Fifty Shades of Grey Revisited Chapter Six (Part 2): Helicopter Dick

This literally just occurred to me—well, it’s entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that it also occurred to me years ago and I simply forgot—but I think I’ve hit on a way that E.L. James could’ve made Christian tracking Ana’s cell phone/stalking her in general both more realistic AND way more horrifying. So, from what I’ve gathered, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. is some kind of telecommunications company, right? ELJ is pretty vague about what this means, and they seem to do a lot of other random business stuff, but when I think telecommunications, I think Comcast, Verizon, etc. Stuff like phone, internet, cable, all that jazz. It’s very plausible that in-universe, a lot of people’s cell phone carrier is Grey Wireless or something, including Ana’s. Her location data would already be tracked by his very own company. If Ana is already a Grey Enterprises customer for phone and/or internet, then all her data—her search history, any social media activity, her email, her billing information, her IP address, her text messages, any photos stored on her phone—would be right at his fingertips. No need to even bother with a private investigator.

So. Have fun thinking about that!

Also, my just-announced rerelease of the updated edition of High Risk and the Risky Business/Unfinished Business/Risk-Reward trilogy? Yeah, I’m 80% certain I’m going to be retitling it to Drawn Into the Shadows and the series title is now the Uncursed Duet. Because it’s also going to be a duology instead of a trilogy so that there hopefully isn’t a jarring shift in tone from quasi-realism to full-blown paranormal. Which somewhat ironically was my original idea (the duology, not the rest of it) before High Risk started getting so long that I ended up finding it best to split it into two books. But I think I might’ve finally cracked the code on some big issues that had been hindering me in writing these books, so it might be viable to recombine High Risk and Flying High into one significantly revamped book after all. IDK, check back on this blog for updates soon; I guess I was just so high off my own supply after my big announcement that my brain was like a chaotic cosmic primordial soup filled with a new and rapidly expanding universe of possibilities in which things were changing by the hour.

(CONTENT WARNING for abusive/manipulative/isolating behavior and the continuing creepy infantilization of the female lead. As always, FSOG quotes are in purple, and Grey quotes are in green.)

Previously in chapter six, Christian drove Ana home, the two Kates battled for dominance of the host body, and Ana was about to undergo what sounded like some pretty extreme amateur plastic surgery at her roommate’s hands judging from her expectation of it being “time-consuming, humiliating, and painful.” Ana’s now finishing up at work for the night and she informs us exactly what Kate’s makeover entailed:

Under Kate’s tireless and frankly intrusive instruction, my legs and underarms are shaved to perfection, my eyebrows plucked, and I am buffed all over. It has been a most unpleasant experience. But she assures me that this is what men expect these days. What else will he expect?

Now, I’m all for women (and people of all genders, for that matter) exercising their right to do whatever the hell they want with their body hair, and it isn’t exactly wrong that it’s a misogynist societal expectation of women and girls that as soon as puberty hits, we assume the responsibility of maintaining certain hair-free zones on our bodies. Leg hair, armpit hair, pubic hair, and facial hair are all perfectly natural, so even though I do enjoy having nice, smooth legs, shaving them is a pain in the ass and why should I have to bother doing that when men don’t have to? More power to anyone who decides to give that societal expectation the middle finger and isn’t as self-conscious as I am about exposing my leg hair to the public.

However, I do think it’s fair to say that probably the majority of American women Ana’s age shave or wax their legs and armpits, so calling attention to her apparent obliviousness to this fact is somewhat uncomfortable and slightly perplexing. Uncomfortable because I can only imagine this passage was included to further reinforce Ana’s innocence and inexperience when it comes to sex and dating. She has to be told what men expect and how to make herself “irresistible” (as Kate puts it) to a man, in a way that’s meant to be endearingly clueless a la the She’s All That-style 90s teen rom-com makeover scene. She’s a diamond in the rough who just needs a spit-n’-shine to bring out the absolute smokeshow within, and it’s all thanks to her falling for a man for the first time that she’s finally able to reach her true beauty potential. Not to mention, it comes with a pretty hefty dose of “not like other girls”-ism, since she didn’t need to do all the stuff that men are said to expect in order to attract the biggest catch of them all in the first place, and actually it’s her (supposed) lack of fussiness over her appearance and unworldly, unpretentious nature that comes as a package deal with her virginity that makes her the perfect match for the more sexually experienced MMC.

