Chapter Nine: Part One

Chapter Nine – Part One

Ana wakes up to Christian Grey and damn near has another orgasm at the sight of his beautiful face. “How could anyone look this good and still be legal?” I’d be more concerned about the legality of your own stupidity, to be honest, Ana. 

She gets out of bed, goes into the bathroom and appears to have an actual conversation with her subconscious. I’ll just reiterate the fact you can’t interact with your own subconscious and I’ll just write this off as Ana being borderline schizophrenic. “ARE YOU CRAZY?” her subconscious shouts (in caps, too). Yes, it seems she is.

Ana realises she didn’t let Kate know where she was, so she goes to find her phone and there are a load of texts from Kate, saying things like “RU OK Ana” and “Where RU Ana”. Add ‘text-speak’ to the considerable list of things that E. L. James can’t pull off.

At a time like this, understandably, the only thing Ana worries about is how bad her hair looks. She finds two hair ties in her bag and puts her hair in pigtails, speculating that the more girly she looks, the safer she will be from 'Bluebeard'. This is really skewed logic. Plus if you're standing in the bathroom trying to figure out ways to keep yourself 'safe' from the man in the apartment with you, chances are you should forget your hairstyle and RUN.

She realises she’s hungry, so she gets her iPod out and heads to the kitchen. “There’s nothing like music to cook by,” she says. Cringe. 

Now Ana starts dancing round the kitchen and grabbing whatever she wants out of the fridge. This might be just me, but when I stay over at other people’s houses, I always feel very uncomfortable when I’m awake before them, and I definitely wouldn’t start helping myself to their food when they weren’t around. Ana started this book flipping out about a guy holding her hand, but now she feels relaxed enough in his penthouse apartment to start raiding the fridge and dancing around, apparently. 

“I am so daunted by this kitchen. It’s so sleek and modern, and none of the cupboards have handles. It takes me a few seconds to deduce that I have to push the cupboard doors to open them.” You, my dear girl, are an unspeakable idiot. 

“Amy Studt is singing in my ear about misfits. This song used to mean so much to me because I’m a misfit.” I am cringing so much there are actual nail indentations in my face.

Christian walks in and catches her dancing. Predictable. He asks her if she wants some tea, reaches into a cupboard and pulls out some Twinings English Breakfast tea. Smooth. She tells him that she’s still sore from last night so he suggests that they just work on oral skills for the time being. I swear, if she has an orgasm from him kissing her feet...

Ana says she’d like to spend the day with Christian, but then return home for the night. This is a completely reasonable request, but Christian is not impressed. When Christian gets upset, this, apparently, makes Ana’s previously insatiable appetite immediately diminish. She spent twenty minutes cooking up eggs and talking about how hungry she was, and now just because Christian is upset with her, she's suddenly lost her appetite. I can't identify with this character – there’s not much a man could say that would put me off my breakfast. 

It turns out Christian is actually pretty obsessed with food, and urges her to finish her breakfast. He has ‘issues with wasted food’ apparently. I’d like to promise that we’ll find out what that’s about in later chapters, but the standard of this writing, planning and plot leads me to believe it’s just another empty sentence designed to make you feel a pang of sympathy before being completely forgotten about.

Christian promises that they’ll take a bath together, and Ana decides to call Kate. Kate is all like, did you?! And Ana is all like, maybe… And Kate is all like, OMGZ, you totally did! Really mature, adult stuff. The sort of conversation that makes you think that Ana and Kate are totally ready for responsible sexual relationships which may or may not include BDSM. 

Ana contemplates that not telling Kate about the Womb Room will be “a difficult square to circle”. I think E. L. James is having a stab at using an idiom here, but as far as I know, this isn’t even a phrase. The phrase she’s thinking of is ‘square the circle’, which means to solve a particularly difficult problem. Calling this situation a ‘square to circle’ is nonsensical (but hilarious).

Christian shows his own maturity (and the author tries to crowbar some misguided literary references in) by referring to sex as ‘making the beast with two backs’. I’m so glad that we’re all adults here, especially considering the potentially dangerous nature of the sexual activities we’re about to embark on.

TBC!