Grey Chapter 14 – Talk to the groin.

Previously: Mia came home and Grey had to like, spend time with his family, or something stupid.
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Alex: Grey starts his day by casually jogging past Ana’s new apartment. He chuckles to himself about what a stalker he is but then immediately gets defensive. He’s just out for a run, OK? ‘It’s a free country’. Dude, there’s no one else here. You’re literally arguing with yourself right now about whether or not you’re being a stalker.

Marines: So, really, the question is if you are a deranged stalker or a super deranged stalker. It’s a close call. 

Alex: He approves of the outside of the apartment and gives us a fuckload of unnecessary detail about it, because of course. Then he runs home again, excited because ‘Today’s the day’.

He showers, gets dressed and slips a hair tie into his pocket. Meanwhile, I throw up in my mouth a little because I’ve just realised what he meant by ‘today’s the day’. I continue to get all the best chapters.

Mari: Sweeney and I used to play this game where we tried to claim that we each got the worst chapters when, in reality, it was probably evenly split. However. I have to say that you are really, really, really getting the worst chapters. Did you do something terrible in a past life?

Alex: I prefer to think of it as just accumulating lots of really, really good karma for the future.

Jessica: You really have drawn several of the short straws. My sympathy goes hand-in-hand with my sense of self-preservation.

Alex: Before we get to the truly awful stuff, though – oh boy oh boy – it’s email time! Grey sends Ana the access codes for the parking garage and his apartment, along with instructions for where to park her car. E. L. not only thought it necessary to include all of this in FSoG, but also thought we could really benefit from reading it all again here. Grey also makes it clear that she can park in ‘one of’ his parking spots, just in case she was tempted to think he might be a smelly pauper who only has one space in the car park. Ew.

Ana emails back right away. It’s 8am on Sunday morning. Why are these assholes already awake and emailing each other? She thanks him for the champagne and the silly helicopter balloon, which is now tied to her bed. Thinking about things being tied to beds makes Grey horny and I pause to hate everything.

Jessica: That stupid balloon wasn’t even his idea in the first place! #TeamEveryoneButGrey

Alex: Because Grey is a giant man-child who can’t be expected to fend for himself, Mrs Jones has prepared all his meals for him before going away for the weekend. He sits down to enjoy the breakfast she left for him. Taylor brings him the Sunday newspapers and they go over his schedule for the day. Seriously, what even is Taylor’s job? Bodyguard, chauffeur, personal assistant and newspaper-fetcher? And when is his day off? Why isn’t he enjoying a lovely Sunday morning breakfast with Mrs Jones right now?

Mari: Because if this god forsaken books series has taught us anything, it has taught us that life isn’t fair. 

Alex: Taylor fails to hide his surprise when he hears that Grey will be taking Ana to meet his parents this evening. Grey once again gets super defensive in his head, thinking ‘what’s the big deal?’ I mean, he spent the entire last chapter telling us what a Super. Big. Deal. this was. But gosh, Taylor. Just chill already.

Jessica: My notes say exactly that. He’s the one who has been whining about it for pages, but gets all snippy about Taylor looking surprised (probably at the fact that anyone would agree to voluntarily spend unpaid time with Grey to begin with). Just punch him, Taylor. Do it.

Alex: Do it for us, Taylor.

We jump to 12:15pm and Grey pretends he’s been ‘working’ for the past few hours, but is now giving up for the day. Mmhmm. Sure. He opens one of the newspapers Taylor brought him, and finds a picture of himself with Ana. I’m sure the paper paid handsomely for this highly sought-after shot of a random twenty-something businessman at a college graduation. Ana arrives and lets herself into the apartment, and we get the second of what we know will be many, many appearances of Kate’s stolen ‘purple’ dress. (M: It’s plum, goddamimit. YOU ARE RUINING EVERYTHING, GREY.) They giggle together over the photo and then Grey fantasises about braiding Ana’s hair. WTF.

Jessica: I’m imagining his YouTube recently played feed being a bunch of DIY hairdo videos. I bet Andrea’s noticed, too.

Alex: A+.

