Well, I spent my Valentine’s Day eating pizza with another single friend and watching movie adaptations of Oscar Wilde plays. It was pretty great and now having done that, I’m not sure what people are actually supposed to do with that holiday.
Anyway, some of you guys left Ariel some really nice, thoughtful comments on her post yesterday where she talked about her personal life a bit. It’s great to know we have such awesome readers! Ariel and I were talking about this yesterday and wanted to share something amazing that happened with you.
Chapter Fifteen
So Eva’s still dealing with how Gideon broke things off with her aka Eva won’t stop being melodramatic.
How deep could a love affair get if you didn’t know the darkest recesses of your lover’s soul? That was the dilemma I’d faced with Gideon.
She goes on like this – the deep, contemplative thoughts about the true nature of love – for a whole paragraph a couple times a page throughout this whole chapter. It’s about as grueling and meandering as you’d expect. Good thing you guys aren’t actually reading it! And I’m reading it for you! Yep, this is an even trade!
Eva stops being deep long enough to talk to Cary about his new, high-profile modeling gig.
“You know how it is with male models—we’re tossed around like condoms at an orgy.”
Yes, I know exactly what that’s like.
Eva then calls her real dad. Maybe he has a real name, I have no idea.
“Hey, Chris insists he saw you on television the other day. Some cable channel, celebrity gossip thing. The guys won’t leave me alone about it.”
Oh my goodness, I love this. The dad’s friends are teasing him about his daughter’s high-profile love life. This is hilarious! Like “Nyeh! Your daughter’s famous! NEENER NEENER.”
“So you’re not dating one of the richest men in America?”
Oh, Eva’s real dad, you provide some great perspective on how stupid this novel is! Please come back more often.
Cary and Eva get ready to go to the garden party/music label rock star gathering/I am suspicious this is even remotely realistic event. Despite Gideon breaking up with her, Eva thinks it’s fine to go to this party hosted by his family that she hasn’t met yet because Gideon won’t be there? Cary is sad.
“Trey didn’t call last night,” he muttered. “He said he would. […] Trey’s not flaky like the others I’ve dated. He wouldn’t have forgotten to call, which means he just doesn’t want to.”
“The rat bastard.”
Just so we’re clear on this, Cary, the character we were initially told was gay but is bisexual, is dating a man named Trey who he thinks he’s falling in love with, despite Cary cheating on him by having sex with random women. Regularly. We’re supposed to be upset with Trey. Just… just try to do that, okay? Your job as a reader/possible crazy person.
So they go to the party and Eva meets all of Gideon’s family, who act like they’re meeting their son’s girlfriend. Even though Gideon has broken up with Eva. And Gideon isn’t there. Nobody acts like this is weird.
“I can see why Gideon is so taken with you. Your eyes are a stormy gray, yet they’re so clear and direct. Quite the most beautiful eyes I think I’ve ever seen, aside from my wife’s.”
I flushed. “Thank you.”
Even when literally everyone says something like that and it gets weirder. It gets worse when – SURPRISE OF SURPRISES – Gideon shows up! He’s super mad at Eva for showing up when she hurt him so bad, so he… takes her in the house to have sex?
“Shut your damned mouth.” He caught me by the elbows and shook me so hard my teeth snapped together. “Just shut up and let me talk.”
I slapped him hard enough to turn his head. “Don’t touch me.”
With a growl, Gideon hauled me into him and kissed me hard, bruising my lips. His hand was in my hair, fisting it roughly, holding me in place so I couldn’t turn away. I bit the tongue he thrust aggressively into my mouth, then his lower lip, tasting blood, but he didn’t stop. I shoved at his shoulders with everything I had, but I couldn’t budge him.
This is actually the worst thing I have ever read.
I gasped and tried to recoil, but there was nowhere to go. Not with the door at my back and a grimly determined Gideon in front, one hand keeping me pinned while the other lifted my left leg over his shoulder, opening me to his ardent mouth.
This is Gideon’s attempt to make amends with the girl he just broke up with, who has opened up to him about being a rape victim. And it works?
“I’m barely surviving it now. I’ve crawled through the last four days of my life. Another week, a month . . . It’ll break me to give you up.”
Okay. Fuck trying to make sense of Eva’s character. Here’s a few hilarious descriptions of Gideon’s penis.
Gideon battered my tender sex with that brutally thick column of rigid flesh
Titillating.
