Grey Chapter 11 – Symbolic Bullshit

Previously: Grey and Ana had their contract dinner date, complete with sexy olives and asparagus.
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Alex: Before we get started on this chapter, I’d like to thank Mari for picking up chapter 9 (the sex contract chapter) while I was completely swamped with finishing my masters degree. However, I’ve kind of screwed myself over, because now I have to cover this extremely long chapter instead. Come back, sex contract! All is forgiven! (Not really).

Marines: I love you, but this worked out so well for me.

Alex: So. We open with one of Grey’s manipulative childhood-trauma nightmares. While it feels horrible to be so dismissive about such a serious subject, I’ve really had it with these dream sequences. I see what you’re trying to do, E.L. James. I’m clearly meant to think ‘awww, poor baby’ and then excuse all the hideously awful things that grown-up Grey does, on account of his terrible start in life. That’s not going to work, I’m afraid.

Mari: Well, the sadness of why we’re here, doing this, is that it won’t work ON US. Somewhere someone is crying for baby Grey, wearing a t-shirt that says, “Keep Calm and Obey Mr Grey.” So.

Alex: Grown-up Grey wakes from his nightmare at 5:38am (can’t forget those pointless details!) and wishes that he could speak to his ‘damned’ psychiatrist. He wonders why he hasn’t had any texts from Ana. Probably because it’s 5:38am? He goes for a quick run and then texts Ana: ‘Call me’. His excuse for sending her demanding texts before the sun’s even up is ‘I just need to know she’s safe’.

Jessica: Well with that jackass Katherine Kavanagh around, who knows? They could be talking to men! In public!

Alex: He spends a few hours working on his speech for the graduation ceremony. His VP of publicity has already written it for him, but it’s terrible and Grey has to pretty much rewrite the whole thing. Why would he make this Sam guy his VP when he very clearly hates him?

Mari: His gripe is that the speech doesn’t sound human, so I actually think Sam is wonderful at his job and wrote a speech that matched Grey perfectly.

Alex: Excellent point. Good job, Sam!

Once Grey’s finished rewriting Sam’s sucky speech, it’s 9:30am. He’s stopped being worried about Ana and is now just pissed off that she still hasn’t called him. He thinks it’s extremely rude of her. You know what else is rude? Sending people ‘call me’ texts at SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. Also, it’s 9:30am on her graduation day. Assuming she isn’t still asleep, maybe she has better things to do than spend the morning on the phone to you. Asshole.

Grey gets an email from his little sister Mia, who wants a ride from the airport on Saturday. I have two observations to make about this email. Firstly, the ‘From:’ line is ‘Mia G. Chef Extraordinaire’. Err… what? Secondly, she’s supposed to be in Paris, but the timestamp on the email says ‘GMT -1’. I guess we can add ‘time zones’ to the list of things E. L. James doesn’t understand. Mia types like an eleven-year-old who’s had too many Pixy Stix, and she wants to know all about her brother’s new girlfriend. Grey is not pleased. (M: “Ugh, she’s going to ask questions. I’m going to have to fend her off… or kill her.” <– something like that.)

Now it’s 9:45 and Grey has to get dressed for the ceremony. He puts on THAT tie and then tries to call Ana again, becoming even more furious when she doesn’t answer. On the morning of her damn graduation. At 9:45am.

Taylor turns up ‘at 10:00 precisely’. E. L. is really going to town on reporting the time in this chapter. Taylor informs him that Ana’s unwanted Audi will be arriving in Portland later today. They set off and Grey thinks to himself ‘though I’m loath to admit it, I’m anxious to see Miss Steele’.

YOU DON’T SAY? I mean, you texted her at 6am and then called her over and over again all morning, and you also just bought her a car. But you being anxious to see her? That’s a plot twist I definitely didn’t see coming!

Jessica: See? These are the amazing insights we get with this totally necessary new book!

Alex: Once they get to the university, Grey is led into a waiting area by a female secretary who so obviously has the hots for him that she might as well just get down on her knees and fellate him then and there. (M: Maybe she can smell the sex on his tie.) You know who doesn’t have the hots for him, though? Katherine Kavanagh! She’s there too, and comes over to speak to him. Katherine Kavanagh is such an evil slut-bag that she doesn’t walk like normal people, she ‘struts with the confidence of the well-heeled’.