Ana informs Grey that she’s hungry, but not for food. This is something else we can look forward to hearing another gazillion trillion times. This turns Grey on some more, and he thinks ‘she might as well be addressing my groin’. (M: Talk to the groin, Ana, ’cause the face ain’t listening.) This is crying out for a gif, but I just couldn’t find anything suitable. You don’t even want to know what kinds of search terms I tried.

Sexytimes will have to wait, though, because the gynaecologist will be arriving any minute now. Grey also finally gets around to inviting Ana to dinner with his parents. He’s already accepted the invitation and told Taylor that they’ll be going, though, so actually informing Ana of their plans is really just an afterthought. He also invites her in the least enthusiastic way possible, basically telling her that his mum is forcing him into it. Ana is hurt and wonders if he’s ashamed of her, but the ensuing argument is cut short by Taylor announcing that the gynaecologist is here.

Grey thinks some creepy thoughts about how much he’d love to watch Ana getting a pelvic exam. Dr Best-In-Seattle enters and thanks him for paying her a shit-ton of money to be here, which is pretty tacky of her. (M: Super tacky. But this is the bitch who could tell Ana was really smart from a pelvic exam, so.) She’s apparently also instantly suspicious of Grey:

‘I’m sure that she thinks I should be twiddling a mustache like a silent-movie villain’.

Because silent-movie villains always book expensive gynaecologists for their girlfriends? Huh? What is even happening right now?

Mari: 

Alex: Grey leaves the ladies to it, although he thinks AGAIN about how much he’d like to watch. Because it wasn’t creepy enough the first time. (J: He really really wanted to, but the bitchy doctor’s “penetrating” eyes threw him off. #Ironic) He’s restless and anxious while he waits for Ana to return, so he keeps himself busy by laying out two placemats for lunch. This surely shouldn’t take more than, like, four seconds? But then, Grey is so unaccustomed to doing anything domestic for himself that maybe it takes him a while to figure it out. Maybe he tried to put them under the table first, or on the ceiling, or something.

Mari: When it wasn’t working, he probably stopped to spank the placemats. I bet that took up some time.

Alex: Anyway, once he’s accomplished that difficult task he selects a Chablis for them to drink with lunch. The wine buffs amongst you may have noticed that this is, in fact a type of Chardonnay. If so, then you’re probably thinking ‘Oh noes, Christian! How can you drink such pig-swill?’ It’s OK though, because he reassures us that Chablis is actually ‘one of the few Chardonnays I like’.

The ladies eventually return and Dr Tackiest-In-Seattle makes a weird remark about Ana being super smart, which makes both Grey and Ana go ‘huh?’. Because everyone knows that Ana is actually the dumbest. The doctor leaves, but not before mentioning her gigantic fee again. This lady is all about the moniez.

Side note: I was chastised in the comments a few weeks back for assuming that there might be any semblance of reality in these books, which is a fair point. However, I’m curious. In the US, would you really need to meet with a gynaecologist and have a full pelvic exam, just to get birth control pills? In the UK you can just get them from your GP. Paying a shitload of money to get the best gynaecologist in all the land, just for this one very simple thing, seems massively unnecessary.

Mari: It probably depends on the woman, her medical history and the doctor. I think it’s more of a question of will your GP (or PCP here in the states) do it rather than can they. My guess would be that Ana doesn’t have a PCP and certainly Tackiest-in-Seattle would insist on giving the full exam. Charge by the minute, yo!

Alex: I see. Thanks! Anyway, now Ana and Grey sit down to enjoy their lunch (Chablis with a side of Caesar salad) and we get this Pulitzer-worthy bit of narration:

‘She takes a bite, then another… and another. She’s eating!’

Mari: Just think! We would’ve missed out on this moment had Erika skipped out on writing Grey’s POV. 

Alex: Grey makes sure that Ana knows that this is the only time he will be ‘cooking’ for her (i.e. taking some salad out of the fridge) because that’s supposed to be her job. (J: DICK) He’s also annoyed that she chose to get the mini-pill instead of the injection, because he doesn’t trust her to remember to take the pill every day. He should really be thrilled, though, because now he has one more thing he can nag her about. (M: And we know how much men love having a say in women’s reproductive health decisions! It’s practically a national pastime.)

