Content Advisory Warning: Christian Grey makes a shitty Casablanca reference in this chapter, which might cause you great pain if you like Casablanca as much as I do.
Grey: Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Christian and Taylor arrive in Savannah, which Christian is desperately trying to convince his coworkers is sorta kinda a business trip by arranging to meet with the company pitching to have his development plant built there instead of Detroit. Which Christian is also desperately trying to convince his coworkers is sorta kinda for business reasons. God, it’s like MacBeth, but if MacBeth weren’t making lies upon lies to be king but to get laid.
On the flight, Christian has one of his famous nightmares, which is so bad he jolts awake, Taylor worriedly fetches him water, and other serious things. Except it’s a flashback to his “heady days with Mrs. Lincoln”, which seems weirdly like something Christian actually enjoys to anyone able to, you know, read the scene. Which is atypical of nightmares.
“If you behave, I’ll let you come. In my mouth.”
Fuck.
“But not yet.” [She] kisses me.
Her tongue demanding and wet.
She brandishes the leather flogger.
And I know this will be tough to endure. But I have my eyes on the prize. Her fucking mouth.
Presumably one of the draws of rereading the story from Christian’s perspective is extra details into the kinkier aspects of the series, so hopefully details like Elena’s demanding and wet tongue are really doing it for that crowd.
Suddenly, being on a plane reminds Christian that one of his favorite pasttimes is gliding, because this is the level of contrived events pushing the plot forward that we have reached. He then thinks about sharing that with Ana, sounding super convincingly like a normal human person:
Yes! That’s what I should do: take Ana soaring. That would be more, wouldn’t it?
The way Christian is fixating on this “more” is a little less “man learning how to love again” and a little more The Shining, but he’s already following Ana to Georgia without telling her, so this is hardly the most unsettling thing going on at the moment.
Speaking of which, Christian hasn’t actually figured out how to tell Ana that he has done this, so he goes to the hotel bar to get a drink and mull it over. WHEN SUDDENLY AND UNPREDICTABLY:
I scan the bar, avoiding eye contact with the two women sitting next to me… and a movement captures my attention: a frustrated flip of glossy mahogany hair […]
Yes, Christian can identify Ana from nothing more than a frustrated flip of her hair, which is amazing because it’s both totally absurd, yet also unintentionally speaks volumes about what kind of mood Christian usually puts Ana in when they spend time together. Perhaps one day you too can have a love that annoys you so much that they can identify you at a distance by your irritated hair!
What are the fucking odds?
In all the gin joints… Jesus.
PRO WRITING TIP: The best way to seamlessly, not awkwardly allude to a classic work of art is to include half of a quote, then replace the other half with profanity. Insta-classic!
Grey reminds himself to “seize the day, Grey” and texts Ana to slowly alert her to his presence.
She begins to read [then types] furiously [then] abandons the phone on the table in what appears to be disgust.
Unaffected by the knowledge that Ana openly wants nothing to do with him when she thinks he isn’t watching (even though Christian Grey is always watching #romance), Christian reads her response and reminds us that only he is allowed to get angry.
“[Elena is] not just an old friend. Has she found another adolescent boy to sink her teeth into?”
What the hell? My temper simmers as I read.
Isaac is in his late twenties.
After Christian vents about how Ana is totally off about Elena because now she’s with a man who’s mostly age-appropriate for her (totally canceling out that statutory rape thing), he points out that not only is her response SUPER INCONSIDERATE and WRONG but ALSO PROBABLY A SIGN SHE’S PROBABLY DRUNK.
How dare she?
Is it the drink talking?
Christian texts Ana, asking how many more cosmos she’s going to drink, which clues Ana in that Christian is in the bar with her and that she’s probably going to get murdered now. Christian goes over and introduces himself to Ana’s mom, which is depressingly predictable:
Her mom’s eyes are all over me.
Shit! She’s checking me out. Best ignore it, Grey.