Mari: Uuuuugh, confidence. Christian hates that almost as much as world hunger.

Jessica: Meanwhile I was all, “Woo, Kavanagh! In the back with the VIPs! Suck it, Ana!”

Alex: Kate is surprised that Grey didn’t know she was valedictorian, because she assumed Elliot would have told him. Grey is all ‘I don’t actually TALK to my brother, jeez’. He inquires about Ana’s well-being and Kate assures him that she did actually make it home last night, and isn’t lying by the side of the road burnt to a crisp after dying in a fiery explosion. I mean, if Ana was dead then Kate probably wouldn’t be strutting around and bragging about being valedictorian, right? But that’s just how bad a friend Grey thinks she is. Grey tries to call Ana once again, even though the ceremony’s about to start. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t answer. Because the ceremony’s about to start.

Grey and Kate go onto the stage and he scans the audience until he spots Ana. ‘She’s alive’, he thinks to himself. Because Katherine Kavanagh is such a monster that, even when she tells you someone’s alive, you can’t believe it until you see it with your own eyes.

Mari: Ana is squirming around in her chair because she can’t keep her vagina under control, or something, and Grey is so angry at her for being alive enough to return his calls that he closes his eyes on stage to imagine dropping hot wax on her breasts.

I just hate them both so much.

Alex: That well-heeled strutter and pathological liar, Katherine Kavanagh, gives an ‘inspiring speech about embracing opportunities’. Grey almost thinks something nice about Kate, observing how ‘smart and popular and confident’ she is, but then he follows it up by thinking once again about how he can’t believe she and Ana are friends. We sadly don’t get to hear Kate’s speech (we’ll have to wait for E. L. to publish the story from Kate’s PoV, I guess) but boy, does E. L. have a treat in store for us now! You remember how in FSoG Ana only listened the first few sentences of Grey’s speech? Well, now we get to hear the whole thing…

…except that there’s no way I’m going to recap all of that. It’s about soil science and feeding the hungry. The End.

Mari: A+! Well done! Improved on the actual material 1000%!

After he’s done with the speech I didn’t read, he purposefully avoids looking at Ana because two can play the ignoring game. Except Grey has been blowing up her phone all morning and specifically sought her out in the audience. So by “ignoring game” what he really means is that he’s not going to look at her this one time.

Jessica: So out of curiosity (stupidity??) I did go through the entire speech and my main critique is– it is not a graduation speech. I don’t know what Sam the publicity VP wrote, but Grey’s speech sounds more like he’s giving a presentation of his company to some investors, not trying to inspire the next generation. I’m just surprised he didn’t manage some not-at-all subtle imagery to fling at Ana in the middle of it to see how embarrassed she’d get, and then get mad at her for it.

Alex: Yes, that confused me too. Why would anyone want a speech about soil science at their graduation ceremony? (M: Doesn’t he know what an aphrodisiac soil science is?)

Now Grey starts handing out degrees. Is this really a thing that happens at universities in the US? Random 20-something businessmen handing out the college degrees? Weird. Eventually it’s Ana’s turn and Grey takes advantage of their few seconds together to interrogate her about why she hasn’t called him back. What an absolute jerk-face. Way to ruin the culmination of years of hard work. Also, I’m pretty sure everyone around them must be able to hear this whole conversation. The stage can’t be THAT big.

The ceremony is finally over, and Grey’s had it up to HERE with horny college students flirting and trying to give him phone numbers while receiving their degrees. E. L. James really doesn’t think much of her fellow women, does she? He orders Kate to go get Ana for him and, when she appears, he drags her into the men’s locker room and locks the door. Nope, nothing sinister about that at all. He interrogates her some more and she explains that she hasn’t looked at her emails this morning because, oh yeah, she was PREPARING TO FUCKING GRADUATE.  Grey tells he that he’s been terribly worried about her driving home in that car. However, DdG, ever the voice of truth, then adds ‘And I thought I’d blown the deal between us’. AHA! And there we have it. None of this anxiety has really had anything to do with Ana’s safety. It’s all been about whether he’s going to get to spank and fuck her again.