At the same time, though… I feel like ELJ is way overselling Ana’s youthful (ick) naiveté here with her purported cluelessness regarding common personal grooming practices. At the level she’s pitching us at here, I’m surprised Ana doesn’t find the idea of using tampons shocking. Like, sure, maybe she hasn’t shaved her legs since Wednesday and they could do with a good once-over in preparation for the sex that will be commencing shortly, but the tone here seems to imply that this isn’t something that Ana is used to at all and that she wouldn’t have thought to do it or perhaps even known how without Kate “tirelessly” instructing her. Am I reading too deeply into this? I’m probably reading too deeply into this. But come on, you can’t tell me Ana—being as painfully self-conscious as she is—doesn’t shave her legs. And you can’t tell me that Mr. Exacting Standards Grey wouldn’t have noticed if she had more than two days-worth of stubble when he was undressing her.

Also not quite sure what “buffed all over” means here. Normally I’d say a good, thorough exfoliation, but didn’t Ana already shower that morning? I pray for her poor, dried-out skin if Kate made her use up a good chunk of the hour she had before work showering all over again just to rub herself raw with some sugar scrub. And how “intrusive” could Kate’s instructions possibly be short of her scrubbing and shaving Ana herself?

In conclusion:

Now that I’ve submitted my dissertation on women’s personal grooming, how it intersects with social norms, and the role it plays in romantic fiction, let’s talk about the rest of this chapter. Confusingly, Ana also says that she has “to convince Kate that this is what I want to do,” which I can only assume is in reference to the shaving and buffing since it was in the same paragraph. This is despite a) how much of an ordeal Ana was making it out to be; and b) Kate being the one to insist on the makeover in the first place. I’m seriously having trouble keeping track of which Kate is in charge on a moment-by-moment basis because apparently now she’s suspicious of Christian again and had to be convinced to help Ana get ready for her not-date? I have a headache…

For some strange reason, she doesn’t trust him, maybe because he’s so stiff and formal. She says she can’t put her finger on it, but I have promised to text her when I arrive in Seattle. I haven’t told her about the helicopter; she’d freak.

Yeah, I’m sure his formality is the only reason. Couldn’t be because he’s so stiff that his dick is about to burst through his pants every time he’s within ten yards of you, Ana, or the fact that the last time you and Kate were together you were stumbling around drunk off your ass before suddenly reappearing with this man the next morning, or the fact that the last time you were with him before that you came home crying. I just find this so supremely annoying, because I know it’s supposed to be some kind of womanly intuition bullshit on Kate’s part that Christian is into some freaky shit in bed—even if she doesn’t know exactly that’s what she’s picking up on—that obviously makes him “dangerous” to Ana the corruptible virgin. As if his kinks are the danger that she needs to watch out for and not, you know, literally everything else about him.

At least Ana has the good sense to check in with her friend once she gets to Christian’s place, I guess. But I’m pretty sure it won’t be hard for Kate to figure out they didn’t drive there when she gets that text only half an hour later or whatever.

