Chapter Twenty Two

Ana gets to have a manicure and a massage as part of being in First Class, and then she sips a champagne cocktail and has the inspired idea of telling Christian about the smart young man who rubbed her down thoroughly. That’s a great idea, Ana. You spent the last chapter chastising your friend for winding up your jealous boyfriend because you were scared of the ramifications, and now you’re going to do it yourself? Why are you so stupid?

The flight attendant passes by and tells Ana she needs to stow her laptop for take-off, before offering a warm blanket for her knees. “It’s nice to feel mollycoddled sometimes,” observes Ana. SOMETIMES? Ana’s life is one long mollycoddle, from everyone in it, whether it’s Kate, Christian, Jose or this damn flight attendant.

““Cabin crew, doors to automatic and cross check.” What does that mean? Are they closing the doors?” Lord, give me strength the continue reading this book. The plane takes off, and Ana takes a sneak peek at her Blackberry. I am 100% sure they tell you not to do this in case you risk interfering with air traffic control signals? But who gives a shit about that - Ana’s demanding boyfriend has sent her an important email! 

Christian tells Ana that if she carries on making him jealous she’ll be bound and gagged in the cargo hold on her return journey. Rejoice, for romance is not dead.

Ana has a change in Atlanta, and while she waits in the departure lounge, she takes out her laptop and types a stream of consciousness email to Christian. I thought the whole book up to this point had been a stream of depressing consciousness, but I was sadly wrong. 

The email is a mess, she talks about how she’s ‘caught up in his spell’ and how she’s scared he will hurt her ‘physically and emotionally’. I can’t reiterate this enough: if you are scared that a man will hurt you ‘physically and emotionally’ you really need to get the hell out of there. No woman should have to live in fear that her boyfriend is going to harm her. She says she will scared she won’t be submissive enough for him and will end up ‘black and blue’. THIS IS NOT HOT.

So Ana finally arrives in Savannah and meets her Mom and Bob. She bursts out crying when she sees her family, for not really any reason at all, then she texts Kate, Christian and Ray. This is what it says: “Arrived Safely in Savannah. A J” Why is that capital letter there? Is this a song title? It honestly baffles me that someone with such a rudimentary grasp of grammar and the English language could have written and published not one, but three best-selling novels.

Ana and her Mom head to the beach when she arrives. “I am in my blue halter neck tankini, sipping a Diet Coke, on a sun bed facing the Atlantic Ocean, and to think that only yesterday I was staring out at the Sound toward the Pacific.” That’s sort of how planes work. You get on one, and then when you get off, you’re not in the same place that you were. It’s not really that hard to grasp.

Ana’s psychic Mom magically predicts that Ana is seeing someone and demands to know who has got her in ‘such a spin’. Ana tells her Mom about Christian (leaving out all the parts she would definitely want to know), and instead saying, “He’s wealthy… too wealthy. He’s very complicated and mercurial.” Who even talks like that? If I told my Mum that my boyfriend was ‘complicated and mercurial’ she would probably ask if that meant he was poisonous. 

Ana’s mother gives her a load of advice about taking men literally and trying not to analyse everything they say. “I gaze at my mom. She is on her fourth marriage. Maybe she does know something about men after all.” Is this supposed to be sarcastic or is this just a really bad joke? I’d say being on her fourth marriage would mean she’s probably not the best person to ask how male minds function.

When Ana gets home she logs into her email account to check if she has a reply from Christian. She does. It’s like eighteen pages. Front and back. 

He wonders why she has to put a country between them before she can start to be honest about her feelings, and I wonder if anyone, anyone in this novel has considered the fact that Ana is not mature enough to be entering into the agreement she’s signed up for.

“I don’t know how to answer your comment about feeling like a whore,” it says in the letter. “I know that’s not what you’ve written, but it’s what you imply. I don’t know what I can say or do to eradicate these feelings. I’d like you to have the best of everything. I work exceptionally hard, so I can spend my money as I see fit. I could buy you your heart’s desire, Anastasia, and I want to.” So… you want her to completely submit to you in a sexual way, you want to reward her with expensive gifts and a lavish lifestyle, and you don’t want her to feel like a whore. Right, gotcha.

