Grey Chapter 23 – Sorry, Mari

Previously: Stalking and nothing much else to see here.
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Alex: Well, this is awkward. I’m currently feeling a little like the Grinch who stole Christmas, because just last week Mari sent me an excited email about how she’d finished writing the last Grey recap…

…and then I had to go and ruin it by pointing out that she’d missed out a whole chapter.

Sorry, Mari!

Marines: I Tweeted about being done and everything! Being suddenly not done was truly was the most depressing thing that has happened to me in a long, long while. IN MY DEFENSE, each of these chapters start with a dream and end with a brood so while I checked to make sure I was on the right chapter I WAS DUPED. BECAUSE IT’S ALL THE SAME. 

Jessica: Truly, it was a roller coaster of emotions.

Alex: The good news is that this means our final recap is already written and ready to go up next week, so the end really is in sight at last. (M: Grumble, grumble.)

This chapter opens with Grey having some kind of erotic nightmare. (J: “Erotic Nightmare” band name- called it!) (A: Too late!). He’s having sex with Ana against a bathroom door, but then he tries to beat her with a belt and she disappears into thin air. He wakes up suddenly and discovers this:

“Jesus H. Christ, I’ve come for Team USA.”

Christian Grey wins the gold medal in Nocturnal Ejaculation for Team USA! I’ve never been quite so happy to be British.

Mari: FIRST TRUMP AND NOW THIS? 

Alex: ‘There’s semen everywhere,” he informs us. He takes off his t-shirt and wipes himself down with it. I’m sorry, but WHY are we reading this? I mean, we shouldn’t be reading anything in this book at all, because it’s terrible, but why oh why does E. L. James think anyone could possibly need to read about Christian Grey jizzing all over the bed and then cleaning it up with his t-shirt? How does this in any way contribute to the story?

He goes back to sleep for a while and has another nightmare, wherein his mother’s pimp threatens him with cigarette burns and punishes him in the face. I’ve barely read two pages and I’ve already had to deal with semen-covered t-shirts followed by graphic descriptions of child abuse. I’m now starting to suspect that Mari didn’t accidentally miss out this chapter at all, but instead got as far as ‘there’s semen everywhere‘ and was just like…

Mari: If not purposefully, it must mean I have some kind of magic powers. I’ll go wait for my Hogwarts letter. 

Jessica: The number gods have been rather kind to me throughout this book. I raise my glass of booze to them and cast an apologetic glance towards my co-recappers.

Alex: I, on the other hand, am clearly being punished by the number gods for some kind of terrible transgression in a previous life.

Grey wakes up again at 5:15am and declares it to be ‘time for a run‘. No. Wrong. I looked it up and 5:15am is definitely time for sleeping, not running. He runs to Ana’s building – of course – (Mari: You should’ve looked up if 5:15am was time for a stalk…) and then stands hidden in a doorway across the street. He boo-hoos a bit about how pathetic he is.

“The awful thought crosses my mind that I might be standing here in a week, a month… a year? Watching, waiting, just to catch a glimpse of the girl who used to be mine. It’s painful. I’ve become what she’s always accused me of being – her stalker.”

I originally had much more of a rant planned for this bit, but we’re all tired and it wouldn’t be anything we haven’t already said a million times before. All I will say is that this is the kind of thing that, in real life, people have nightmares about. Stalking isn’t some kind of cute, romantic endeavour that’s carried out by poor lovesick puppy-dogs, and an ex lurking outside your apartment day after day is not sweet. It’s terrifying. E. L. James trying to make me to feel sorry for the stalker in this situation is just… too much. No, just no.

Mari: Oh, maybe the gold medal ejaculation was also meant to make us sad for Grey. We can’t blame a guy for stalking a girl if he woke up in an Olympic sized pool of semen! Great thinking, E.L. 

Alex: Grey declares that he ‘can’t go on like this’. He doesn’t want to be a stalker, but not because it’s wrong or out of any concern for Ana and her well-being. Just because it makes him feel kind of sucky. He decides that he needs to devise a plan to see her. Once again, he claims that it’s all about ‘seeing that she’s OK’, because we’re still pretending that that’s a thing. (J: Ugh. Eyeroll.)

Back at home, Mrs. Jones tricks him into eating an omelette. Unfortunately she forgets to lace it with cyanide first. (M: We’re counting on you, Mrs. Jones.)

Some time later, Grey is moping and wondering whether he should call Ana and hang up, just to hear her voice. A stalker says what? It then becomes apparent that this moping is happening at work, where he is currently in a meeting with Ros and hasn’t been listening to anything she’s just been saying. Ros repeats that Ana’s publishing company is in a lot of financial difficulty and that they probably shouldn’t be buying it, but Grey insists that they go ahead anyway. Hanging around outside Ana’s building makes him feel sucky, you see, but he’s still going to waste millions of dollars buying the company she works for. I guess that’s a special executive kind of stalking that he’s OK with.