Grey now decides to take Ana into the playroom for the first time, contract be damned. (J: I’ll agree with the ‘contract be damned’ part, just in general) Ana asks if he’s going to hit her when they’re in there and he replies that he will, but that he won’t hurt her. Not ‘only if you want me to’ or anything silly like that, of course. He also tells her that he spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about how to deal with the fact that she really doesn’t like it when he hits her… but he’s reached 0 conclusions and he’s bored now so they’re going to go into the playroom anyway. I’m not over-simplifying, that’s pretty much exactly what he says. Brilliant.

E. L. also seems to have forgotten that we were with him yesterday, and at no point did we get any kinda of glimpse at this supposed inner turmoil. Given that this whole book is apparently supposed to shed light on their relationship from Grey’s PoV, you’d think that these would be some important thoughts for us to read, right? But instead we just got a few half-arsed pages about Mia and kickboxing, because these books are really just about E. L. James copy-and-pasting her way to another bajillion quid.

They head into the playroom and he orders her to take off her shoes. ‘I pick them up and put them neatly by the door’. Then he takes off her dress and carefully folds it up. Oh my, such neatness! Things are really heating up in here! Once he’s got her wearing only her panties, he gets to work braiding her hair, securing it with the hair tie he mentioned at the start of the chapter. Then he orders her to kneel in the corner and part her knees so that he can ‘see your sex’. Ugh. Cringe! I seem to recall Ana referring to her vagina as ‘my sex’ a few times too. Man, these books are awful.

Jessica: He also strictly orders her to not feel ashamed of her own body. Um, that’s not how it works, tremendodouche. 

Alex: Grey leaves Ana kneeling in the corner while he runs back to his bedroom, and then this happens:

‘In my closet I strip off all my clothes and from a drawer pull out my favourite jeans. My DJs. Dom jeans.’

Mari: There are a few acceptable DJs in life and Dom jeans? 

Alex: Back in the playroom, he whacks Ana across the hand with a riding crop and she confirms that it didn’t hurt, but I call bullshit. Now Ana gets shackled to some kind of grid which runs across the ceiling. I don’t really get how this works at all, but Mari previously suggested that Ana was sort of like a ‘human shower curtain’ in this scenario. (M: Good job, past me.) (J: LOL) Grey gets to work with the riding crop and this scene is filled with lots of sexy words like ‘vulva’ and ‘pubic hair’. And even if being hit across the hand with a riding crop didn’t hurt, you’d think that being repeatedly smacked in the vulva with one would at least sting a little. However, Ana apparently has some kind of iron-clad yet super-sensitive crotch, because after being whipped in the groin a few more times she has a screaming orgasm.

Grey now manoeuvres shower-curtain-Ana into position against a St Andrew’s cross at the other end of the room, and they fuck up against it for a while until they both come. He unshackles her and they collapse onto the floor as he tells us that Ana smells of ‘Ana and sweat and sex’. He’s super proud of her for surviving her first trip into the Red Room, but then he starts to freak out because he suddenly FEELS a bunch of FEELINGS for her and doesn’t know what to do.

He decides that they should have some more sex, but reassures her that ‘I’ll make this quick’. He grabs a cable tie and fastens her hands together. Then they do it doggy-style over the bed, with him again telling her ‘this is going to be quick’. I think Christian Grey needs to work on his sexy talk. Despite the super-speedy shag, Ana comes once again because she’s basically just an orgasm machine.

I don’t really know why the cable tie was necessary for that, but anyway, Grey cuts it off now. As he does, he says ‘I declare this Ana open’, which is the kind of dorky post-sex humour I’d probably find hilarious if it were said by anyone other than Christian Grey. Ana giggles at his little joke, but this makes Grey sad, because he realises that Ana hardly ever laughs when she’s with him (because he’s terrible).

Mari: Grey, homie. 75% of what you say to Ana is, “I’m so angry I could hit you.” If you want giggles, try a joke, maybe. And try not to make it about stalking her. #protips

Alex: Ana is so exhausted from all the sexing that she’s practically comatose. She can’t even put on a damn robe, so Grey has to dress her while she just kind of flops around like a rag doll. Jeez, it was two quickies and he did literally all the work. This girl needs to work on her stamina. (M: Maybe being a shower curtain is hard work.) He carries her up to her bedroom and they get into bed together. Grey tells himself he’ll just hold her for a while, but he quickly falls asleep and has another of his childhood-trauma-manipulation-flashback dreams. The dream includes this truly fantastic line:

‘Let’s bake a pie, Maggot’.