He goes on to say that in a dom/sub relationship, the sub has all the power. I’m not sure if he believes this or is just using it as a tool to convince Ana what she’s doing is fine. “I want to share my lifestyle with you. I have never wanted anything so much,” he says. Interesting choice of words. If this were a romance novel, it would most likely say ‘I want to share my life with you’, but this is a novel about materialistic desires and submitting to powerful men who can provide for them in a financial way. So it’s ‘lifestyle’.

“Holy crap,” thinks Ana. “He’s written an essay like we’re back at school – and most of it good.” Like we’re back at school! Why can’t the references to being a child stop?! There are ways that a woman can be portrayed as innocent and virginal without constantly likening her to an actual child. Ana has a huge epiphany about Christian’s essay and realises that spending four days without him will be sheer hell. She falls asleep at her laptop salivating at the idea of Christian just being his abusive, domineering self. Yech.

When she wakes up, her Mom says that they’re going for dinner. Ana puts on Kate’s grey halter neck dress (KATE’S DRESS. KATE’S. NOT ANA’S, KATE’S. If I was Kate I’d get pretty sick of my best friend not owning a single piece of clothing of her own). She emails Christian a little and they get talking about sex, because there hasn’t been nearly enough about bums and spanking in this chapter so far, and then she heads down for dinner.  

Mom: “You look lovely, dear.”

Ana: “Oh, this is Kate’s dress. You like it?”

FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST WE GET IT, IT’S KATE’S DRESS.

I CAN’T.

There is literally not even any point in the paragraph, except to point out once more that Ana is wearing Kate’s dress. We don’t even get to see what they chat about at dinner because the next moment, Ana is stood in the shower about to get ready for bed. She has an email from Christian she must reply to first. They chat for a while and Christian tells Ana that he is having dinner with an old friend. Predictably, Ana loses her shit. “Searing, green, bilious jealousy courses through me unexpectedly.” She wants them to have a healthy relationship but he’s not allowed to have any friends. Sure, okay, that makes sense.

Ana tries to cool herself down by Googling Christian (as you do) but eventually ends up sending him an email asking if he was having dinner with ‘Mrs Robinson’, his ex-dom.

“Part of me is desperate to know more, and another part wants to forget he ever told me. And my period has started, so I must remember to take my pill in the morning.”

I’m not even kidding, this is how this section of the chapter ends. I get she’s going for realism but THIS IS TOO MUCH.

  

Ana spends the next evening sipping on cocktails with her Mom, who dispenses a lot of great advice about men. And by ‘great’, I mean ‘absolutely fucking useless’. “You see, Ana, men think that anything that comes out of a woman’s mouth is a problem to be solved. Not some vague idea that we’d like to kick around and talk about for a while and then forget.” What?! Try to make sense, I implore you.

When Ana’s Mom goes to the ‘powder room’ (nobody says this anymore), Ana checks her phone to find an email from Christian confirming that yes, he had dinner with his friend and ex-dom, ‘Mrs Robinson’. “I am away for two days, and he runs off to that evil bitch,” muses Ana. It is interesting to note that when Christian is the sub, the woman who played the dom is labelled an ‘evil bitch’; what does that make Christian when he is the dom? In Ana’s eyes, I’d say that makes him fairly evil.

Ana sends a snarky email back, and here’s the kicker. Christian responds saying, “This is not something I wish to discuss via email. How many Cosmopolitans are you doing to drink?”

Holy fuck, he’s here, thinks Ana. MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY.

The man has followed her on her private holiday to visit her mother. He has secretly got on a plane and followed her, possibly for the entire 48 hours she’s been in Georgia so far. He has STALKED HER.

I think we'll finish here for today.

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty One

The last post ended on a bombshell about Christian's mother being a crack whore. "Holy fuck. What does that mean?" wonders Anastasia. It's nice to see that after a long break, the protagonist is still as gormless and clueless as ever.

What does it mean? I'd wager it means that his mother was a crack whore, as that's what he said. Ana fall asleep and dreams about a little boy with grey eyes and then wakes up. She thinks for a few moments about the utter horror of the revelation that Christian dropped last night, but then gets to thinking about the more important stuff: their relationship.

