Thanks for bearing with us, guys! I had to take a break from writing chapter descriptions of Fifty Shades to, you know, write academic things about Fifty Shades. Also, my computer was fixed and returned to me…on my birthday last Friday! So lovely.
HA! Law and Order: SVU moment of the night. Stabler and Ice-T walk in on the child they’ve been looking for watching porn.
Stabler: Jack, where are you parents?
Jack: My dad works late, and my mom’s dead, WHO ARE YOU???
I feel like that would be my first question.
Whelp. You guys voted, and apparently you wanted to be tortured with Fifty Shades, so here we go!
Chapter 8
When we last left off, Gia Matteo, the woman who’s helping Ana and Christian with plans for their house, was about to show up. Well, here she is, y’all! And Ana gets really insecure and kooky when this woman so much as smiles at Christian or shakes his hand first. Is Ana turning into the new Christian? What if this whole time, Christian has actually been super normal and Ana has actually been projecting her own insane jealousy onto him and his actions. I mean, she has this “inner goddess” and “subconscious” bullshit going on, we know she’s a few screws loose. Ana goes so far as to get annoyed that Gia wants to shake their hands because it means Ana has to let go of Christian’s. Girl, get a grip. I mean, not in the sense of gripping Christian’s hand, but you know.
He brushes his lips against my temple, taking me by surprise. See . . . he’s mine. Annoying—infuriating, even—but mine. I grin. Rightnow I really love you, Christian Grey. I slip my hand around his waist then into his rear pocket of his pants and squeeze his behind. Gia gives us a thin smile.
I bet poor Gia just wants to do her job and is wondering why this couple is being really gross and unprofessional. Seriously, squeezing his ass? Come on, Ana, I mean it, are you turning into Christian?
There is boring talk about what they want to do to the house, and Christian backs off to give Ana room to lead the discussion. Her reaction is interesting:
His words from yesterday come to mind: “I want this house to be the way you want. Whatever you want. It’s yours.” He wants me to be happy—happy in everything I do. Deep down I think I know this. It’s just —I stop myself. Don’t think about our argument now. My subconscious glares at me.
Aw, so Ana is allowed to get her way when it comes to the home! Where a woman belongs! It’s only at work that she has to be under Christian’s thumb, because she’s a lady, and that big ol’ world is dangerous and not to be made even more dangerous by ladies making decisions and choices and other things that could hurt their brains and lead to bad situations with bosses like Jack Hyde.
Anyway, Ana keeps silently seething because she thinks Gia is making eyes at Christian. She keeps calling her bitch and stuff in her head. Taylor comes in saying he needs to talk to Christian about an urgent matter. Christ, what happens next is so cringe-worthy I can barely type it. And I’ve written about really gross things here before.
“You’re right to be nervous, Gia, because right now your work on this project hangs in the balance. But I’m sure we’ll be fine as long as you keep your hands off my husband.”
She gasps.
“Otherwise, you’re fired. Understand?” I enunciate each word clearly.
I feel like we’re supposed to view this as a sign that Ana’s finding her voice or strength or some shit, but I just see it as her getting closer and closer to completely losing her mind.
“Let me be clear. My husband is not interested in you.”
“Of course,” she murmurs, the blood draining from her face.
“As I said, I just wanted to be clear.”
“Mrs. Grey, I sincerely apologize if you think . . . I have—” She stops, still floundering for something to say.
Woof. Meow. All of the animal sounds. This is painful to read. This doesn’t show how confident Ana’s become, it shows just how insecure she still is! She’s just expressing the insecurity in a different, more aggressive way!
So Gia leaves after they finish talking about the house, and Christian is like, “Taylor says that Jack Hyde hasn’t been back to his place in a week.” Lots of interesting stuff going on.
Then, because there’s nothing else to do but give us more filler, Christian and Ana have another serious talk. Ana is confused because Christian wants her to run a company (remember, he bought the publishing company for her), but he wants her to stay at home! She explains that keeping her last name would give her some independence. It’s a shame that simply keeping her own last name is like the only way she feels she can keep any independence.
Ana feels railroaded, and not in a sexual way. Well, maybe that too. Christian seems to sort of get the point for a second, but then tells her it’s still really important to him that she take his last name. So she’s like, “Well, I’m still going to say yes, but now I feel better about giving in to your every demand!”
There’s also this really weird moment where she quotes King Lear, but it’s a line one of Lear’s daughters says to him, so it just reinforces the whole creepy Christian-acts-like-a-father-to-Ana vibe we all hate.
Because Christian is so pleased with Ana’s decision he…
He tells her to cut his hair! Ana makes a sort of funny joke about giving him a bowl cut. It’d be great if she did that, and then realized that even Christian looks ugly with one of those and then came to her senses and dumped him.
Christian explains that he wants her to do this because it’ll make him feel cherished…I don’t get it.
She cuts his hair for what feels like thirty pages, and then OF COURSE they have boring sex.
This happens, though:
“You have such beautiful breasts, Ana.” He groans. “One day I’ll fuck them.
What the hell does that mean?
It means he’s going to be inside of your breasts.
Then Ana cries because she loves Christian SO much. I secretly think she’s crying because she knows all they have is good sex and nothing else in their relationship. But I guess if you have good sex and money that’s all you need!
WAIT so apparently earlier I missed this but Ana just washed Christian’s hair and didn’t actually cut it. So she goes to get scissors and sees Taylor and Mrs. Jones hooking up! OH MY GOD!! You guys literally everyone in this book is fucking!!!!
Take Our PollI wonder if they hook up in Christian’s playroom sometimes.
So also while Ana’s looking for scissors she finds a gun and so apparently the two main points of this chapter are that Mrs. Jones and Taylor are hooking up and Christian owns a gun.
This chapter is really long, and I just took NyQuil and am about to pass out, so I’ll be brief.
-They talk about building rooms for Mrs. Jones and Taylor in the new house so they can live there and Taylor can bring his daughter.
-Christian tries to convince Ana she’ll be good at running a company, and she tries to deflect by saying it might take up time she could be spending with him…ew.
-Christian says he’s not sure he can let Ana tie him up and touch him. But wasn’t he Elena’s submissive for like six years? Ug confusing.