50 Shades of Grey Chapter 17 brought to you by Chris!

Hi all! Erika here! This weeks chapter is brought to you by the brave (and probably as he wrote it very drunk) Chris! He, like The Boy, went in knowing basically nothing about the book, simply the hype around it (and my occasional drunken rants). I knew it would be good when he e-mailed me the file and titled it "Chris50sharts". Be sure to show him (and his liver) lots of love in the comments since I am a bad friend and let him do this!

Hey everybody! My name is Chris, and I’m a bit late with the delivery of this blog post to Erika. See, over a week ago, I offered up my services in writing a blog post for Erika’s blog. I wanted to see if I could get some creative type writing done. This type of “creative” writing is great because it doesn’t involve any type of particular creativity, it’s mostly just opinions and the arrangements of said opinions, and I got opinions o’ plenty!

And so, I read this here chapter of 50 Shades in order to garner some opinions. I was already partially buzzed by the time I started, but this did not aid in the long and tedious journey to the end of the passage. Eventually, by using every fiber of strength in my body, by god, I finished the chapter. I contemplated various forms of suicide and mental castration in hopes that I could preserve my sanity, but luckily, I kept it together for you, dear reader.

I began to write. By golly, I got over 600 words down into my computer when I thought “Gee, how long is a usual post on the world famous somethingshortandsnappy blog?” What I found was not pleasing to my sloth-like ways. 3,000 words! What have I gotten myself into? Again, ideas of suicide and mental castration - more preposterous than the ideas before - mingled their way between thoughts of shock and awe.

NO! I won’t give up! I told my friend I would help and I will do exactly that! I’ll hand it in super late, but, by George, I’ll hand it in! It might get incoherent by the end, but it will be a long-form blog post! Quantity and quality in equal measures are the order the day!

(There, that inflated the word count.)

Let’s do this thang Erika-style, shall we?

BUTTSBUTTSBU-Hold on. I got to switch gears here.

So this here is 50 Shades, eh? I’ve heard this is a sexy sex book about people doing “it” or whatever. I’m pumped to read it! Sex is funny but also sexy. I like to laugh with my boners because laughing at my boners just makes them self-conscious. Let’s dive right in to some raunchy stuff, shall we?

Hmm.

Christian is nuzzling my neck as I slowly wake.

Aw yeah, starting off with the slow stuff. I hope they take their time reaching the “climax”.

I stretch out beside him, relishing his touch, and feel his erection against my behind. Oh my. A Christian Grey wake-up call.

Looks like George Takei showed up. If Sex Ed. taught me anything, it’s that erections lead to sex, so this should be getting good any sex-ond now!

“Sleep well?” he asks as his fingers continue their sensual torture. He’s smiling down at me—his dazzling, all-American-drop-dead-male-model-perfect-teeth smile. He takes my breath away.

Can’t-wait-for-descriptions-of-all-American-penetration.

My hips begin to sway to the rhythm of the dance his fingers have begun. He kisses me chastely on the lips and then moves down my neck, nipping slowly, kissing, and sucking as he goes. I moan. He’s gentle and his touch is light and heavenly. His intrepid fingers move down, and slowly he eases one inside me, hissing quietly in awe.

His fingers were hissing quietly? Lady, it doesn’t matter at what volume his fingers hiss, the man has a case of “snake fingers” and needs to see a doctor immediately. This condition is not as sexy as it sounds. You know what, I want to see you guys do the horizontal mambo. Go to the doctor’s after your morning tryst.

“Hmm,” he growls softly and raises his head to give me a blazing gray-eyed look. “I want you now.” He reaches over to the bedside table. He shifts on top of me, taking his weight on his elbows, and rubs his nose along mine while easing my legs apart with his. He kneels up and rips open the foil packet.

Oh, foil packet! It’s either a condom or a pack of Magic cards. Either way, we’re so close to the sexing!

“Not now. There’s a time and a place for giggling. This is neither. I need to stop you, and I think I know how,” he says ominously, and his body covers mine.