She has a good old whinge to herself about whether Christian will try to be a real boyfriend or not. "I need to clarify between us to see if we are still at opposite ends on the see-saw or if we are inching closer together." I'm sorry, is this a phrase? It's ludicrous. At first I found the image of them both in a children’s playground, shuffling towards each other on the see-saw, quite funny, but then I realised that we’re back to the child-like descriptions. Yikes.

Ana goes looking for Christian and finds a woman stood in his kitchen; she's described as blonde-haired, blue-eyed and attractive, with a business-like tone. Don't forget - to be a successful female in the 50 Shades universe, you need to be a hot blonde!

"Why does Christian only have attractive blondes working for him?" wonders Ana, as she finds out from the woman that Christian is in his study and sets off to find him. Why, indeed? She enters his study and finds him on his phone, and when he sees her, her smiles a smile that is 'too beautiful for the little people below'. Shut up Ana. E. L. James is such a Tory.

"Good morning, Miss Steele," he says as he finishes on the phone. The whole 'Miss Steele' and 'Mr Grey' thing was a bit of a novelty when they were acquaintances, but they've been having sex all over Seattle for the best part of a month now, you'd think they'd dispense with the cringe-worthy formalities. The author obviously thinks it’s very endearing and an example of the great banter and rapport that they share.

"I just came in to say hi before I had a shower," says Ana. She's crossed his palatial apartment and disturbed him while he was taking an important phone call just to say hello before she gets in the shower. Clingy. Dependent. Scary.

They kiss, and Christian gets all growly: "I suggest you go and have your shower, or I shall lay you across my desk, now." Not even been awake for five minutes, I tell you.

Christian does that awful cliche thing of sweeping everything off his desk with one arm. "You want it, you got it, baby," he says. Urrrrggggghhhhh.

There's another full paragraph about the technicalities of putting on a condom, as though it's a really complicated process and we all need reminding how it's done.

"Oh, Mr Boy Scout," thinks Ana. WHAT?! I don't understand what's just been said. Boy scout? Why? I'm pretty sure that if your significant other had just swept the contents of his desk to the floor and indicated he was going to absolutely ravish you on it, the last thing on your mind would be boy scouts. What a weird thought process.

If you're thinking about this while having sex, you're doing it wrong.

They have sex. It's pretty much like every other time they've previously had sex so far in this book. Lots of groaning, Ana has a mind-blowing orgasm and there's some really bad grammar and upsettingly bad dialogue. For a book about whips and stuff, there sure are a lot of samey sex scenes.

"Come on baby, give it up for me," says Christian. I can't speak for others but if someone said this to me in the heat of the moment, I'd have to respond by vomiting on their face.

They both orgasm and lie on his desk panting for a bit. "Wow... that was unexpected," thinks Ana. Was it? Was it really? We all know that's a lie. They exchange some chat about how much they 'beguile' one another. Disgusting. Again, if any man ever said that I 'beguiled' him, there would be vomit, and it would be on his face.

Ana looks down at the condom packet that's still there on his desk (I wonder if he ever got rid of that one he put in his pocket? I wonder what he's going to do with this one? This is the most enthralling part of the plot). "Always prepared," Ana murmurs. "A man can hope, Anastasia, dream even, and sometimes his dreams come true." That's a bit deep as a response to the observation that he always has a condom on him. The dialogue in this book is so weird. Imagine if someone said that in real life?

Ana goes back to take her shower. She has another whinge about how much she can't understand Christian. "We had sex... and then he wasn't." That is an actual sentence from the book. Please at lease try to make some sense.

Ana has some sort of internal conference with her subconscious and her inner goddess; the three of them all trying to figure it out. "No - we're all clueless," she thinks. Yes, yes we are. 

She finishes her shower, gets out and puts her hair up. KATE'S PLUM DRESS hangs laundered and ironed in the closet. Kate's dress, don't forget. Kate's plum dress. Ana heads back into the kitchen where she tells the housekeeper she doesn't want anything to eat.