Ana gets annoyed at him being such a dick about her car and explains that Jose services it regularly for her. This makes Grey even more furious. Ana very patiently apologises for worrying him, which makes me so very angry. Grey gives her an ultimatum: he needs an answer on the whole submissive thing, by tomorrow. Then he demands to be introduced to her dad and, when Ana hesitates, wonders if she’s ashamed of him because his speech gave away the fact that he was ‘dirt poor’ as a kid. He refuses to take no for an answer and insists on meeting Ray whether she wants him to or not.

Mari: He bristles at dates and sleeping in the same bed post-sex because he isn’t a “hearts and flowers” guy, but Ana bristles at INTRODUCING HIM TO HER FATHER and he’s like, “oh well, let’s go”? Sounds about right.

Alex: After spending some time at a tedious drinks reception being forced to talk to people who aren’t Ana, he manages to escape with Kate. They go to find Ana but, when they do, Grey’s dismayed to see that some tall blond guy has his hands ‘all over her’. Ana looks really guilty when she sees Grey, and he assumes that said tall blond guy must be the real reason she didn’t want him to come for a drink with her dad.

Kate introduces Grey to Ray as ‘Ana’s boyfriend’, which is kind of shitty of her, but it also makes Grey super uncomfortable so… well done, Kate. Grey and Ray shake hands, and Grey observes that he has the rough fingers of a man who works with his hands. Then he’s introduced to Kate’s brother Ethan, who he’s already written off as a ‘beach bum’ before saying even a single word to him. Grey disapproves of Ethan’s soft hands, which must mean he’s a lazy layabout, even though his own are presumably just as soft.

Grey holds out his hand to Ana and she comes to him ‘like the good woman she is’. Fuck off. (M: ANGER.) Ana goes with Kate and Ethan to talk to the Kavanagh parents. Meanwhile, Grey and Ray talk about fishing a lot. Like, a LOT. And to think, if E. L. hadn’t written the book from Grey’s PoV, then we would never have got to read these pages and pages of dialogue about fishing. (J: Yaaaay….) Eventually Grey steers the conversation around to the death-trap Beetle, and asks Ray’s permission to force a new car on Ana. Ray says that would be up to her, but this does not compute for Grey.

Mari: I don’t even understand why Grey mentions it. He wouldn’t care one way or another what Ray said at this point, so why ask at all? I honestly am trying to understand why this happened so probably that’s my first mistake.

Alex: While Ray’s in the restroom, a random photographer snaps a photo of Ana and Grey together. They then have another tedious conversation about their non-relationship and Ana eventually agrees to ‘try’ the whole submissive thing. DdG is over the moon and thinks ‘Deal done, Grey!’. (M: Who says “deal done” and not “done deal”?)(J: More proof the Americanisms Team was fucking with ELJ. Or, more likely, didn’t exist to begin with.)

Ray returns and invites Grey to join them for lunch. But Grey suddenly has some kind of personality transplant, and recognises that Ana probably wants to spend some time alone with her father on her graduation day. Of course, he didn’t give a shit about that when he was calling her all morning, harassing her on stage and imprisoning her in locker rooms, but now that the ‘deal’ is closed he’ll oh-so-generously let her celebrate with her loved ones. The scene weirdly ends with Grey shaking hands with Katherine Kavanagh’s father.

Some time later, Taylor collects Grey from the university and tells him that Ana’s new car is waiting at the hotel. Grey knows there will be ‘a discussion’ about this, but of course he doesn’t really care. He considers calling Ana right now, but then reminds himself that she’s enjoying time with her dad. I think we’re supposed to be impressed that he’s allowing her to spend several uninterrupted hours with someone who isn’t him? Look how much he’s changing already, before our very eyes!

Back at the hotel, we get three pointless sentences about Grey changing to go to the gym.