That line has officially just replaced ‘shit-or-bust’ as my favourite thing ever.

Mari: It could mean so mean different things! It’s really a phrase for all occasions.

Alex: Normally when Ana and Christian fall asleep it means the end of the chapter, but no such luck here. This is merely a post-sex nap and we’re not even half way there yet. Oh, universe. Why do you hate me so? Grey wakes up from the nap and continues to have a ‘what is emoshun?’ freakout about his feelings for Ana.

In typical E. L. James fashion, we then get a detailed account of Grey tidying up the Red Room after their sex session. While tidying, Grey finds Ana’s panties and has the ‘wicked idea’ to hide them from her.

As he showers, Grey thinks about how well Ana did in the playroom, and wonders whether they might be able to manage a relationship after all. And then, for some reason, he makes ‘a mental note to call Caroline Acton in the morning to dress my girl’. Two things:

1. After finally acknowledging that he might have some proper feely feelings for Ana after all, his immediate next thought is that he must therefore get her some better clothes. Of course it is.
2. Who the fuck is Caroline Acton? (J: Good question. No clue.)

Grey spends an hour pretending to work some more, and then declares that ‘Ana has had enough sleep’. Because Grey gets to make decisions about her sleep cycle as well as her reproductive one. Oh, and they also have 45 minutes until they have to leave for dinner, but the writing makes it sound very much like he’s just waking her up to exercise his control over her sleep schedule. That whole dinner-with-his-parents thing is kind of an afterthought. Grey says that he’s found it easier to get some work done knowing that Ana is ‘safe’ upstairs. Whenever Grey says ‘safe’, though, you should read ‘unable to interact with any humans who aren’t me’.

He mixes some cranberry juice and sparkling water for Ana to drink when she wakes up. I really feel like this book is just giving me a list of all E. L. James’ favourite food, drink and music choices. Orange juice, cranberry juice and Sancerre all get a thumbs up from Erika, but Chardonnay?

Once Ana’s awake, he waits downstairs for her to get ready. When she appears, she surprises him by not immediately asking for her underwear back. They dance around to some Frank Sinatra, while Grey tries to communicate telepathetically with Ana: ‘Ask me for your panties, baby’. She doesn’t, though, and they leave for dinner with Ana’s panties still tucked in Grey’s pocket. Oh, the fun that these two have.

As Taylor drives them to dinner, Grey has all sorts of conflicting thoughts about introducing Ana to his parents, including blaming all of this on Elliot for ‘fucking her roommate’. Look, shithead. Elliot is the one voluntarily bringing said roommate to meet the parents, while you had to be coerced into this. Maybe you could show just the teeniest ounce of respect for their relationship? But of course, that would be asking far, far too much.

Mari: He hates Elliot for basically being well adjusted and Katherine is a woman with some measure of a backbone who is also sexually active. Grey couldn’t have positive thoughts toward them if he tried. 

Alex: Ana asks where he learned to dance, and he explains that Mrs Rape taught him while we get some really stupid flashbacks which add absolutely nothing at all to this scene. Ana starts fidgeting and Grey quickly tells her not to ‘overthink things’. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking, but whatever it is, she should definitely stop thinking it. (J: Angry face.) They start to talk about what they got up to in the Red Room, but Ana isn’t keen to chat about bondage with Taylor listening in. Grey reassures her that it’s fine, though, because listening to all the gory details of his boss’s sex life is just part and parcel of whatever the hell Taylor’s job even is.