"Of course you'll have something to eat. She likes pancakes, bacon and eggs, Mrs Jones," says Christian, striding in. Then he orders Ana to 'sit', like a dog. I would tell him where he could shove his pancakes.

They start talking about Ana's upcoming trip to Georgia, and Christian offers Ana use of his company jet. Of course he does. At this point, Ana is just arguing with him for the sake of it; she flat out refuses and says she'd rather fork out to fly economy on a scheduled flight. I'm not sure what grounds she's refusing on really. She wants him to open up and be a 'real' boyfriend for her, but she shuts him out when he offers to help her? She sure picks her moments to come over all feminist. I wish she'd have one of those stubborn moments when it comes to signing that damn contract that all but makes her his property.

They get to talking about the job interviews that Ana has later that day. "Are you going to track my phone?" Ana asks. "Actually, I'll be quite busy this afternoon. I'll have to get someone else to do it," replies Christian. He is absolutely not kidding.

Later on, Ana is at her interview for 'Seattle Independent Publishing' with a Mr Jack Hyde. She says it's exactly where she wants to be. The book talks for a while about her surroundings, how excited she is about the job, and then wildly straying from the narrative as is the author’s habit, we’re suddenly talking about Ana’s upcoming trip to Georgia.

“Christian has ordered me to take my BlackBerry and the Mac. I roll my eyes at the memory of his overbearing bossiness, but I realise now that’s just the way he is. He likes control over everything, including me.” Nope, this isn’t okay. Now you’re not even attempting to fight back against his controlling and abusive nature, you’re just accepting it. “He can be tender, good-humored, even sweet.” I’m sure many women say this about their abusive partners when they’re trying to justify staying with them.

Ana gets called in for her interview. “I am wearing one of Kate’s dresses, a black pinafore over a white blouse, and my black pumps.” Another one of KATE’S DRESSES. GOT THAT? KATE’S DRESS. Nothing Ana owns can possibly be considered smart or stylish because she’s just such a hopeless mess. It really is a good job that this rich and powerful man is here to look after her.

Ana meets Jack Hyde, the guy who runs the publishing house. She’s creeped out by him for a reason she can’t describe. Let’s rewind for a second. Ana has taken part in two interviews in the course of the book. One is with Jack, who is rich, powerful, runs his own company, a little creepy, full of innuendo, and with red hair and two earrings. Christian is rich, powerful, runs his own company, a little creepy, full of innuendo and general consensus is that he’s absolutely smoking. What is the difference between these two men? NOTHING. NOT A SINGLE THING. Ana has taken a shine to powerful, creepy Christian because he is hot, and she’s wary of powerful, creepy Jack because he isn’t.

(Incidentally – how long is this chapter?! Really great show of narrative planning here.)

Ana gets the job on the spot (of course she does!) and goes back to the apartment; she’s flying to Georgia in the morning and needs to pack. She runs into Kate, and starts lecturing her about winding up Christian. “Incidentally, will you please stop winding Christian up? Your comment about José at dinner yesterday was out of line. He’s a jealous guy. It doesn’t do any good, you know.” In other words, “Will you please placate my boyfriend because he’s scary and controlling and I don’t know what he’ll do to me if I step out of line.” Eek.

Ana confesses to Kate that she’s really falling for Christian, but that they’ve not been talking so much as ‘non-verbally’ communicating. Kate comes out with this little gem: “That’ll be the sexing! If that’s going well, then that’s half the battle Ana.” Of course, because once you’ve shown a man how good you are in bed, he’s bound to like you! That’s what us girls are primarily here for anyway!

Kate leaves to get Chinese takeout and, within the space of about thirty seconds, Ana manages to convince herself that Christian is having a relationship with his housekeeper, Mrs Jones, because in this world, no man can have a working relationship within a woman without him dragging her into the Womb Room for hanging-from-the-ceiling sex. The email conversation is a bit pointless; Christian tells her nothing is going on between him and his maid and they do that awfully annoying ‘banter’ thing and Christian wishes her a safe flight to Atlanta.

Kate drives the two of them to the airport and when Ana tries to check in, she discovers that her flight has been upgraded. That fucking Christian Grey, upgrading her to first class. What a dick.