
(Feb. 19-March 20)
Success in business is yours. Who knew how productive you could be when working from home? You keep your laptop right next to you in bed, so that if an idea occurs to you around 3 a.m., you can simply roll over, rub your eyes, and begin typing away. You have worked more than 100 hours per week every week since the quarantine began, and you have already completed all the projects slated for next fall. You plan to get a couple of hours of sleep and then start in on the December projects. Your spouse, who has moved to the sofa, has been rather irritable, but you don’t care. All that matters is the spreadsheet you’re feverishly working on. If you ever get re-hired, you’re definitely getting a promotion.
Sophia Sinclair is Curvicality’s sex and relationships writer and the author of the Small-Town Secrets romance series, available on Amazon. Reach Sophia at sophia@curvicality.com.