Then he ripped open his button fly and pulled his big, beautiful penis out
Okay. What makes a penis beautiful? Everybody I know is perplexed by this one. I’ve shown this passage to a ton (a ton) of my friends and nobody has any idea what qualities constitute beauty in a penis.
But Is It Better Than Fifty Shades of Grey?
This is really, really uncomfortable to read. Even if Gideon has a beautiful penis.
The Winner This Round: Fifty Shades of Grey
I am glad to hear that Ariel is feeling better. Just have negative Ariel go read The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, that seems to keep Anna’s subconscious occupied.
I was at the store yesterday and I saw a CD with music from Fifty Shades of Grey. I tried to resist looking at it but I couldn’t help myself especially when I saw that the music was picked by the author herself! It is just a collection of all the classical music mentioned in the books and then some that supposedly she listened to while writting the book. So….yeah, that exists. Just thought I would share so that others could shake their head in confusion as well.
Did…did she just describe an absolutely brutal rape scene but end it with Eva changing her mind in the middle and deciding she wanted it?
That is *unbelievably* sick. It’s a classic example of the old middle school level joke “It’s not rape if you want it.”
Seriously. She just depicted, in the middle of a brutal rape, the rape victim *changing her mind midway* about it being rape. I cannot stress this enough.
This is disturbing beyond words. And right after how we were all impressed about the big reveal too.
To be fair, they talk a little bit more and I cut it out, but none of it makes it any less non-consensual sounding in any way at all. At. All.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s a way to sanitize phrases such as “I gasped and tried to recoil, but there was nowhere to go. Not with the door at my back and a grimly determined Gideon in front, one hand keeping me pinned…” or “’Don’t touch me.’ With a growl, Gideon hauled me into him and kissed me hard, bruising my lips. His hand was in my hair, fisting it roughly, holding me in place so I couldn’t turn away.”
That’s not just a depiction of a rape scene. That’s a vicious, brutal rape scene. I don’t care if they stopped in the middle of this to discuss the merits of “My Little Pony”, it doesn’t make this any more consensual, or her mid-way reversal any less disturbing.
This is just so inappropriate on so many levels.
To chime in on the beautiful penis conundrum… my friends and I had a discussion about this several years back. A bisexual (and non-promiscuous! gasp!) female friend of mine claimed that there was nothing whatsoever that could be constituted as even remotely attractive about a penis. I in turn insisted that my boyfriend had a beautiful penis. When asked to elaborate, I was obviously incapable of explaining it in any sensible way. The unanimous conclusion was that “It’s not the penis I find beautiful, it’s the man it’s attached to. The penis is a vital part, so it’s all in the package.” (no pun intended 😉 )
This is the only thing I can think of that makes sense. Because now in hindsight, when the boyfriend is an ex boyfriend, I don’t see the aesthetic appeal to his “brutally thick column of rigid flesh”. (Gag. So much gag for that description. Brutally thick gag of liquid gag for that description.)
This is partly an in-joke with a bunch of my friends involving a very drunk ex-girlfriend, that exact “sentiment”, and lots of subsequent conversation over what “beautiful penis” could possibly mean. When it showed up in this book Ariel and I died laughing and I couldn’t resist working in the joke.
Sure, I’ll just share this on the internet.
Okay, beyond the obvious disgustingness of what I believe is at least the second sexual assault scene by the romantic hero (heaven help us all), this doesn’t make any sense.
If he was so eager to work things out with her, he would have just shown up at her office when she was, you know, downstairs, instead of giving her back her keys. (And why does he have the keys to her house? Never mind, I’m too tired to go down that rabbit hole). But no, he waits so stat he can make a scene in front of his family?
So okay fine, maybe he’s mad that she’s trying to still kick it with his family, which is legit because why the hell IS she there?, but he seems to think she broke up with him, and I don’t know how you rich white college kids do it, but where I come from giving someone back their shit is always a bigger “no, fuck YOU” than walking away when you’re mad.
Or maybe this was supposed to be some version of angry sex? But it didnt make sense because they were hurt, not angry. Oh, and the fact that it was rape, not sex.
I feel like I’ve put way more thought into this book than Sylvia Day has. And now excuse me while I go weep for the turn my life has taken.
A beautiful penis=big, thick, straight, the head is smooth and shiny like a christmas tree, the forskin is not too big or tight (no phimosis).
You’re welcome.