Mari: You can do that kind of stalking in an expensive suit at a respectable hour.

Alex: Now we cut to Grey having a session with his therapist, Dr. Flynn, where he decides to open up and tell the doctor all about his time with Ana and how much he now misses her. He relates the whole story, but thankfully we don’t have to listen to it all over again (again) (M: AGAIN. I watched the movie…). Flynn hones in on the part where Ana told him that she loved him, and how horrified Grey was by this. Flynn insists that ‘you’re not the monster you think you are‘ and ‘you’re more than worthy of affection‘. Flynn is wrong.

Jessica: This whole therapy session doesn’t make sense until you picture Dr. Flynn as E.L. James.

Alex: 

We’re a few chapters from the end of the book, and I feel like we’re finally getting to the crux of what E. L. James has been trying to do in writing this whole thing from Grey’s point of view. I think this is supposed to be the epiphany – the big turning-point where we finally get to understand Christian’s actions up until this point, and witness him deciding to change. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how well that’s going to work out?

Mari: 

Alex: Flynn and Grey have a back-and-forth which is all over the place and barely makes any sense. The gist of it is that Grey enjoyed beating Ana, but doesn’t want to do it again because hurting her made him sad, and that made him feel helpless. Flynn starts down a path where it seems like he might be about to call Grey out on how fucked up all of this is, drawing comparisons between his treatment of Ana and the way he witnessed his own mother being abused. But then E. L. James Grey gets defensive and Flynn quickly backs down. E. L. James Grey again goes overboard with the excuses for the beating: Ana asked for it, she’s a consenting adult, she could have safe-worded if she wanted to… blah blah. We’ve heard it all already. Flynn goes ahead and agrees with him, because this chapter isn’t actually going to contain any kind of epiphany at all.

Mari: Wait, wait, what? 

Alex: Flynn gives his diagnosis: ‘her leaving has triggered your abandonment issues and your PTSD’. Got that, everyone? It’s all Ana’s fault. Yay!

Mari: WAIT. WAIT. 

E.L. James brought us all the way to therapy, approximately 87 chapters after this book should’ve finished, JUST to have Dr. Flynn tell us that ANA ABANDONING GREY triggered the SAME DAMN PROBLEMS HE HAD ALL THIS GODDAMN BOOK? 

Alex: Flynn decides that what Grey needs, therefore, is to focus on his goal of getting Ana back. Because that sounds like totally healthy advice for a psychiatrist to give to a patient. Sorry, Dr. Flynn, where did you say you got your licence again? Oh, The E. L. James University of Total Bullshit? That’s what I thought.

Jessica: This reminded me of when Mrs. Rape told Christian to go to Atlanta when Ana ran away on vacation. Everybody just keeps sending this asshole after her with no thought as to whether or not she is interested in pursuing any kind of relationship.

Alex: Exactly!

Flynn’s radical suggestion for winning Ana back is basically ‘have you tried… not hitting her?’ and Grey is floored by this absolute curveball of an idea. That’s it, that’s the epiphany. Fantastic.

What’s maddening about all this is that throughout the conversation with Flynn, we’ve focused solely on one specific incident – Grey beating Ana with the belt on their last night together – and we haven’t even touched on all the emotional abusive and controlling behaviour that’s been going on throughout the book. Grey comes away from this conversation having decided that if he can just control his urges to beat Ana with belts, then everything is going to be fine and dandy. What’s downright upsetting is that I genuinely think that E. L. James believes this too – that this one tiny aspect is the only part of their relationship which needed any kind of fixing.

Mari: Definitely. In her head this plays out as, “what happens if the handsome billionaire wants to hit you? HE SHOULD STOP HITTING YOU! WEE!” That’s bad enough even when you don’t see the fine print that’s all, “this handsome billionaire will still stalk you, control you, isolate you, hate you, manipulate you and let’s be real still probably hit you lol.” 

Alex: Grey worries for one second that he’s not good enough for Ana, but then decides that he doesn’t have the strength to stay away from her, and who cares about her anyway because this is and will always be all about him (that last part was implied). Then his time with Flynn is up and he’s rather unceremoniously booted out of the room because, like everyone else in this book, Dr. Flynn is just the worst at his job.

In the final scene of this chapter, Grey stands on his balcony drinking cognac and for a second he thinks he sees movement in his apartment, but nothing happens. Nothing ever happens.

Take us home, Mari!

Mari: I can see the actual end. NO ONE TAKE THIS FROM ME.

 

Next time on Grey: Grey decided to get Ana back with gifts and even! more! stalking! on Wednesday June 8, 2011.