Ana briefly remembers that José exists and that she’s mad at him for the drunken forced kiss. She’s “decided to let him stew” for a bit, not answering his calls to her cell phone or home phone (did most college roommates living in apartments in 2011 have landlines? I remember my parents gave me a cordless phone for my dorm freshman year for whatever reason but I never bothered to set it up because cell phone), having Kate cover for her. It was at this point I realized that in the several pages since Ana came home, there’s been no mention of her telling Kate about what happened with José. And if ELJ did skip over Ana telling her when she said, “I let her have all the unexciting details about my night,” (not sure if “unexciting” is the word I’d use, Ana, but ok), then whichever Kate was the one listening didn’t find it worth commenting on since she only wanted to know if Grey had kissed her yet. Which would be a pretty insensitive comment to make on the heels of Ana recounting how she’d been assaulted by way of an unwanted kiss by a mutual friend.

Ana doesn’t know whether or not Christian was serious about her signing paperwork before giving her the dirty deets on his bedroom proclivities, and I feel like it should go without saying that if you are honestly asking yourself this about someone you are about to have sex with, maybe you should reconsider having sex with this person. I don’t think I’m the first person to suggest this (although I can’t remember right now where I read someone else bring up a similar argument, probably Das-Sporking), but the way in which Ana’s curiosity (or lack thereof) about Christian’s sexual tastes is portrayed reveals Fifty Shades/Master of the Universe to be actually pretty bad as a Twilight fanfic with a poor understanding of the source material. If BDSM is supposed to be the AU vampirism analogue, then Ana should be actively researching it and possibly even guessed by now what he’s into based on his extreme secrecy and weird comments; hell, she should be the one actively pursuing him, with Christian being so wrapped up in this idea of his own “darkness” that he’s afraid of corrupting her, and only agreeing to actually have sex with her when she surprises him with how much she already knows. Instead, ELJ’s attempts to demonstrate Ana’s curiosity and eagerness to uncover his secrets are flaccid at best and at worst just make her seem utterly devoid of any imagination and critical thinking skills.

Christian, meanwhile, has been forced to wait a whole five minutes–adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly equivalent to one eternity in billionaire time–for Ana to finish up after the last customer has left Clayton’s Hardware. Which is strange, because according to Ana she spent two hours restocking shelves after the store closed, which would be like, 600 eternities in billionaire time. And we all know he couldn’t possibly wait that long since “Patience is not my forte.” Idk, maybe Christian’s car exists in it’s own little pocket dimension where time passes differently, like Narnia. After all, we know from back in chapter one that as a billionaire his time is far more precious than the average person’s, so I’m certain a time-warping car would essentially pay for itself in the long run.

Finally, sometime between 1-600 eternities later, Ana emerges from the store, followed by some guy who has “his eyes on her ass.” Not to gaslight you, Christian, but I’m inclined to believe it’s all in your head, buddy. That, or maybe Ana has some kind of embarrassing stain on her jeans and the guy was debating whether or not to say something. Oh, she’s wearing “Jeans again,” by the way, as Christian/Christian’s penis is quick to make note of because they’re just soooo inconvenient and annoying, amirite?

Christian–who, again, “doesn’t do romance” and gets supremely annoyed at the mere idea that Ana might want something romantic from him–holds her hand in the backseat and tenderly strokes the back of it with his thumb. You know, if he really wanted to nip any romantic expectations in the bud from the get-go, then he could’ve, I don’t know, explained using his words what kind of relationship he’s interested in before taking her on an elaborate helicopter date and perhaps not constantly send mixed signals with all his touchy-feely little acts of physical intimacy? Just a thought.

Taylor drives them to the local helipad, and it’s at this point that I start to get a bit cross-eyed and get FSOG and Grey mixed up, because boy howdy, did ELJ ever abuse the copy-paste function when writing Grey. If, like me, you decided to read both books simultaneously for whatever godforsaken reason, you can really, really tell the points at which she got bored with her own writing and figured she could get away with taking a page or two of a scene from Ana’s POV and then switching the pronouns and sprinkling in a few embellishments here and there to pass it off as Christian’s “authentic” voice. Granted, I’m one to talk considering I’m currently in the middle of editing/rewriting one of my formerly-published contemporary romances into a paranormal romance and repurposing several characters from another one of my old romances into an urban fantasy novel, but at least I respect my readers enough not to pretend like that’s not what I’m doing, or gaslight you into thinking that my new book is a fresh take on a familiar story from a unique perspective with new insights to offer. Like, yeah, I know I’m lazy and basically just writing fan fiction of my own stories, but at least I’m self-aware about it (and have the courtesy to publish said fan fiction of my own unpublished stories and not, you know, another author’s).