Then he’s back in his room, showered and having a WebEx meeting with Ros. Based on the way she describes this meeting, I’m not sure E. L. actually knows what WebEx is. After some boring business talk with Ros, Grey emails Ana to say that she looked beautiful today. Then he remembers how horrible it was when he couldn’t get hold of her this morning, so he emails Taylor to order her a Blackberry.

Next, he reads Forbes and eats some seafood risotto. Then he gets a call from his mother. I’ve recapped the last five pages as briefly as I can, but honestly, this is the most tediously boring drivel I’ve ever had to read. Hey, readers of this ‘erotic’ novel, raise your hand if you give a single fuck about WebEx meetings and emails and Forbes and seafood risotto.

Anyway, Grey’s mum wants him to bring Ana to dinner on Sunday and he’s suitably freaked out.

Grey finally gets an email from Ana, inviting herself to come over later and discuss the contract. He replies, forbidding her from driving her own car over to his place, and says he’ll come over to hers. He prints out ANOTHER copy of the contract, explaining that the first copy is still in his jacket at Ana’s apartment. Wait, but aren’t you going there now? So then why do you need to… oh, never mind. (J: You can never have too many printed email copies. I mean, what if both of them want to read it at once?) He heads out with his printout and two condoms, telling Taylor to come pick him up later. He drives the Audi Submissive Special over to Ana’s place, stopping en-route to buy some pink champagne. The fact that it’s pink is ‘symbolic’, apparently, although he doesn’t explain what it actually symbolises.

Mari: I have guesses! Pink like watered blood? Pink like stupid girls and their stupid desires for things like heart and stupid stupid flowers? Pink like the color of a white girl’s skin after Christian Grey whacks it? Pink like lips through which pink champagne will pass to intoxicate an otherwise unwilling person? Pink the color we wear on Wednesdays? Pink?

Alex: A+.

Grey arrives at Ana’s apartment and notes that she seems nervous, so he decides she needs some champagne to relax her. She’s wrapped up the books he gave her, ready to give back to him. He gets annoyed because a good submissive would just accept them. He tells her to stop ‘overthinking’ things, which is what he says pretty much any time she has any kind of independent thought that doesn’t match his own.

He pours her some of the champagne, but hasn’t the heart to tell her why he chose pink. He doesn’t tell us either, though, so I’m still none the wiser. They bitch about how gross the wine at the graduation reception was (must have been a Chardonnay)(J: Grey says it was “foul” and right afterwards Ana says it reminded her of him. Ha!). He continues to top up her glass with champagne as Ana looks at him suspiciously. ‘She knows I’m plying her with alcohol’, he thinks to himself.

Mari: Pink like the color of QUEENLY DISAPPROVAL.

Alex: They chat about Kate and Ana’s upcoming move to Seattle and Grey says that he’d offer to help, but he unfortunately has to collect his sister from the airport.

Of course, he already made it very clear that he never had any intention of helping.

Ana tells him that she has some job interviews lined up in Seattle and Grey’s annoyed that she didn’t immediately inform him about this. She refuses to tell him which publishing houses the interviews are at, in case he tries to pull any strings for her or, I don’t know… buy the company? (M: Shhhh, not yet.)

Now they’re going to talk about the contract AGAIN. I swear we’ve been over this damn contract at least six times already. But first, Grey plies her with a little more alcohol. DdG speaks up and reminds him ‘you just want her tipsy, not drunk’. That’s right. They’re having this important conversation about what Ana is or isn’t comfortable with, sexually, and Grey actually wants her to be tipsy for it.

I don’t really feel like recapping this contract discussion in great detail. Basically, Ana expresses doubts about a bunch of things she doesn’t want to do and Grey pretty much tells her tough shit, she has to do them anyway. He also laughs at her for being so inexperienced, then apologises for laughing, then gets pissed off with her for making him apologise. What A Guy. Throughout this conversation, it’s also obvious that Ana is completely terrified at the thought of being physically hurt by Grey. Not only that, but Grey is very much aware of how scared she is. However, he’s quite insistent: he must be allowed to hurt her, for deep, dark reasons that he refuses to reveal. Reading this whole exchange is honestly making me feel a little sick, so let’s move on.

