Sexual Astrology – Chapter 2 – Taurus

Marcus was not a plan.

I want to be clear about this because the Taurus chapter is where the experiment gets complicated to explain – not because anything complicated happened, but because nothing complicated happened, and I am not used to that being a positive quality.

I met Marcus at a bar on a Thursday evening when I was out with a colleague from the cardiac unit and he was at the next table with a friend. He was broad-shouldered and unhurried and he had the specific, comfortable stillness of a person who was completely at ease in whatever room they were in. He caught me looking and raised his glass. I raised mine back. By the end of the evening we were at the same table.

He was not quick. He was the precise opposite of Jared in nearly every measurable dimension – where Jared moved toward things, Marcus allowed things to arrive. Where Jared talked fast and funny, Marcus said less and meant more of it. Where Jared’s appeal was the crackling, impulsive energy of a fire, Marcus was something earthier. He was just – there. Solidly, entirely there.

His date of birth: May 3rd.

Taurus.

I found this out because he mentioned his birthday was coming up when we were talking about the end of the month, not because I asked specifically, but I noted it with the specific, quiet attention of a woman who has started noting these things and is not quite ready to admit why.

We did not date. This is important to the structure of the chapter. Marcus and I were not a relationship – we were a mutual recognition of a specific kind of compatibility that existed in the body rather than the biography. We saw each other four times over three weeks and each time was better than the last, and then his job situation changed and he moved cities, and we said goodbye with genuine warmth and no particular regret.

What I want to tell you about is the physical experience, because the physical experience was its own category and deserves to be told with the accuracy it merits.

The first night at his apartment, Marcus lit a candle.

I realize how that sounds. I’m telling you anyway because it was not a romantic-gesture candle, it was a practical candle – a thick pillar thing that smelled like cedar and burning and he lit it because, he said, he liked to be able to see. Not a performance. Just a preference.

He undressed me slowly, not in the reverent, slightly anxious way of men who are managing their own attention, but with the unhurried confidence of someone for whom slow is simply the correct speed. His hands on my skin were warm and deliberate, and he paid attention to texture – the specific, tactile interest of someone for whom the surface of things matters. He traced my shoulder blade with his thumb as if he was learning the geography of it.

“You’re in a hurry,” he said, when I moved forward.

I had not realized I was in a hurry.

“Force of habit,” I said.

“Take your time,” he said.

I took my time.

The sex with Marcus was the most purely physical experience I had had in longer than I wanted to count. Not emotionally absent – there was genuine warmth in it, the specific warmth of two people who like each other and are enjoying each other’s company in the most direct way available. But the warmth was in the body rather than the conversation, in the contact rather than the performance of contact. He was present in a way I could feel – not effortfully present, not demonstrating his presence, just actually there, his attention entirely on the physical reality of us in the room.

He smelled good.

I mention this because it is the detail that most clearly distinguished the Marcus chapter: the smell of him, cedar and something else, warm skin and the specific, clean scent of a body that had never needed to mask itself. He pressed his face into my throat and breathed slowly, and I felt the deliberateness of it, the specific sensory attention of someone for whom smell was information.

He was slow throughout. Not teasing – not the withheld slowness of a man building to something, but the natural pace of a person who was simply not in a rush. His stamina was considerable. I note this clinically and also with genuine appreciation. He moved with the steady, deep rhythm of someone who had decided this was the thing and was doing the thing completely and without any interest in rushing through it.

When I came it arrived the way things arrive when you have been given time to actually get there – not the sharp, electric peak of Jared’s fast-and-direct approach, but something longer and more complete, a wave that had been building for a while and finally crested.

He was warm afterward. Quiet. He didn’t feel the need to talk about it.

I found this remarkable.

We had breakfast the next morning and he made eggs with the same unhurried competence he applied to everything, and we talked about his work and my work and the neighborhood, and it was pleasant in the specific, uncomplicated way that pleasant things are pleasant when they are not trying to be more than they are.

Three weeks. Four evenings. Then he moved.

I thought about the Taurus description I had read – truly right there with you, no frills, sensory, long-lasting and steady – and I thought: yes. Accurate.

I filed this away.

I was definitely not running an experiment.