Previously: Ana graduated and no one gave a damn. Not Ana and especially not Grey.
—
Marines: We pick up the emails right where they left off last time, but now it’s 12:03am, so it’s a new day, see? Grey sends back an email asking why Ana said she doesn’t like him. If you are an author who figures that including full email transcripts is a super excellent way to fill your book, what do you do between emails?
“I get up and open another bottle of sparking water.
And wait.”
Riveting.
Ana takes six minutes to reply “because you never stay with me.” This makes Grey’s “scalp tingle,” which is a weird reaction when what happens next is James’s attempt to make us think that Grey can kind of be a human. He realizes that while he doesn’t sleep with anyone, today was kind of a big day for Ana. She graduated from college, and somehow on the same level of importance in his head, she also said yes to a sex contract and got spanked. Before he can stop himself, and while his scalp still feels like an Herbal Essences commercial, he leaves.
Grey arrives at Ana’s place in twenty-three minutes. True and actual detail. He knocks and Katherine Kavanagh opens the door. She greets him (I can already hear the cheers from the comments section) with a, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing here.” Grey says she’s standing with her legs braced in the doorway, “like a gargoyle.” KICK HIM, KATE. KICK HIM.
Alex: KICK HIM IN THE BALLS.
Jessica: DO IT.
Mari: Kate doesn’t kick him. Instead, she tells him that all Ana does is cry since she’s met him, and this is not an exaggeration. She cries A LOT in the opening chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey. Of course, she spends a lot of time thinking how he’s also super wonderful with magic grey eyes and pretty hair, so who can understand Ana’s emotions? Grey thinks that he can’t deal with Kate’s “shit” (aka deciding who can come into HER MF HOUSE) anymore and barges past her. Kate yells that he can’t come in, but Grey’s blatant disregard for consent and the will of others is not limited to Ana.
He makes his way to Ana’s room, Kate following behind him, “shrieking like a harpy.” These are the words that Grey associates with women who have the gall to stand in his way: gargoyle. harpy.
Alex: Hey asshole, how about you remember this encounter the next time you call Kate a bad friend?
Mari: As if.
Ana is in her bed, and she’s all red and swollen from crying. Grey has seen women in this state a lot of times, after he’s punished them, but this time it makes him uneasy.
Alex: What. The. Fuck. He’s just casually admitting that he’s seen women bawling their eyes out ‘many times’ after being ‘punished’ by him? I’m pretty certain that that’s NOT how this whole deal is supposed to work. He keeps emphasising how his previous subs were all super experienced and totally into it, but if that’s the case then surely none of them should have been this fucking miserable after receiving a spanking? Let alone ‘many times’? E. L. James likes to claim that people who criticise her books are just shaming those who are legitimately into BDSM, but I think she does a damn good job of that all by herself.
Mari: Ana asks what he’s doing there. Kate asks if Ana wants her to “throw this asshole out.” Grey thinks, “fuck you, Kavanagh,” because even though Ana’s busy crying over him, Kate continues to be the worst. Ana shakes her head and Kate leaves, but not before telling Grey that he’s on her shit list and she’ll be watching him. Grey says she sounds, “shrill.”
Jessica: *dagger glare*
Mari: Once Kate is gone, Grey takes a moment to be super impressed with Mrs. Jones, who put a handkerchief in his pocket. (A: Mrs. Jones is well aware of how often her employer makes women cry.) Why James couldn’t let Grey just pull out a handkerchief without pausing this whole confrontation scene to specify that Mrs. Jones put it there is way beyond me. (J: She is his definition of a “good” woman, see? She was so helpful with the clothing chore, while the Kate-harpy just shrieked and flapped around.)
Ana asks again what Grey is doing there. He thinks about how she said she didn’t like him, but out loud, says that part of his role is to look after Ana’s needs. After-care, as I understand, really is a big part of BDSM. If you are thinking those are actually Grey’s motivations, though– if you are considering that maybe there is a bit of a decent Dom in there– he thinks, “nice save, Grey.” UM, you mean nice LIE? He can’t admit that it hurt his feelings when she said she didn’t like him, so better lie about caring for her needs as a sub! Nice. save. (A: ANGRY ANGER).
Grey is sure he’s responsible for Ana’s crying, but has no idea why. (J: This random cluelessness does not match the calculated way he conducts himself. This has to be internal denial on a large scale.) Ana sits up and winces. He asks if she took any Advil, allowing him the opportunity to quickly turn some blame back on Ana. He honestly just took a bit of (cheap) responsibility for hurting Ana, but then follows that up with an immediate, “when will you do as you’re told?”
