The Good Guy
by Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa
A friend of mine,
once told me
that he’s never
“too friendly,”
with women
because he doesn’t
want them
to think
that he’s hitting on them
and I told him
that I do
the same thing
but with straight men
and it wasn’t until
I let those words
Toil in my brain
For a few days
That I realized
how fucking dumb
That comparison is
Women assume
That my nice friend
is hitting on them
Because men so freely
make claim
to our bodies
while Men assume
That my niceness
Is an invitation
into my pants
Because they think
That I exist
For their amusement
men can’t be too friendly
because they tread
on the rotting remains
of the monsters who came
before them
but women can’t be too friendly
because we constantly have to crawl
on the broken backs
of our sisters
and our mothers
and our own
bloody carcasses
in order
to survive
men live in the shadow of their own violence,
fearing they’ll be misbranded,
while women politely decline
the barrel of a gun
being jammed down their throats
so no,
it’s not
the same
thing.
If it were,
Then my friends’
Reservations
would extend
Into his friendships,
The same way,
Mine do.
But they don’t.
Men’s entitlement to my body
Or my mind
Doesn’t end
With familiarity
Through distance
my friend becomes the “good guy,”
welcomed into the fold
and Forever celebrated
For simply not being
a piece of shit.
In contrast,
All distance awards me
Is more time
Time before I’m used up
or forced open
as I stupidly
try to find
any kind
of semblance
of a friendship
I can’t turn
To men
For support
Or advice
Or care
Or help
Because I’m afraid
That these acts
of friendship
Will turn
Into declarations
of love,
unrequited or not
Yet that same fear,
has never stopped them
from coming to me
for the same
kind of support
that they brand
“too personal”
When lodged
From their own tongues
their entitlement to my labour
more gendered then my politeness
so that even when,
I get the courage,
to break
or assert
those boundaries
that work against me
I’m still
always met
With silence.
Because no,
I was wrong.
It’s not the same fucking thing.
The same niceness
that indicts my friend
protects him
from the same scrutiny
that consumes me
because
at the end
of the day
he’s a good guy
and I’m
just a girl
Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa is a fourth year PhD Sociology candidate at York University, Toronto, Canada. She does gender, sex, and sexuality studies with a concentration on queer, postcolonial, and Black feminist theories. She has a joint honors degree in Sociology and English Language and Literature and a Master’s degree in Sociology from Western University. Her dissertation focuses on the pragmatic development of Toronto activist group AIDS ACTION NOW! using a queer-postcolonial, Black feminist lens. Much of her work is interdisciplinary. In particular, she uses sociological literature to examine a wide range of pose, poetry, interview data, and media content. For more information on her poetry, please follow her Instagram handle: @bluishgreenpoems or email her at jdacost5@yorku.ca
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ben
by Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa
First published in the Halcyone by Black Mountain press
Because your name
is as generic
as your soul
you won’t be able to prove
that this poem is about you
unless you claim
its contents
as your truth
you’d have to admit
that you held me down
on my bed
as you punched
Eight
Holes
in
my
wall
while
I
Cried
and begged you
to stop
that you used to call me a bitch
when we fought
because you knew
that my dad
would call me that
and that hearing his hate
echoed in another man’s voice
could break me
weaponizing my trauma
against me;
and spitting the poison
of my past
in my face
in order to drown out
the sound
of my resistance
If this poem is about you,
then that means
that you’re the same guy
who used to corner me
in my room
when I changed
to try to force me
to have sex
the same racist piece of shit
who thought it was okay,
to call immigrants and brown people names
even though
your girlfriend
was both
if you are the Ben,
that I knew,
then you made a habit
of ripping my limbs
from my sockets
and shoving them
inside me
just to watch
my fingers bleed
from under
my teeth
I don’t know
The exact moment
When you raped me
maybe it was the first time
that I said
I didn’t want to
and you said
“c’mon baby”
and made your way
inside me
anyways
or maybe
it was when
I openly cried
and you looked away
as I waited
for you
to finish
or perhaps
It was the first
or the 10th
or the last time
that I got black out drunk
so that I could give you my body
and not have to feel
the sharp stab
of your flag
colonizing
my insides
I don’t know
Which time
Was “the time.”
All I know
is that the word “raped”
fits neatly on my skin
which you made
unbearable
to live in
I know
that when I finally met a man
who loved me right
I would still
get black out drunk
so that I could try
and re-enact
the trauma
of loving you
stuck in a loop
haunted by the lost image
of you
tearing through
my flesh
forever trapped
in the muscle memory
of my dead brain cells
I know
that no matter what
I feel
like I have
No choice
when it comes
to sex
that even when
my love says
over
And over
And over
Again
that it’s “okay”
all can I hear
is Your voice
in my bones
saying
“no, you have to.”
And that the sensation
of another man
any man
on my skin
feels like
the hand
of death
And I know,
That I don’t know,
What sexuality
Feels like
Looks like
Is like
anymore.
I don’t want to claim
the title
“asexual”
because it feels
like I’d be describing
something I am
and not something
I lost
so instead
I dress myself up
in the language
of survivor
anxious
triggered
strong
stretching the words
across my body
like armour
to protect me
from the lingering sent
of your breath
but these labels
can’t fit
over the body suit
of black tar
that you left
on my skin
marking me
and leaving me
exposed
to the whisper
of the wind
that sings
in my ear
that you’re just
another girl
who
was
raped.