They arrive at the Greys’ house and Ana meets the parents. Mama Grey leads Ana inside as Grey ‘follows in her pantyless wake’. What? Is Ana’s exposed vagina leaving a trail of devastation in its path? What is this? (M: I DON’T WANT TO KNOW.) Mia comes careering into the hall and tells Ana ‘I’ve heard so much about you!’. I guess she must have been talking to Kate, then, given that Grey refused to divulge even a single detail about her to his family. Kate and Elliot are in the living room and they’re – ugh – cuddling on the sofa. Who do they think they are? Kate and Christian revel in their mutual loathing, and then Grey gets mad and jealous because Elliot dares to give Ana a hug. Papa Grey suggests that it’s time for booze. I QUITE AGREE.

There’s still so much of this fucking chapter left to recap. Cheers, Papa Grey.

Grey orders Ana to sit down on the sofa. He joins her, but is careful not to make any kind of physical contact with her, because ‘I need to set an example for my overly demonstrative family’. Sure, you can grope each other and talk freely about spanking in front of poor Taylor, but HEAVEN FORBID your knees accidentally touch in front of your friends and loved ones.

Mari: I’m sure they are all looking at your knees not touching and thinking, “oh! Is that how it’s done?” 

Jessica: This just confirms the theory that Grey hates his family. And everyone who’s not Ana.

Alex: Grey is surprised to learn that Elliot is going to be joining Kate’s family on holiday in Barbados. He can only conclude that ‘Kavanagh must be good in the sack’. I just hate him so much.

Now shit gets real as Ana surprises Grey with the news that she might be leaving for Georgia tomorrow, to go visit her mother for a few days. She also has some job interviews, which Grey didn’t know anything about. Grey furiously interrogates her in front of everyone for a while, until Kate steps in to defend her ‘with ill-concealed antagonism’. Sure. Kate’s the one being an asshole right now.

Jessica: Yeah, I missed the part where he asked her how she was doing and what was new with her life. Was that somewhere between her playing human shower curtain and him running to find his DJs? NO IT WASN’T BECAUSE IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Alex: WORD.

The interrogation is interrupted by Mama Grey calling that it’s dinner time, but Grey pulls Ana aside once everyone else has left the room. With his temper ‘rapidly unraveling’ he asks why she didn’t inform him of her plans to go to Georgia. She starts to defend herself, but he just says ‘this conversation is not over’ and leads her in to dinner.

Kate chats to Mia about her budding journalism career. Kate has scored herself an internship at the Seattle Times, and Grey nastily thinks to himself that this was ‘no doubt set up for her by her father’. Because there’s no way that the valedictorian and editor-in-chief of the college newspaper could possibly get an internship on her own merit, right? Of all the many, many things that baffle me about this book, the Kate-hate probably takes the top spot. I just don’t get what E. L. James is trying to do here. Grey occasionally butting heads with Kate over their mutual concern for Ana would be one thing, but why does he need to continually think such horrible, shitty things about her?

Mari: The worst part is that if it were just Grey being his usual tremendodouche self it would be one thing, but these are basically all the same thoughts Ana had about Kate, too. My only conclusion is that E.L. James is one of those women who hates women. Thank goodness she wrote Ana to not be like other women, amIright?

Alex: Ana quietly asks Grey not to be mad at her. She wants to know if he’s ‘palm-twitchingly mad’. Just to be clear, this is cutesy-code for ‘do you want to beat me?’. Kate unfortunately chooses this moment to stir some shit by casually mentioning that Ana recently met Jose for a drink. Grey confirms that he is now, indeed, ‘palm-twitchingly mad’. That’s cutesy-code for ‘yes, I want to beat you’. Aren’t these two just adorable together? Grey gives us his reasons for wanting to beat the shit out of his girlfriend:

‘So she went to a bar with the guy who was trying to ram his tongue down her throat the last time I saw him. And she’d already agreed to be mine. Sneaking off to a bar with another man? And without my permission…

She deserves to be punished’.

I’m certain that none of our readers need to be told how fucking awful this is. I’m also painfully aware that we end up repeating ourselves over and over in these recaps, but I feel it must be said again. There is NOTHING sexy about the above. This is NOT BDSM. This is not just ‘you’ve been a bad girl’ sexy talk. This is a man just straight-up telling his girlfriend ‘I’m going to hit you because you pissed me off’. THIS IS NOT OK.