He gets up, goes back out to find Kate and asks for some Advil. Kate is described as seething, glowering and stomping throughout this whole scene, of course. Grey goes back to the room and says that he thought Ana was okay. He would’ve never left if he thought she weren’t. I call BS on that COMPLETELY, but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Ana thought she was okay and Grey berates her for saying what she thought he wanted to hear, instead of being honest. He asks how it felt when he was hitting her and she admits that she didn’t like it. According to Grey, she wasn’t supposed to like it. (A: EVEN ANGRIER ANGER). She flips the question and asks why he liked it, and he freaks a bit, internally, because it’s a total, super non-obvious secret that he’s a sadist. Ana is a bit sarcastic with him and he warns her off. Ana pales and worriedly asks if he’s going to hit her again. Grey is super magnanimous and says, “not today,” because that would be too much, you know?
Jessica: See, that, right there! That’s why all this ‘it’s just BDSM’ and ‘I truly care for you and want you to be safe’ is just a gigantic lie. He says she both is and isn’t supposed to enjoy being spanked, so either way she loses. Also, when someone moves and the other person flinches away, thinking they might get hit, that’s a sign of abuse, and here it happened totally outside of sexual context. The only reason he doesn’t hit her again is because he doesn’t think she can physically stand it, not out of any true regard for her. Fuck you Grey. Fuck. You.
Mari: Grey finally answers that he likes the control hitting people gives him. He wants her to act in a particular way, and if she doesn’t, she’ll be punished until she learns to behave in a way he desires. Ana asks why he wants to change her and he claims he doesn’t want to change her, just change the way she acts and anything she does that doesn’t please him or any behaviors that contradict his notions of a good woman. So not like change her change her.
Ana still doesn’t get why he wants to punish her. Grey sighs and say that’s just the way he’s made. He NEEDS to control her and NEEDS her to behave in certain ways. He needs her to behave in certain ways.
And it gets worse as he thinks:
“I find it arousing, Ana. You did, too. Can’t you accept that?”
Christian Grey truly believes he gets to decide what Ana finds arousing. She’s sitting here crying, being honest like he demanded that she be, saying she didn’t like being hit and he just thinks, “accept it. You liked it.”
Alex: This whole exchange is just so fucking awful, and it’s really hard to pull out anything as a particular lowlight. However, Grey’s repeated insistence that Ana was turned on by the spanking kind of makes me want to vomit with anger. Even if a part of her found the experience arousing, that does NOT negate the (seemingly much larger) part of her which is telling him, out loud, with her words, ‘I didn’t like it’ and ‘I don’t want to do it again’. There’s some seriously nasty victim-blaming bullshit going on here. Grey’s whole argument amounts to ‘but you were wet, so STFU’.
Mari: Grey goes on about how turning her skin pink turns him on and Ana asks if it isn’t putting her through pain that turns him on. He freaks again and LIES, because when he was demanding honesty from her so that this whole set-up could work, obviously he just meant that SHE should be honest and he could keep the fact that he gets off on pain a secret. That’s not relevant to anything right? I mean, even as she’s asking outright?
Know why Grey doesn’t tell her?
“If I tell her, she’ll throw me out.”
Wonderful. And he was shocked that Ana thought he’d make her sign a legally unenforceable contract and never tell her, but everything Grey does is basically under false pretenses.
Grey finally just says that he isn’t explaining this well and thinks that he’ll have to lend her a book or two on being a submissive. Great, has anyone given him a book on being a normal human being yet? All you gotta do is read a book, right?
Grey returns to his question of how she felt after the spanking and she replies, “confused.” But no because Grey knows better.
“You were sexually aroused by it, Anastasia.
You have an inner freak, Ana. I know it.”
He thinks about the sex they had last chapter. Ana is already licking her lips, but Grey shuts that down. He wants to keep talking. Ana tells him that he’s overwhelming, and she feels like our good old friend Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Grey finally tells Ana to just write him an email with her feelings.
He asks if he can stay and she asks if he wants to stay. Apparently, it should be answer enough that he “drove like a maniac to get here after your fucking message. That’s your answer.”
Alex: So Ana’s not allowed to drive the car she’s been driving just fine for three years, just in case it disintegrates around her. Meanwhile, Grey’s allowed to speed across Portland ‘like a maniac’ as much as he likes. COOL.
Jessica: Well yeah. He has a penis.
Mari: I hear those things come equipped with airbags.
Grey growls at her to lie down. I don’t know why he’s growling. He tells her that if she’s going to cry, she should cry in front of him. He commands her to sleep, but I guess the magic words work on him too because next thing we know we’re in a baby!Grey dream. He’s running through an orchard and he waxes baby poetic about how good apples smell and taste. Gedddit because Ana smells like apples.