I hope she was laughing with his boner. Anywho, mister handsome seems to be making his move…

“What would you like for breakfast, Ana?”

WHAT?! I thought this was embarrassingly lude best seller 50 Shades of Porking, not some kids movie from the 1930’s. I was hoping for play-by-play detail of every thrust, every moan, every accidental fart – instead I get a star-wipe to the kitchen! Oh well, who can resist early morning kitchen sex – not these two, I bet.

“I’ll just have some granola. Thank you, Mrs. Jones.”

WHOA WHOA, KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS, GUYS.

I flush as I take my place at the breakfast bar beside Christian. The last time I set eyes on the very prim and proper Mrs. Jones, I was being unceremoniously dragged into the bedroom over Christian’s shoulder.

A toilet in their kitchen?! Now I’ve seen everything! Also, maybe we will get flashback sex – flashback sex is almost preferable because it takes all the best parts of the sexing and edits out all the accidental farts (unless they were sexy accidental farts, if you’re into that sort of thing). Hmm, I just read a bit ahead, and she just describes what she’s wearing and they talk about work. It’s like a really boring Facebook post.

There’s a jump after breakfast and it goes into either a driving lesson or the least sexy metaphor for sex since “bumpin’ uglies”.

“So, the key goes here.” Christian points out the ignition beneath the gearshift.

The next bit is spent with all-American-frown-dude letting the narrator drive her new car. It’s pretty boring. She talks to him, he frowns, she turns on the radio, he frowns, she crashes head-on into oncoming traffic, he dies then frowns. Okay, I made that last one up, but a guy can dream. I’m still waiting for some porking.

After she gets to work without them having any sort of sexing at all (what the hell?) they talk about some dude they’re seeing after work.

“Don’t forget we’re seeing Flynn at seven this evening,” he says as he holds his hand out to me. I press the remote door lock and take his hand.

“I won’t forget. I’ll compile a list of questions for him.”

I was confused by this, but I later found out that this Flynn character was, unfortunately, not the owner of an arcade, but some kind of therapist. This story could really use a light-cycle scene.

I think they start making reference to a marriage proposal – I don’t really know. What I do know is that our author had the balls to write this sentence:

“Christian, this has all been so quick. And by your own admission, you’re fifty shades of fucked-up. I can’t give you what you need,” I mutter.

Hahaha. I might be missing something here, but making reference to your book title is like wearing your own band’s t-shirt. Maybe you writer folks can tell me if this is actually faux-pas. Anyway, he escorts her into her office.

“Come,” he orders, holding out his hand.

It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder why anyone would want to be anywhere near this guy. It’s frustrating to read to this book on a lot of levels: the main characters are horrible people, it’s not particularly well-written, the story (when not sexy, I assume) is extremely boring, and to top it all off, there’s no Batman! Why on earth would anyone want to read a story that doesn’t feature Batman? It’s this list that makes me realize how brave Erika is for taking on such a soul-sucking project like this. Kudos, Erika, I will lend you some Batman comics when this is all over and it will improve your quality of life greatly.

So, our narrator heads to work. Let me tell you folks, the next 1000 pages of the story are of our narrator getting promoted and then not doing any work at all. Yes, she’s a model worker.

Actually, this sounds like something out of a document the CIA published in the 1950’s called “Simple Sabotage.” The idea is that you can oppose your government and throw a metaphorical wrench in the works by attacking things from the inside using by inconspicuous methods. Here’s my favorite example of one of the methods:

Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.

I think someone is trying to bring this place down from the inside!

There is one relatively interesting section where it goes into full on email mode. Her and All-frown are emailing (they could be texting or IMing, but no, they’re emailing like a couple of Amish people) back and forth, and it shows the conversation in an email type format.