And I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with retelling a romance from the other MC’s POV, but like I flagged up in the chapter four recap, there’s so little that’s fresh and interesting in Grey, and what scraps there are exist almost entirely in scenes that Ana’s not a part of. Whenever they’re together, Christian’s contributions mainly consist of 1) getting ridiculously horny/angryhorny over the most baffling and minor things; 2) glossing over conversations in FSOG such that it makes Grey borderline unreadable as a standalone work; 3) using the same descriptors and making note of the same bits of scenery as Ana but in a more “masculine coded” (i.e., he says fuck a lot) way; and 4) whenever he’s not reading her completely wrong, he’s instead apparently just straight-up reading her mind. Like, in Ana’s POV, she’s wondering where the helicopter is because she can’t see it, and in Grey’s POV he thinks, “She’s wondering where the helicopter might be.” Then when they’re about to get in the elevator to go up to the helipad we know Ana’s remembering the elevator kiss from that morning because she tells us so and also because she thinks “Elevator!”—ah, another classic ELJ-ism; can’t believe I forgot about her pointless little one-word exclamations—while Christian notes that she must be remembering the elevator kiss from that morning. Yeah, yeah, she does clue him into her thoughts with a “knowing look,” but given that we all just read what happened earlier that day in another elevator ten pages ago or whatever, I think we probably could’ve figured out what Ana was thinking about without ELJ having to spell it out for us.

Huh, maybe I got this all wrong; he doesn’t have Kiss-O-Vision, he just has the equally useless superpower of only being able to read one person’s mind, but only the most inconsequential details and only when she’s specifically horny for him. Which hilariously just adds more evidence to the theory that ELJ either didn’t pay attention to or has an exceedingly bad memory of the books she was ripping off, because who was the one person whose mind Edward Cullen couldn’t read? Exactly.

The answer to where the helicopter—Charlie Tango—is parked is on a roof three floors above them, short enough that I have to wonder how Ana could’ve possibly missed it, especially considering she later mentions the area being floodlit. Anyway, they take the Elevator! up to the top and meet Joe, the guy who runs the helipad:

He salutes when I see him. He’s older than my grandpa, and what he doesn’t know about flying is not worth knowing; he flew Sikorskys in Korea for casualty evacuation, and boy, does he have some hair-raising stories.

Not sure why this dude is saluting Grey (which Ana doesn’t mention, btw), or why it was necessary to plop this bit of backstory in the middle of the story for a character we will never see again, other than probably to show that these two have such a great mutual respect for each other that a grizzled old war veteran would salute civilian captain of industry Christian Grey. I am rolling my eyes at the notion that Christian would actually bother to stop and listen to this guy’s war stories unless we’re meant to believe he’s the one who taught him to fly, though (I mean, he also isn’t a female employee/service worker, so…). But hey, at least E.L. James successfully copied one crucial aspect of Twilight, that being Stephenie Meyer’s habit of making side characters far more interesting than her leads and then refusing to follow up on their fascinating backstories. Farewell, Sikorsky Joe, we hardly knew ye.

Ana gives us yet another telling line:

Oh. Someone deserving of the polite treatment from Christian. Perhaps he’s not an employee. I stare at the old guy in awe.

Says the girl who previously wouldn’t shut up about how “formal” and “polite” this prick was…

Christian buckles his toddler into her car seat I mean Ana into her seat in the helicopter and gets horny over it. No, seriously:

I strap her into the seat harness, trying not to imagine her naked as I do it.