Jessica: So basically what I took away from this is that he loves Ana for her shampoo or perfume or whatever it is that makes her smell all orchard-like and ooooohkay literally as I was typing this I made the Twilight connection, because Bella smells all irresistible to vampire Edward. Wow, way to shoehorn that one in, ELJ.
Mari: When Grey wakes up, Ana is looking up at him, smiling. Grey’s got an erection but since clearly Ana is interested in sex, he says they should wait until later. When he finds out the time, he jumps out of bed. He’s late so he dresses quickly and leaves her with quick instructions to seriously, seriously, seriously not drive that moving bomb known as a Beetle.
Back at the hotel, Grey is all frazzled when he signs-on to his WebEx meeting. Ana sends him an email with the subject, “assault and battery: the after effects.”
Grey gives his thoughts as he reads through Ana’s email. Ana starts, “you wanted to know why I felt confused after you–which euphemism should we apply– spanked, punished, beat, assaulted me.” And now! The moment we’ve all been waiting for! Grey’s thoughts:
“A tad overdramatic, Miss Steele. You could have said no.”
Hey, remember last chapter where Grey was begging Ana at every corner to say yes, and came over prepared with alcohol and sexual manipulation, in order to get her to say yes? So, yes, Ana could have said no, but it makes my anger have anger kittens that this dude is like, “yeah, really simple. Just say no.” YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE HAS BEEN DEDICATED INTO MANIPULATING HER TO SAY YES. I HATE YOU.
The email goes on that Ana felt “demeaned, debased and abused” during the spanking and Grey dismisses this with a, “duh. Safe words.” (A: Oh, you mean the safe words that you didn’t discuss at all before her first ever BDSM experience?) Then he gets to a part he actually likes and it’s where Ana says that hey, she was aroused. That’s only horrible because it means all of his “I know you were aroused” BS was right and he should never, ever be right. Ana says she’s too inexperienced to really know what’s going on and she feels guilty for having liked the parts of it that she liked. Wonderful.
The WebEx meeting starts in earnest but Grey pays 0 attention as he types a reply back to Ana, basically telling her that spanking her caused him “ecstatic joy” and that she shouldn’t bother feeling guilty because they are consenting adults. We know from our first go-around that this idea of consenting adults shocks Ana. In her reply, she also says that if she were listening to her body, she’d be in Alaska by now. Grey says a few things in his meeting and then writes a reply back, copy and pasted from FSoG about how he would find her in Alaska because he can track her cell phone. Still deserves a gif response the second time around:
Another email and if you are wondering, here are Grey’s thoughts that justified writing a whole ‘nother book in his point of view: I smother my laugh. She’s funny.”
Enlightening.
They joke about Grey’s therapist, but then Grey gets angry because if Ana is emailing, it must mean she isn’t at work yet and she will have to speed to get there (A: like he did last night…) and that will put her at risk. The WebEx meeting finally wraps up and everyone hangs up except for Ros, who is pissed. Grey puts her on mute for a second so he can read Ana’s next email and laugh out loud. When he gets back to Ros she tells him not to hold meetings when he’s obviously not interested. He asks if it was that obvious, and since he was laughing at hilarious Ana’s emails the whole time, I’m not sure why he’s surprised when Ros is like, “um, duh.” Grey apologizes, but he’s smiling. Ros lightens up and tells him to get back to Seattle ASAP.
Grey asks Ros to have some other employee investigate publishing houses in Seattle that are ripe for takeover. Ros says that isn’t a high-potential growth sector, but Grey does business with his little head not his big one and tells her to investigate anyway.
Alex: So, just to be clear, this is confirmation of what we all knew already: when in FSoG he was all ‘I’ve been meaning to get into publishing for ages actually, it’s totally a coincidence that I happened to buy the company you work for’ he was, in fact, lying his ass off. COOL.
Mari: THE COOLEST.
Grey calls Andrea and asks her to have a good gynecologist report to his apartment on Sunday and text him the number of the personal shopper he uses at Neiman Marcus. Grey takes a shower and spends all of it thinking about how hot and funny Ana is, and he’s surprised, because he never knew who liked a woman with a sense of humor.
Next, he orders a riding crop for their playroom adventures on Sunday, works a little and even smiles at Taylor because Ana’s super funny emails about how much of a stalker he is have him in a good mood.
Elliot texts him. He’s coming to Portland to help the girls move and says it’s a shame Grey can’t stay so they can have a double date. Grey uses his “picking up Mia” excuse and tells Elliot to fuck off.