Christian places an order with the waiter, which adds nothing to the story, or even characterization at this point, but is always fun to point out what a jackass Christian Grey is:
I need something stronger than beer. “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” I tell the waiter. “Hendrick’s, if you have it, or Bombay Sapphire. Cucumber with the Hendrick’s, lime with the Bombay.”
Christian gets possessive and paranoid about Ana’s faithfulness to him, which is a theme I guess we’re supposed to take seriously even though there’s never been any indication that she might not be.
Her breasts are straining against the silky material of her top, but hidden by her long hair. For my eyes only, I hope.
Ana’s mom briefly goes to the bathroom to give them a chance to talk, which immediately becomes a conversation about Christian’s continued friendship with Elena. We’ve read it before in Fifty Shades, so it’s that conversation, except with even more sentences how angry Christian is. And trite generalizations about gender.
She’s pissed at me; maybe she has PMS.
Christian leaves Ana and her mother to enjoy their evening together and goes back to the hotel. He has a business call with Ros before Ana shows up, so if you liked the sexy foreplay of Fifty Shades of Grey but wish it had more talk about liquidating companies and fiber-optics, Grey is the book for you.
Anyway, remember the tampon scene? Where Christian Grey pulled a tampon out of Ana, and that book went on to sell a millìon bajillion copies? Think that scene gets better from the guy’s point of view?
“Are you bleeding?” I ask between kisses. […]
Why is she embarrassed? It’s her body.
Maybe because the love of her life isn’t any more mature than “Are you bleeding?”
My hand glides down her ass to the blue string, and I tug out the tampon, which I toss in the toilet. She gasps, shocked, I think
“I THINK”. Guys. You guys. Dude just pulled a tampon out of a woman without saying anything, and HE THINKS she’s shocked. You guys. The ways in which this book explores the depths of human interaction.
I pound into her with a punishing, I-own-you rhythm.
Don’t argue with me. Don’t fight with me.
Not making this up, this is actually what’s going through Christian’s head during this sex scene. This is what everyone should have going through their head during sex. That’s just love! After the sex, they immediately start fighting about Elena again. Still just love! I am buying the love between these two! They have a collection of ongoing fights that are interrupted only by sex! THAT JUST LARVE.
They talk about their “arrangement”, which is more dialogue just copy/pasted from this exact same scene from the first book. They have sex again, which is more description just copy/pasted from every scene we’ve already read in this book. Because, hey, when you’ve written something as good as “Up. Down. Up. Down.”, you can’t just use that once.
After the sex, Ana insists on just talking. Which immediately becomes about sex again, because this book is about maybe two things. Christian admits he lied about how many women he slept with.
Her smile vanishes. “You said fifteen.”
“I was referring to the number of women in my playroom.”
Nothing says “trust” like “technicalities”!
“There are places in and around Seattle that one can go and practice. Learn to do what I do. […] Yep, I’ve paid for sex, Anastasia.”
I feel like “I’ve paid for sex” is a sentence you can’t really put a “yep” in front of, like “Yep, I’m not 21” or “Yep, I ran over the cat”.
They go to sleep together and the chapter thankfully ends. Get excited for next week’s chapter when we get to see gliding from Christian’s perspective. I can’t wait to read even more weighty, emotional “Fuck!”s.
Geez, this book reads like a creepy deposition. I feel like a juror being presented evidence at Ana’s rape and murder trial. That’s not even a joke. Yep, I feel gross in my very soul.
I love that “she’s pissed at me” immediately translates into “she must have PMS.” It can’t possibly be because he oversteps boundaries with every move. It’s always her fault, never his. This mysogynistic POS is loved/lusted by women everywhere. Yet this is what he is thinking. Anger = PMS
(And no, I don’t want to hear that women love him because he “changes” so much because of their love. He does not change one bit in Book one yet women were drooling over him already. I challenge someone to show me that he changes at all, but I digress…)
christian’s brainwashed attitude to his abuse just makes me sad despite him being an misogynistic, man-child he is.