[…]

“I like this harness,” I mutter. I want to tell her I have others, in leather, in which I’d like to see her trussed and suspended from the ceiling. But I behave, sit down, and buckle up.

Bro, it’s a seatbelt, calm down. Can you imagine this guy as a ride operator at a theme park? He’d be sporting the most painful erection all day long. Parents would be shielding their children’s eyes. And then I, the omnipotent god who is playing this game of Roller Coaster Tycoon, would pick him up and reassign him to a new position at the bottom of a lake. And again, this guy refuses to quit the cryptic bullshit until he has Ana nice and safely trapped in his penthouse.

Christian flies them to Seattle, and it’s all very romantic and awe-inspiring, allegedly. I don’t think I’ve brought this up yet, but Ana keeps talking about his “long fingers.” He runs “his long fingers down my chin” and “points his long index finger at one of the gauges.” I’m picturing him like Slenderman, with fingers that keep growing and growing each time she mentions them. She also says that she’d “like to run my tongue along his jaw,” and I punch myself in the face as I realize that I used almost that exact phrase in the original High Risk and also proceeded to have Kiera do exactly that to Caleb a few pages later. This is my drunk Don Draper “cure for the common breakfast” moment. *Grumbles* Well, I guess I could take this opportunity to rewrite that part now that High Risk is getting reworked into Drawn Into the Shadows, but I was so happy with that pair of lines before I realized I’d accidentally cribbed them from Fifty Shades. Does it count as plagiarism if Kiera wanted to lick Caleb’s jaw after noticing he’d shaved whereas Ana finds Christian’s stubble “doubly tempting”?

While I’m recovering from my mild crisis, Christian proceeds to amaze Ana and bore the readers with a bunch of needless helicopter jargon. They’re approaching Seattle, and Ana asks him if he always uses his flying skills to impress the ladies, which we already know from his POV that he doesn’t because she’s the first girl who’s been special enough to win a trip in Charlie Tango.

“I’ve never brought a girl up here, Anastasia. It’s another first for me.” His voice is quiet, serious.

Oh, that was an unexpected answer. Another first? Oh, the sleeping thing, perhaps?

Remember, everyone, this man does not do romance and will repeatedly get annoyed with her for thinking that they could have something special when he keeps treating her like their relationship is special.

Ana’s “blood is pounding in my ears as my heartbeat accelerates and adrenaline spikes through my system” when Christian says they’ll be landing soon, and as a fellow long-winded writer I beg ELJ to just pick one description. She always does this, using three descriptive phrases or similes when one will do, as if she couldn’t decide which one she liked best and just decided the more the merrier. Christian describes Ana’s smile as “a huge cock-tightening grin,” a turn of phrase so foul that I can only make myself clean again after reading it by purifying my copy of Grey with holy water and fire. Alas, there’s still about 80% of it left to spork, so I’ll have to live in this feeling of shame and filth for quite a while. ELJ proves herself a genuine sadist by dumping even more filth on me shortly after that:

She peers up at me. Trusting. Young. Sweet. Her delicious scent is almost my undoing.

Can I do this with her?

She’s an adult.

She can make her own decisions.

MAYBE YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO REMIND YOURSELF THAT SHE’S AN ADULT IF YOU’D STOP THINKING OF HER LIKE A CHILD, HUMBERT HUMBERT. Seriously, though, about 20% of Grey reads like something copied straight out of Lolita, 70% of it reads like American Psycho, and the remaining 10% is utter nonsense.

They land at long last on the roof of Escala, the building where Christian lives. He tells her that she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to, thinking to himself about how much he wants her consent. Hey, did you know that Christian Grey cares about Ana’s consent? Because that word sure is liberally applied all throughout his POV. ELJ really wants us to know that her romantic hero really, totally cares about consent for real without bothering to put in the effort to show that he does.

“I’d never do anything I didn’t want to do, Christian.” And as I say the words, I don’t quite feel their conviction, because at this moment in time, I’d probably do anything for this man seated beside me. But this does the trick. He’s mollified.