Jessica: Nothing in this book is subtle, and her discomfort is so obvious and, worse, so obviously not important to either narrator or author. It’s uncomfortable at the very least.

Alex: Grey now says that, as well as the whole Dom/sub thing, he’ll try to act like a real boyfriend one night a week… but only if she ‘graciously accepts’ her graduation present. He leads her outside and shows her the car, explaining that Ray was ‘all for it’.

You see, now that we’ve got the story from Grey’s PoV, I can tell you exactly what Ray said. His exact words were ‘I guess. That would be up to Annie, mind’. Yup, he totally gave you permission to force a car on his daughter.

Mari: Now that I know why Grey asked that question it has not in fact made me feel the least bit better. I didn’t remember this and didn’t see this coming. Hey, look, I hate him more than five minutes ago.

Alex: Plus, what he actually asked was whether Ray thought Ana would like to borrow one of his company cars. He in no way asked permission to buy her a brand new car as a graduation present, and Ray in no way gave it. You know what we call that, Grey? We call that LYING.

Anyway, Ana’s extremely pissed off… for about three seconds. And then she just shrugs and agrees to the ‘loan’ of the car, kissing him on the cheek and calling him ‘Sir’ as she thanks him. Then, because Grey’s such a charmer, he tells her ‘it’s taking all my self-control not to fuck you on the hood of this car right now, just to show you that you are mine, and if I want to buy you a fucking car, I’ll buy you a fucking car’. Swoon.

Back in Ana’s bedroom, she begs him not to be angry with her and tells him that he scares her. I’m not even sure what he’s meant to be so angry about, but he calms himself down by thinking ‘don’t blow it, just because she doesn’t understand how to behave’. I’m finding it hard to put into words just how angry I am right now. How can anyone possibly read this and continue to deny that there’s any kind of abusive relationship in these books?

Mari: A lot of pink champagne?

Alex: Sexytimes commence. This has been a really long chapter and we’re still only about two-thirds of the way through, so forgive me if I rush through this a little. Grey rips off Ana’s underwear, sticks a finger inside her and then puts it in his mouth, thinking ‘Mmm, salty’. NOPE NOPE NOPE.  That is probably the unsexiest thing I have ever read. Ana tries to undress him but she’s super clumsy and it’s hilarious, then he teaches her how to put on a condom. They fuck with her on top and blah blah it’s the best ever and they both come.

After the sex, Grey gloats about how he’s responsible for all her orgasms ever. Ana sheepishly confesses that she had an orgasm in her sleep this morning. She expects him to be angry about this, but he’s fascinated. Then he announces that he’s DONE with condoms and a doctor will be coming over on Sunday to provide her with an alternative form of contraception, whether she likes it or not (that last part was implied).

Ana wants to give him a ride home in her new car, but she can’t because he got her drunk on purpose. He freely admits to doing this, and nonchalantly explains that it was the only way he could get her to communicate honestly with him.

No, no, NO. That is NOT how it works, Grey, and you know it. Fuck you, E. L. James, for suggesting that it’s ever OK to get someone drunk on purpose with the explicit goal of obtaining their sexual submission.

Mari: And then she buries this under the need for “honesty.” Hey, here’s a thought: if you cannot be sober honest with the guy you are entering a sexual contract with, probably don’t enter into a sexual contract with him, OKAY?

Alex: Ana wants to have sex again, but Grey’s only interested in sex when Ana doesn’t want it. (J: Are we still doing taglines? Because there’s another one.) He gets up to leave and makes hilarious jokes about kidnapping her and holding her against her will if she doesn’t sign the contract. Hahaha. Ha.

Ana rolls her eyes at this, so Grey announces that he’s changed his mind; he’s now going to spank her and then fuck her hard and fast. This is a test, you see. If she doesn’t let him do this, then he’ll know she’s not taking the whole submissive thing seriously and he’ll dump her ass. She agrees, though, so he pulls her over his knee, thinking to himself ‘I’ve wanted to do this since she asked me if I was gay’. I want to cry. He pulls down her underwear and prepares to turn her skin pink… like the champagne. Oh. I guess we have our answer about the whole ‘symbolism’ thing, then.

