The Gentleman's Grammar

“But when she said no, I put it back,” he said,

almost convinced,

his eyes glittering with an island of newly found hope

in an ocean of what one would expect to be regret and shame,

but was mostly

the realisation of the bad luck of getting caught.

He spoke about his penis

like people speak about things

they're accused of misplacing.

He spoke of her pause before the refusal

like it was a waiting period 

he could utilise to win back a business deal.

He spoke of consent and of abuse

like they were metaphors:

subjective, 

negotiable, 

open to interpretation.

What can I say?

He was a veteran in the metaphorical department.

And like the weather gods at the meteorological department,

it was barely a surprise

that he would fail at his job rather spectacularly.

It's funny how we've been brought up

with an image of what monsters should look like:

loud,

ruthless,

unhinged.

The more I see humans,

the more convinced I become

that the worst of them

come in soft, tamed, well-behaved skins.

You need your prey to like you

before you can become its predator.

Apparently,

that is where evolution peaked.

He wasn't just another man.

What life would that even be?

He was a man of ethics,

of principles,

of revolutions.

A gentleman

drowning in a sea of women

tarnished by grains and specks

of uncouth penises

reeking of unbothered testosterone.

A gentleman

who had called me a misogynist

three weeks earlier,

who spoke of my arrogance

in arguing with a woman,

of my refusal to accept

that every last man

on the face of the planet

should be apologetic

and ashamed

of his very existence,

as though disagreement

were a misdemeanour,

and refusing to surrender

my sensibilities

to somebody else's dogmatic definition

of feminism

were a serious offence;

one that demanded exile.

As though an everyday disagreement

could be turned into a ticking bomb

of character definition,

one that would culminate

in the assassination

of the very character,

its identity,

and every life

caught inside its blast radius.

And don't we all know,

gentlemen don't rape.

Because how could they?

They're soft-spoken.

Agreeable.

Pleasant to talk to.

They feel good to be around.

Imagine if everything

that seemed and felt nice

were incapable of carrying disease.

How poorly

would a sexually transmitted disease

feel?

And who was I,

an oral cancer,

to judge him,

a fucking genital germ?

He was a gentleman

with a gentle penis

and gentler intentions.

Every time he touched a woman

with cheap liquor beneath his breath,

it was drunk affection.

Every time he described

his journey across the terrain of an unclothed woman's flesh

to another,

he was merely being a flirt.

Every time he pulled his penis out of his pants

in front of an unwilling woman,

it was just an error in punctuation.

And isn't that the trick?

We have become so accustomed to manicured manliness

that we mistake sheep's clothing for character.

The gentleman's voice is soft.

His hands are clean.

His vocabulary is polished.

His metaphors are well behaved.

Only the verbs misbehave.

Consent becomes a metaphor.

Violation becomes a misunderstanding.

Persistence becomes desire.

And a woman's refusal becomes an inconvenience to be negotiated.

Perhaps that is how a predator survives

in a world that insists

on recognising monsters by their manners.

He doesn't need to look monstrous.

He only needs to sound vulnerable.

And perhaps that is why the language matters.

Because once you crowd the noun with enough adjectives,

people stop asking what the verb did.

That is the genius of manicured manliness:

the sentence looks clean.

Even when the body does not. 

Especially when the body does not.

And somewhere between the two,

a gentleman has learned how to call his crime a metaphor.