Grey Chapter 5: Stalking For Her Safety

Last time in Grey...Christian decides to give Ana Tomas Hardy books in order to send mixed signals.

Friday, May 20, 2011

“I've slept for the first time in five days.”

I doubt that he hasn't slept in five days. Maybe not all the way through the night, but he had to have slept a little. He would literally die otherwise. Although it would explain his erratic behavior.

He yells at himself a bit in the mirror.

“Liar.

Fuck.”

I can't say I disagree.

His brother calls him and he acts like this is the worst thing to happen during his breakfast ever.

“What the hell does my big brother want?”

To say hi, how are you? It's what family does asshole.

“'Dude. I need to get out of Seattle this weekend. This chick is all over my junk and I've got to get away.”

Did James decide to model his brother's dialogue after Baywatch? Cause I've never met someone out of high school who talks like that.

“'Your junk?'”

Every time I walk away from this book I feel like my mind is playing tricks on me. Like I'll tell myself “Nah, this twenty-something does really talk like that” or “Christian doesn't really talk like a vampire” and then I read lines like that and I remember that he totally does. And this isn't the only time. Elliot (the brother) will use super common slang like “chopper” and Christian acts all prim like he has never heard a helicopter be called anything else.

Christian schemes to go hiking with his brother. It's not explicitly stated, but you can kind of tell he wants to stalk Ana personally. His personal chef asks if he wants her to prepare food for him this weekend and he says to make something but he might not be back. I bring this up because the next line is

“She didn't give you a second glance, Grey.”

I assume he is talking about Ana, but she hasn't been mentioned since before Elliot called. The only female in his presence is the cook and originally that is who I thought he was talking about. But that doesn't make sense either because Christian spends half the time bitching that everyone wants his junk. So which “she” is it? When you use pronouns they refer to the most recently named person whose gender the pronoun matches, that's how English works James. So if I were to use the pronoun “she” in this sentence, for instance, “She should know better, English is her primary and possibly only language” everyone knows I am referring to James because she was the last “she” I mentioned.

The chapter cuts to Christian and Elliot driving to Portland.

“Elliot sleeps most of the way to Portland. Poor fucker must be fried. Working and fucking: that's Elliot's raison d'etre.”

1. At least there is the implication that Elliot works. Other than Christian's questionable dealings with Sudan, all he does is obsess over having sex with a woman he hardly knows. Let me remind you that within a minute of meeting Ana he was fantasizing about caning her, but Elliot is problematic?
2. There are 321 occurrences of fuck in this book. This is number 22 in five chapters. Christian is supposed to be this cultured sophisticated guy who doesn't understand slang and uses phrases like “raison d'etre” yet he can't be bothered to curse more creatively than “fuck”

Christian makes a few calls. One is to order up some mountain bikes. Yes, this half a page of dialogue was necessary. How else were we supposed to know that his brother is 6'2? The other call is to his driver Taylor, but what confuses me is that Christian is already driving to Portland, so why is he calling his driver? He has a car, he's in it, so why is he making his driver go from Seattle to Portland with a new car? It can't be the car that he gives Ana, that doesn't happen until after their second non-date. So is he just wildly inconveniencing an employee so he'll have car options? And let me remind you that this is set in 2011 where gas prices were between $3.50 and $4.00, we were still solidly in the recession after the housing market crash of 2008, and Christian is supposed to be all noble at heart. So instead of just telling me, James, that Christian is rich but trying to feed the world so no kid ever has to go hungry like he did, you could show me that by having him live relatively frugally, and spending that “bringing a second car to Portland for no reason money” on a food bank or soup kitchen. But wait I forgot.

“I end the call and turn up the music. Let's see if Elliot can sleep through The Verve.”

Because no one can sleep through the jamming tunes of mid-90's alt rock?

Christian considers following up with secretary #1 about the books he had delivered to Ana but decides not to because

“...I know I've left her with a ton of work. Besides, I don't want to give my staff an excuse to gossip.”

I don't doubt that gossiping happens in his building, and I also don't doubt that they are talking about him, but I do doubt that they care about someone he sent books too. My guess is that they sit around the water cooler wondering how many bodies he hides in his closet.

He talks to himself and eventually Elliot wakes up.

Christian: We're going mountain biking.

Elliot: We are?

He didn't ask his brother if this is something he wanted to do? Don't get me wrong, this is completely in line with his character, he does whatever the hell he wants first and asks questions never, but what happens when people say no? If I recall this becomes a thing because Ana is the only one to ever tell him no and he gets off on her telling him no (red flag!) but I can't believe that no one has ever turned him down for something before.