From: Anastasia Steele
Subject: Megalomaniac . . .
Date: June 16, 2011 15:43
To: Christian Grey

. . . is my favorite type of maniac. Thank you for the beautiful flowers. They’ve arrived in a huge wicker basket that makes me think of picnics and blankets.

x

From: Christian Grey
Subject: Fresh Air
Date: June 16, 2011 15:55
To: Anastasia Steele

Maniac, eh? Dr. Flynn may have something to say about that.You want to go on a picnic?We could have fun in the great outdoors, Anastasia . . .How is your day going, baby?

Christian Grey
CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc.

I like how there’s some minor formatting errors ‘cause normal people don’t have time to write things out correctly on the computer, don’t you know. Anyway, this whole section sort of reminds me of some the stylistic experimentation Melville uses in Moby Dick.

JUST KIDDING. I’ve seen this stuff in my sister’s book’s for teenagers. To its credit, however, it is quicker to read than the other regular passages, and it does break up the overwhelming monotony of not having any sex.

Seriously guys, I am disappointed.

So the book continues on at its snail’s pace. Christian comes to pick our narrator up at work, she describes how he looks – this is, by the way, the 10^th or so description of someone’s manner of dress. I guess this sort of thing is important? Maybe I just read books where people wear the same clothes every day.

Anyway, they head to the non-arcade-owning therapist (worst kind of therapist) for someone character exposition, or something? I don’t know. This is so boring.

“The technical term is SFBT—sorry.” He smiles. “That stands for Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. Essentially, it’s goal oriented. We concentrate on where Christian wants to be and how to get him there. It’s a dialectical approach. There’s no point in breast-beating about the past—all that’s been picked over by every physician, psychologist, and psychia trist Christian’s ever seen. We know why he’s the way he is, but it’s the future that’s impor tant. Where Christian envisages himself, where he wants to be. It took you walking out on him to make him take this form of therapy seriously. He realizes that his goal is a loving relationship with you. It’s that simple, and that’s what we’re working on now. Of course there are obstacles—his haphephobia for one.”

Yup, he’s damaged goods. To sum it up, the good doktor tries to pass our narrator off as someone special, someone who’s making a difference in All-frown’s life, and that All-frown isn’t so bad and he’s changing, and blah-blah-blah. I need a drink. 

This is a book about horrible people doing horrible things and indulging in horrible fantasies. “He’s broken but you’re fixing him.” This is the type of abusive relationship fantasy that makes this book somewhat dangerous. When it indulges in concepts such as this, this book is no longer just harmless fun. I’m no expert, but I would think that if you were in an abusive relationship, a goal would be to get out of that relationship. If this book were trying to help people, it might help people identify the type of relationship they’re in, and maybe give them some impetuous to perhaps escape their relationship. This book doesn’t do any of that; it shamelessly sells this delusional fantasy. I hope I was able to express myself clearly. It’s an extremely frustrating to watch two people (even fictional ones) engage in this type of behavior.

DEEP BREATH.

To refute myself a bit, this is the only chapter I’ve read to completion, so the claims I’ve made of central themes to these novels may be completely false. Heck, I may be reading into this stuff myself.

Oh, and “haphephobia” unfortunately isn’t a special disease that will cause All-frown to violently spontaneously combust, killing all of the main characters, and thus, abruptly ending this story (and, in turn, my suffering) but it is actually a fear of being touched. Not sexing, though, he sexes without touch. It must be like that future-sex in Demolition Man. Great, now the main characters look, in my mind’s eye, like Sandra Bullock and Sylvester Stallone.

After the extremely boring session at the doctor’s office, they have an extremely irritating car argument (cargument). Some dude named Jose calls our narrator, and this makes All-frown frown, and then All-frown won’t let the narrator drive and I want to kick them both in the shins. They fight and make up. Their relationship sucks.

UUUIUUGH, everything sucks.

I went from being expectantly frisky, to disappointment, to disgust. 

I wish I had something to conclude this, some sort of way to make this funny, but I can’t. This book sucks and it’s no fun.

You can follow Chris on twitter @Buzzopolis