You know, I’m starting to agree with the Kate who said that he was dangerous to “an innocent” like her. Ana’s so love-hungry and Christian’s so eager to buy into anything that props up his own unreliable internal narrative–that Ana holds all the power and is coming into this arrangement with a clear understanding of what she’s getting into–that it’s hard to believe at times that this isn’t a self-aware cautionary tale of a sheltered young woman being taken advantage of. I’m sure this line is meant to convey just how dreamy and seductive Christian is that Ana would do anything just to spend a night in his bed, but honestly, it’s just depressing, especially knowing how prophetic her words will turn out to be.

 They go down to his apartment where everything is huge and white and expensive. Ana notes that it “looks more like a gallery than a place to live.” It’s symbolic of Christian’s life being cold and empty because he hasn’t opened his heart to the love of a good woman yet, get it? He has a piano which of course he plays well, just like all self-respecting billionaires who were once brooding teenage vampires do. Ana smiles as she’s reminded of Tess Durbeyfield arriving at Alec d’Urberville’s house. I hope she failed the final paper she wrote on that goddamn book. Speaking of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, she asks Christian why he picked the first edition of that book in particular to give to her.

“It seemed appropriate. I could hold you to some impossibly high ideal like Angel Clare or debase you completely like Alec d’Urberville.” My answer is truthful enough and has a certain irony to it. What I’m about to propose I suspect will be very far from her expectations.

Ana replies that, “If there are only two choices, I’ll take the debasement,” not bothering to question why he’s presenting this false choice between “debasing” her or putting her up on a pedestal as too pure to touch. Because those are the only two options that he’s giving her, which he will make even more explicit in the next chapter; she can either sign up to be disrespected and degraded but also get sex out of it, or he can treat her like a perfect, virginal angel and not have any kind of relationship with her at all. It just the classic Madonna/Whore complex, is what I’m saying, just expressed way more candidly and unironically than it usually is in fiction.

Christian says that she doesn’t understand what she’s saying (BECAUSE HE WOULDN’T FUCKING TELL HER!!!), which is what Ana’s here to find out, duh. He gets the NDA for her to sign, telling her, “My lawyer insists on it.” I don’t know about you, readers, but it would certainly raise a few red flags for me if the guy I was about to have sex with told me that it had to be cleared with his lawyer first. Wealthy public figure or not, I can’t see any reason for his attorney to take any interest in their client’s sex life unless Christian has a legitimate reason to believe that a former partner of his would seek legal or financial compensation from him for something that happened during their relationship. I don’t even want to contemplate how this came up in conversation with his lawyer in the first place… or with his employees for that matter, because didn’t Andrea send him a copy of the NDA to print at home? How much does she know about his sex life, and what kind of NDA did she have to sign? So, instead I’m going to contemplate ELJ’s perplexing word choice in describing his worry that Ana won’t sign it and he won’t get to bang her:

“Then it’s Angel Clare high ideals, well, for most of the book anyway.” And I wouldn’t be able to touch you. I’ll send you home with Stephan, and I will try my very best to forget you. My anxiety mushrooms; this deal could go all to shit.

Perhaps it takes being on shrooms to truly understand the enigma that is this overly dramatic, self-obsessed weirdo.

Even Christian flags up Ana’s stupidity in not reading the NDA before signing it, which she justifies by explaining that of course she wouldn’t ever talk about their relationship to anyone, not even her best friend… even though she already talked about Christian with her best friend and she lives in perpetual anxiety of the “Katherine Kavanaugh Inquisition,” but whatever. She acknowledges to herself that his deep, dark secret must be “bad, really bad,” but it only makes her “very curious to know.”