He has inner monologue about his father

“My father is a polymath...”

Again, you use words like polymath and yet fuck is the most commonly used word in this book.

“...a real renaissance man: academic, sporting, at ease in the city, more at ease in the great outdoors. He's embraced three adopted kids...and I'm the one who didn't live up to his expectations.”

This is really odd because if you go by the logic of the book Christian is the shit. He is a billionaire playboy philanthropist trying to save the starving children of the world while having the most enviable face and figure. Yet, I am to believe that he is a disappointment? If the book would admit that Christian is a terrible human being then I would get it, but that's not the case. It's not because he is an asshole that he is a disappointment, it's because

“Puberty ruined all that for me.”

The worst part is that, if you squint and look sideways you can almost see a valid argument here. He was raped as a teen and if he associated his traumatic encounter with the onset of sexual desire I could buy it. However, he doesn't see it as rape. In short, I have no idea what is meant by that line and where this is going.

The pair talk about all the sex Elliot is having, and wouldn't you know it? I don't care. After an attempt at character development for Elliot, we get a pagebreak.

When we return, the boys are riding bikes. Elliot makes a comment about a girl sounding desperate and I wonder if it's possible for James to write a likable character. Another pagebreak and the boys are watching baseball

“Go Mariners! Elliot and I clink beer bottles.”

Not sure which is weirder: Christian showing any enthusiasm/emotion or James getting information on the game right.

Ana drunk dials him, I would nitpick word choices, why he is angry, why he assumes that she can't take care of herself, but in all this commentary thus far I've only covered 3 pages of the chapter so just know that Christian's first worry upon hearing drunk Ana is if she is with another man. Priorities!

Ana hangs up on Christian which lights a fire under his butt enough to call his private stalker and use illegal software to hunt her down. Again, he doesn't know that she is in any danger. All he knows is that a college student he only met recently is drunk, the fact that he saves her from her friend trying to force himself on her does not excuse the fact that he made a metric ton of assumptions.

The guys show up at the bar, Christian is annoyed with Kate because she is not a paranoid dick like he is. Christian find Ana outside, saves her from Jose because if anyone is going to abuse, disrespect, and disregard her feelings for his own needs – it's going to be Christian.

Ana vomits on the sidewalk, Christian holds her hair. When she is done she says she is sorry and his first thought is

“Okay, let's have some fun.”

Yeah, I mean, she was only sexually assaulted by a close friend who she thinks of as family and then vomited all over the sidewalk. What harm would there be in you fucking with her emotions while you are at it?

“Why is it such fun to tease this young woman?”

Because you have no soul?

Christian thinks Kate is a shit friend for trusting Ana and Jose to be together and assuming that Jose wouldn't attack her, and I think he's a shit person for existing.

Christian starts to have a panic attack out of nowhere. The only thing preceding it is Ana unexpectedly clutching his arm then

“I freeze.

Shit.

My heart rate catapults into overdrive as the darkness surfaces, stretching and tightening its claws around my throat.”

She touches him and he has a panic attack. That is not an “I'm in love” reaction, that is a PTSD reaction. James does say he has PTSD and he doesn't like being touched but it is related to his mother, who use to put out her cigarettes on him. Which means that for Ana's touch to trigger his panic attack, either A) he associates Ana with his mother in some weird Oedipus complex, or B) all people who touch him at all times gives him panic attacks. I'm leaning toward A because he specifically chooses submissives who look like/remind him of his mother.

Even he doesn't understand why he reacts the way he does.

“She's oil on my troubled, deep, dark waters.”

Calm down, Batman. If she soothes your savage soul then why did you have a panic attack?

“Hmm...flowery, Grey.”

If by flowery you mean trite, then yes I agree.

He decides the only way to get her to Kate on the dance floor is by dancing their way there. Yeah, when I read this scene in Fifty Shades, the dancing felt out of nowhere and I feel like this was added to sort of retroactively justify it, but it doesn't work. Sorry, James.

We get his rundown of taking her to his hotel room, getting her half naked but not wanting to step

“beyond the bounds of propriety.”

Because having her SSN, banking information, malware on her phone*, and eventually stealing and selling her car is well within the social confines.

He gets her puke covered clothes off while she is passed out and of course his first thought is of having sex with her. Not creepy at all. He then has his private stalker look into Jose, his driver to buy Ana clothes, and laments how he needs to get laid.

*I have consulted some tech peeps and the consensus is that in order to track Ana the way he did he would have had to hack her cell phone and put spyware on it.