Taylor tells Grey that a new Blackberry is on its way to Ana. He sends Ana a quick email to tell her the phone is ‘ON LOAN’ and it’s only because she’s so honest in emails and now she can email all the time. (J: So he’ll totally force a brand new car on her but she better give that Blackberry back dammit!) He packs up his stuff after another meeting because it’s time to go home. Ana emails him about his consumerism, asking why he keeps gifting her crap, and he writes back that he does it because he can.
Andrea calls back, saying that she’s booked Dr. Best in Seattle, but she’s expensive. It’s okay, though, because money is no object when you are making choices about the reproductive rights of others. Grey sends Ana another email, asking her to meet him at 1pm on Sunday since the doctor will see her at 1:30pm. He wishes her well with the move. (J: More lies!)
Grey calls Andrea and arranges to have some wine delivered to Kate and Ana’s new house. Andrea is like, “anything else hint hint hint” and Grey decides on a helicopter balloon.
Alex: I think I like Andrea.
Jessica: I can see Andrea taking on Kate-like backstory. She’s the one he supposedly attempts to continuously stump about his coffee preference, and who one commenter imagined taking advantage of his giving her an hour to find a blank notecard to get lunch and a mani-pedi on the company card. Yeah, good job Andrea.
Mari: By the time Grey gets home at…. wait for it… wait for it… here comes our favorite part… 6:30pm, he’s already being a sour puss because he hasn’t heard from Ana. He’s called her twice, but he calls again and leaves a message about how she needs to manage his expectation. And his expectation is that every damn time he decides he wants to talk to her, she needs to be available, apparently. Or else he WORRIES and worrying is SO inconvenient. Grey is going to explode if Ana doesn’t call soon, and we all hope against logic that something has changed and Ana never calls.
Grey goes to a charity event but he’s bored and is especially put off by all the “trophy wives” in attendance. When does Christian Grey ever describe a woman in positive ways? Never!
He sneaks out and back at home he emails Ana AGAIN. He wonders why he volunteered to pick up his stupid sister from the stupid airport instead of being with Ana right now, even if that did mean helping her to move. Dick de Grey pipes up and is like, “for God’s sake, Grey. Get a grip.” Wanting to help Ana move just to know where she is TOO MUCH apparently.
Jessica: He also hopes he isn’t “forced” (his word) to call his icky brother Elliott to find out what she’s up to. Because talking to your loving siblings is the worst.
Mari: Ana finally calls Grey back. He goes from pissed to extra pissed when he hears she was having takeout with Kate and Jose. Grey reins in his temper as Ana whispers that she wishes he were there. Grey confirms that they’ll see each other on Sunday and she says good night. But neither of them want to hang up. Ana asks if she’ll get punished for not answering his calls, but Grey says he’s more an “in-the-moment” kind of guy. (J: That is not comforting.) He tells her to hang-up, but she doesn’t. He asks if she ever does as she’s told and she replies that they’ll see after Sunday. Then she hangs up.
Christian finally goes to bed so we can end this stupid chapter.
Trauma Flashback:
– When Grey leaves her house, Ana is super upset because she wants to sit and cry, but her butt is too sore for sitting.
– When Grey says that he’s wanted to spank Ana since she asked him if he was gay, Ana’s first thought is how all of what she’s going through is Katherine’s fault, because that was her question.
– When Grey wakes up, he sees Ana smiling at him. A second before that, she was trying to touch his no-no zone. His chest, that is.
– After Ana gets the phone, she decides to put it away and ignore it.
– At work, her employers send her off with kind words and a check worth $300. This gift she receives thankfully. The Blackberry? She knows that crap is a set-up.
– Jose comes over with takeout and then they go out to escape from Kate and Elliot’s PDA.
– Ana leaves her phone at home, which is why she never answered Grey. She just, you know, forgot about her brand new phone she wasn’t use to carrying around.
Baby Count: 3
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Next time on Grey: Mia’s in town and Grey actually has to pay attention to his family or something on Saturday May 28, 2011.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a chronic book nerd and love storytelling in all forms. I'm particularly excited by the rise of the television show as an art form with long, cinematically beautiful plots and complex character arcs (I also watch cartoons). My travels in the past handful of years have led me through three continents and most recently landed me among the majestic mountains of Colorado. Some day I will compile all my travel journals/blogs into one place. Some day. Until then, you can find me with craft beer in hand, ready at any moment to deeply and passionately discuss survival tactics for the zombie apocalypse.
I'm a thirty-year-old postgrad living in Scotland. When I'm not writing (which, between my degree and Snark Squad, is almost never) I watch entirely too much TV, and live in constant fear of the day that I run out of things to watch.