I know I already brought this up in chapter five, but I just wanted to include here the annotation I made in my Kindle edition of this book over two years ago: “Reading this again now, this whole thing with the NDA disturbingly reminds me of everything we learned about Harvey Weinstein and his victims in Catch and Kill. How is this not a huge red flag? Don’t sign over the power for him to use the legal system to ruin your life, Ana!” Pretty sus that Christian expects her to sign this without a lawyer of her own present; what if she had looked it over and decided that she needed to get some legal advice before seeing him again? Would he complain about having to let her leave for the night? Would he decide that the “deal” is off just because she wouldn’t sign right away? Or would he get all annoyed at her for not taking his super-trustworthy lawyer’s word for it and pressure her into making a decision then and there?

Also, it’s interesting to note that because Ana doesn’t read the NDA, we never get to learn what was specified in it in FSOG, and while you’d think that it would be relevant to note in Christian’s POV exactly what is and isn’t covered by the agreement, it’s never specified in Grey, either. He does tell her that “It means you cannot disclose anything about us. Anything, to anyone.” Which is such an absolute that I find it hard to take it 100% literally (though that could very well be the case knowing this guy). After all, Kate already knows he and Ana are sort-of dating now, so is he just legally forbidding Ana from talking to her about their sex life, or is Ana supposed to pretend that she doesn’t even know who Christian is anymore? Is he just expecting Kate the “tenacious” journalism student to not want to pry when her best friend suddenly starts acting cagey about her new relationship? Can she talk about it to an outside attorney? A therapist? Her mom? An emergency room doctor? The cops? Does this just apply to talking to the media or literally everyone in the world?

We also don’t know how strictly this is enforced, what the penalty is for disclosure, if there are any loopholes, and to what extent—if any, and I’m betting it’s none—Christian is likewise legally prevented from talking about their relationship. Not once does he clarify for her after this moment what “anything, to anyone” means, encourage her to read the NDA even after signing it, or suggest talking to an outside lawyer in case she needs extra guidance.

So, having symbolically eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (oh hai again, Twilight) but not actually having gained any knowledge, Ana asks the all-important question, and Christian says The Line that I’m certain ELJ was very proud of, and which made the entire theater burst out laughing when I saw the movie:

“Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian? Holy shit. Did I just say that?

His mouth drops open, but he recovers quickly. “No, Anastasia, it doesn’t. First. I don’t make love. I fuck, hard.”

Sends me into the stratosphere every time. IDK you guys, I think I’m starting to develop a soft spot for this self-obsessed drama king…

Just kidding, he’s still the fucking worst.

“Second, there’s a lot more paperwork to do. And third, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run from here screaming! Come, I want to show you my playroom.”

Ana asks in all seriousness if he means he wants to play Xbox, which Christian finds very droll. I’d call his attitude toward her condescending, but maybe if he didn’t call his sex dungeon by a name that makes it sound like it has a McDonald’s ball pit to someone who he (correctly) believes is clueless about BDSM, then she wouldn’t assume that the most grown-up thing he could be doing in there is playing video games. Honestly, he pretty lucky she’s so clueless about kink; how enraged do you think he’d be if he said “playroom” and her first thought was “adult baby fetish?” This isn’t me kink shaming, by the way; this is me assuming based on experience that Christian Grey/E.L. James would find age regression to be a kink worth shaming. After all, we all still remember how he reacted to The Gay Thing^TM, right?

Christian waffles a bit (even Ana tells him to get on with it already), then finally opens the door:

This is it. Pay or play. Have I ever been this nervous? Realizing my desires depend on the turn of this key, I unlock the door, and in that moment I need to reassure her. “You can leave anytime. The helicopter is on standby to take you whenever you want to go; you can stay the night and go home in the morning. It’s fine, whatever you choose.”

[…]

I open the door and follower her into my playroom.

My safe place.

The only place where I’m truly myself.

Meanwhile, the end of FSOG chapter six proper baits us with this:

And it feels like I’ve time-traveled back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish Inquisition.

Holy fuck.

Bet you didn’t expect that.

Chapter Six (Part One) ~ Table of Contents ~ Chapter Seven

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