Grey magnanimously decides that he won’t go ‘too hard’ on her, but he will give her a spanking, tonight, right here at his parents’ house. He also says that it’ll be ‘harder than the last one’. You know, the one which made Ana cry and made her so sore that she couldn’t sit down. Harder than that one. (M: But not too hard. So somewhere between her emotional break down and murder, I guess.)(J: This fucking book.)

Mama Grey (who’s a doctor, by the way) gets called away from dinner to take a quick phonecall about a measles case, and when she returns E. L. James takes the opportunity to get a little preachy and throw in a PSA about vaccinating your kids. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with Mama Grey (and E. L., I guess) on this. This just seems like a really weird time to bring it up.

Nothing at all interesting happens for the next few pages. People chat about measles and sports and Ana’s new apartment. Then the poor exchange student/housekeeper shows up to clear the table.

‘I still can’t remember her name. She’s Swiss, or Austrian or something, and she doesn’t stop simpering and batting eyelashes at me’.

IT’S GRETCHEN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. YOU JUST MET HER IN THE LAST CHAPTER. GRETCHEN, GRETCHEN, GRETCHEN!

Ahem. (M: A mic drop would’ve also worked here.)

Grey, who previously disapproved of Kate and Elliot for cuddling in the living room with no one else around, now decides it’s appropriate to start feeling Ana up at the dinner table. He strokes her thigh and this gives him a boner, causing him to writhe around in his seat while suppressing a moan. This does not sound at all subtle and I’m sure everyone at the table must be able to see what’s going on. Ana tries to cross her legs to stop him, but she’s too busy giving GRETCHEN the evil eye to pay very much attention to what he’s doing.

J: I remember seeing a snippet of this in the movie trailer, and thinking “wow, that is really fucking obvious, that poor family.” Also, I hope Gretchen spit in his food.

Alex: #TeamGretchen.

Dinner drags on and on but eventually Grey gets bored with all this family fun time. When Ana once again resists his efforts to finger her in front of everyone, he decides ‘that’s it’ and excuses them both from the dinner table. Once they’re outside he lets the rage flow through him: ‘Panties. The photographer. Georgia’. He picks her up and throws her across his shoulder, carrying her across the lawn. When she squeals in protest he smacks her, ‘hard’ on the ass and ‘snaps’ at her to keep her voice down. No pretence of sexy times whatsoever. He just straight up HIT her.

He informs her that he’s going to spank her and then fuck her, and when she begs for an explanation he just snaps ‘you know why’. He carries her into the boat house, where she says ‘Please don’t hit me’.

That’s right: ‘Please don’t hit me’.

If you have ever tried to argue that these books don’t depict an abusive relationship even the slightest little bit, then shame on you.

Grey is ‘paralyzed’ with confusion by this plea. Ana steps forward and kisses him, which distracts him for a while, but he just can’t get over the fact that she said no to him. But then… he suddenly decides that her saying ‘no’ actually really turns it on. I just… I can’t…. it’s too much, you guys. I think it can’t get any worse and then it always does. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

Mari: Just keep calm and let’s bake a pie, maggot.

Alex: I love you.

Grey now lists all his reasons for being angry with her, and they include this gem:

‘I’m mad because you went drinking with that guy who tried to seduce you when you were drunk, and who left you when you were ill with an almost complete stranger. What kind of friend does that?’

He declares that he’s going to fuck her now ‘quickly, for my pleasure, not yours’. Question: do they ever have any sex which isn’t quick? (M: No but also it’s never quick enough.) (J: Word) He pushes her down onto the couch and takes out a condom, because of course he brought condoms to dinner at his parents’ house. They have some super-speedy sex, but Ana isn’t allowed to come. This is her punishment for ‘denying me what’s mine’.

Afterwards, Ana is finally reunited with her underwear and they have some more cute banter about twitchy palms, with Ana also making jokes about Grey’s ‘unprovoked attack’ on her. This chapter is just the FUNNEST. Mia interrupts all the cuteness to let them know that Kate and Elliot are leaving, and they head back to the house to say goodbye. Even though Grey spent 90% of this meeting thinking about how much he hates his annoying super-friendly affectionate family, he now declares that it’s been a beautiful evening and that he’s so glad Ana met them all. They say their goodbyes and finally this awful (for me) evening is over.