Mari: BOOM. One of my answers was right. I’d celebrate more but really what I’m saying is that I effectively thought like a stalkermurderrapistboyfriend so brb, crying.

Alex: He smacks her a few times and Ana’s clearly in a lot of pain, not enjoying it at all. She grimaces and cries out a lot. However, in his internal monologue Grey makes a really big deal about how it’s OK for him to keep going, because Ana isn’t actually telling him to stop. Just to be clear, at no point before this spanking commenced did he say anything along the lines of ‘you can tell me to stop at any time’, but now he’s assuring us that it’s totally fine – no matter how much she screams and cries – because she’s not explicitly using the word ‘stop’. This scene was hard enough to read in the original book, but knowing Grey’s inner thoughts makes it fucking unbearable.

Once he’s slapped her 18 times, he cops a feel of her vagina and declares her to be mega turned on by this whole experience. That’s for her to decide, not you, you complete and utter pile of shit. They have sex again, doggy-style this time. Afterwards, Grey fetches some baby oil from the bathroom and rubs it into her ass, then announces that he’s leaving. Leaving, like, five minutes after sex… likeadick.

Taylor has been waiting outside this whole time. As they drive home, Grey asks him to collect the Beetle and ‘dispose of it’, even though this wasn’t discussed with Ana at all. Once he gets back to his hotel, he pulls out his laptop and yet another tedious exchange of emails commences. Sigh.

Grey’s first email to Ana is a really odd mixture of compliments, orders and threats. He calls her ‘the most beautiful, intelligent, witty and brave woman I have ever met’. I’ve worn out the Spongebob Bullshit gif now, but feel free to imagine it here too. He also orders her to take some Advil, then tells her not to drive her Beetle again or ‘I will know’. Ana replies that she’ll be driving it to the garage to sell it, but nope! Taylor’s going to do that. It’s OK for him to drive the deathtrap-mobile because he’s ex-army, see. Apparently all those VW Beetles you see on the road are actually being driven by highly skilled military experts, because if anyone else tries to drive a Beetle then it instantly bursts into flames.

Mari: Plus, apparently Grey gets email alerts any time someone who isn’t ex-army drives a Beetle.

Alex: Ana wonders why Grey would be so worried about the safety of ‘some woman you fuck occasionally’, and this makes Grey really angry. And she wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. (J: And that is nearly verbatim from his thoughts. Any chance Marvel lawyers will send James a cease & desist letter??) Ana replies that she’s not sure she likes him anyway, which sends Grey into a panic. However, the time stamp on Ana’s email is 23:57. E. L. is determined to stick to this one-chapter-per-day thing she’s got going on, so when the clock strikes midnight, the chapter ends. Even if it’s right in the middle of a conversation. Who am I to argue? So long, suckers.

Trauma Flashback

• Ana didn’t reply to Grey’s email the night before, because she was too busy crying herself to sleep.
• Then in the morning she was busy sleeping until 8am, being interrogating by evil Kate, and meeting her dad.
• When the girls next to her in the graduation audience started swooning over Grey, Ana told them he was gay.
• Ana spent most of Kate’s speech freaking out at the thought of Kate and Grey being together.
• Ana finally read all of Grey’s texts and emails the evening after graduation. She had to ‘hunt down’ her charger before she could even switch on her phone.
• Ana decides to accept the car after remembering how poor Grey was as a small child. No, I don’t get it either.

Baby Count: 12

Favorite comment last post:

If only Ana had revealed the (in)famous plum (dark purple?) dress was Kate’s. I can just imagine Grey jumping a foot in the air and shrieking, “EWWW! EVIL KATE’S DRESS! I TOUCHED IT!”, like the immature 8-year old that he is.

Also, what’s up with that last thought? “Deal”? Is he in Walmart? Is this Best Buy? Would he like his receipt and credit card rewards with that??? God’s sake, I hate that guy. – 1Changeling

 

Next time on Grey: Katherine Kavanagh kicks some ass on Friday May 27, 2011.