Grey Chapter 22 – Full stalker mode

Previously: Elliot told Grey to go fuck himself. That’s all you need to know.
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Jessica: Grey hasn’t gone to bed yet, but since we’ve passed midnight it’s the next chapter. He broods at his piano instead. He’s mad because Ana said she would try to change for him, but in the end she didn’t. In fact, he tells himself that she “fell at the first hurdle.” Grey, I think last night was leagues away from the first hurdle. Way after the selling-your-car and stalking-your-life hurdles.

Marines: And I’m pretty sure you pushed her over that hurdle with a belt, a growly voice and some serious psychological WTFery.

J: He then asks himself why he hit her so hard, and his internal answer — take a big breath here so you’ll have enough time for the rage yelling — is: “because she asked me to.”

His only thought of his own responsibility in this scenario is that he was too selfish to resist doing what she had asked him to do. How this book could fathomably be thought to exonerate this character, in any way, is far beyond me.

Alex: He even claims to have been ‘seduced’ by her invitation to beat her up. We’re near the end of the book and I’ve run out of creative ways to say ‘this is the worst’ but… this is the worst.

J: Agreed.

Grey’s next thought is to get drunk. The last time he was drunk was when he was 15, except for that other time when he was 21. Is this like when he’s naked except for his pants? (M: Exactly.) But he shudders at the violent effects of losing control while drunk. This segues us into sleep and a flashback!dream.

In the dream, baby!Grey is brushing his mom’s hair when the bad guy from before comes back. He’s got another guy with him, and basically pimps the mom out to him for drugs. He drags baby!Grey around for good measure, smelling of booze and cigarette smoke.

Grey wakes with a start and gets a glass of water from the kitchen. He decides he needs to see Flynn, who I recall is his therapist maybe? Which– agreed. He thinks back to how he never had nightmares with Ana, and until he met her, the “inebriated innocent,” he’d never considered sleeping beside any of his subs before.

He goes on for a large paragraph about how amazing it was to watch Ana in her sleep, and then he picks up the little glider she bought and takes it to bed with him. If anything sexual happens with the glider, we (thankfully) don’t hear about it.

Mari: That page about how awesome it was watching Ana sleep was enough. We’ll recall that Ana was passed out drunk while all this was happening, and had not consented to being undressed, in his bed, and the subject of Grey’s all night lust-a-palooza. 

J: Oh shit, I had forgotten about that. Seriously, this is the worst.

Transitional sentences are for losers! Next paragraph brings us mid-conversation with housekeeper Gail, who asks if Grey wants coffee. He gets grumpy when she mentions his uneaten dinner because his painful drama is none of her beeswax apparently. Gail’s “lips thin” as she “turns to the Gaggia.” I had to Google this, apparently Gaggia is a brand of espresso machine. Maybe it’s just me, since I get most of my coffee from the old monster machine at work, but Gaggia isn’t exactly a household name like Kleenex, right? (M: Never heard of it. Maybe because I’m poor.)

Next paragraph, Grey’s in the car on the phone with Ros. As he pushes to get the SIP deal (i.e. Ana’s future workplace) through, Ros breaks the news that it turns out Detroit is a better location for whatever-business-deal than Savannah. Grey’s bummed that business is getting in the way of his stalkering.

Alex: I know I shouldn’t be surprised any more, but his reaction here does indeed seem to suggest that he actually wants to build the whatever-they’re-building in Savannah. I figured that he was just pretending to scope out Savannah as an excuse to follow Ana on her vacation before. That was bad enough, but the fact that he’s actually trying to follow through with the fake plan, just to allow him to keep tabs on Ana? Hilarious and horrifying in equal measure.

J: He spends the rest of the car ride broodily wondering about Ana and what she’s up to. He’s certain now that she didn’t love him, in fact, nobody loves him, not even his parents because not only was he adopted but he’s been “nothing but a disappointment to them.” He’s in this deep, guys.

Alex: ‘Nothing but a disappointment’. Right. Because everyone knows there’s nothing more disappointing than a son who runs his own hugely successful billion-dollar business while simultaneously solving third-world hunger with soil science. Get the fuck over yourself, Grey.

Mari: Honestly, the most disappointing thing is probably that you spend holiday dinners sighing about what a disappointment you are… 

J: Grey starts hating on his secretaries the moment he gets in the door. Olivia flirts with him and he decides to move her to another department. He snaps orders at Andrea and no one is to call him unless their name is Anastasia Steele.

Grey carries his brooding into his office, and has taken the toy glider in to work with him as well. He thinks about Ana starting a new job and meeting new men and forgetting his very existence. He boosts himself confidence-wise with this little gem:

“No, she won’t forget me. Women always remember the first man they fucked, don’t they? I’ll always hold a place in her memory, for that alone.”

1. Chaaaarming.
2. Why “women”? Why not “everyone”? Hello, misogyny.
3. “For that alone.” Because she can only remember/care about things related to her vagina, and nothing else.
4. Just ….. aaaaaaagh. I can’t be eloquent. This is so rageful.

He resolves that he can’t let her woman-ness erase him from her mind. He needs to do something. Andrea appears with croissants and, magically once again, his coffee just the right way. Black, like his soul. He says a bunch of orders with names that I don’t recognize, and she peaces out “as if she can’t get out of my office fast enough.” Andrea, I still like you.

We’re treated to a page’s worth of Grey ordering flowers to Ana, sent to her house rather than work, so she can be embarrassed in private by her crazy stalker.

Alex: Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a minor-yet-bizarre detail in here which I just felt I had to comment on. He also randomly calls someone called ‘Barney’ and asks him to make a stand for his model glider. Two things:

1) It took me 0.2 seconds of Googling ‘model glider stand’ to find about half a dozen places that sell those.

2) Who the fuck is Barney?

Mari: Isn’t this the guy that does all Grey’s stalking for him? …and makes model gliders on the side?

That can’t be right.

J: Grey is obviously too rich to just order his own stand. He’s got a guy for that.

In the next segment, Grey is fighting Bastille, his trainer. Bastille is described as a big cat, and at one point Grey hisses at him “I’m pissed.” I guess…. that sort of works for hissing? Bastille goads him about being mad because of a girl and Grey kicks him a lot.

After the workout, Grey has Taylor drive past Ana’s apartment. Dude is in full stalker mode this chapter. Grey gets a thrill from thinking he might glimpse her, and seriously, did ELJ just take all of this from a website about stalking? As they drive away, Grey ignores a text from Mrs. Rape.

Back at home, Grey goes to the one room in his apartment that has no memories of Ana, which is his library. But then he sees the billiard table and gets distracted by thinking of her naked on top of it. He chugs some cognac and walks out of the room.

CHAPTER OVER. And what did we learn class? Grey is a stalkery stalking stalker-face.

Baby count: zero (M: Baby come back!)

Trauma flashback: This chapter exists in the purgatorial wasteland that is the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey. Then the first chapter of Fifty Shades Darker starts with Ana getting Grey’s flowers.

 

Next time on Grey: I don’t know. Maybe another call to Barney on Wednesday June 8, 2011.