The chapter’s not over, though. Sigh. On the way home, Ana gets upset because she thinks Grey felt ‘trapped’ into inviting her to dinner and didn’t really want it to happen. Let’s remind ourselves of the last lines of the previous chapter:

‘Shit. It looks like Anastasia Steele is going to meet my family. I don’t know how I feel about this.’

However, Grey not only denies this but also gets a little mad at Ana for even thinking it. He then freaks out some more about her plan to go to Georgia, because ‘her mother might persuade her to find someone more… suitable’. And because Grey would much rather Ana stay up in her bedroom and never interact with other humans at all. However, since he can’t actually stop her from ever seeing her mother again, he decides that the next best thing will be to meet Mom herself, and ‘charm her’. He suggests this to Ana and she’s not keen on the idea, but we all know that’s not going to stop him.

Ana explains that she just needs to go away and get some space to think things through. This terrifies Grey and he begs her not to leave him. She cuddles up to him in the car and for the billionth time this chapter we get Grey’s thoughts about how confused he is by all these FEELINGS. The worst part is that I know there are probably legions of fangirls lapping this up, and that is a truly terrifying thought. Inexplicably, Ana now declares that she’ll sign the contract, about a nanosecond after saying that she was having second thoughts and wanted to run away to Georgia to think things through.

Mari: And suddenly Grey is like, “wait, wait, wait. Sign the contract after you go on this trip to Georgia I really didn’t want you to go on 2 seconds ago.” Basically, whatever one of them wants? The other one wants the opposite. #relationshipgoals

Alex: Once they get home, Grey decides that they should have sex AGAIN. Because this is the chapter that just keeps on giving. Ana wants to ‘make love’, though, and insists on hearing why Grey doesn’t like to be touched on his chest. Grey refuses to answer, so they get into a bit of a fight while they get ready for bed. In the middle of all this drama, though, Grey still find time to check his email… on his phone! So he does know about smartphones! Phew. There are no urgent emails. Double-phew. Oh, and in case you were wondering, it’s 11:46pm. WAIT, that means it’s almost midnight! The chapter must nearly be over!

We still have time for some last-minute grossness, though, as Ana and Grey share a toothbrush once more. Then Grey decides to bargain with her. He’ll finally reveal his troubled past to her… if she lets him spank her with some Kegel balls in her vagina first. He grabs the Kegel balls from the playroom but doesn’t bother with lube, because Ana definitely won’t need it. Once we’re done with these recaps, I’d like to go the rest of my life without having to hear about Ana’s magical insta-lubricating vagina ever again, thank you.

He returns to the bedroom and hands her the balls, reassuring her that ‘they’re new’. Because I guess Christian Grey keeps a steady supply of brand-new Kegel balls at hand for his submissives, but can’t spring for a spare fucking toothbrush.

MIDNIGHT. THE END.

Trauma Flashback:

• Ana also woke up thinking ‘today’s the day‘. (J: Eyeroll)
• Once alone with Ana, Dr Best mentioned yet again that Grey paid her a fuckload of money to be there.
• Ana tells us that being hit across the hand with the crop didn’t hurt ‘much, just a slight ringing sting‘.
• Every time Ana had an orgasm in the Red Room, she thought something along the lines of ‘oh no, not again‘.
• Despite learning that her name is Gretchen almost immediately, Ana refers to the housekeeper at various points during the evening as ‘the staff‘, ‘pretty little Miss Pigtails‘ and ‘European Pigtails‘.
• Ana observes that Mama and Papa Grey obviously love each other very much and thinks that it’s ‘almost embarrassing to witness‘.
• Ana refers to the boathouse sex as ‘a punishment fuck‘.
• As they said goodbye, Kate explained that she deliberately antagonised Grey at the dinner table so that ‘you can see what he’s really like‘. Ana was not pleased.

Baby Count: 14

Favorite Comment Last Post: The eagerness we latch onto these side characters is one of my favorite things about the FS recaps and comment sections. “Who is this guy?” “WHO CARES, HE DOESN’T HAVE THE LAST NAME OF GREY OR STEELE.” – Ryan

 

Next time on Grey: We find out who Caroline Acton is on Monday, May 30, 2011.