50 Shades of I Totally Don’t Get It

I swear I don’t think about porn as often as I write about it, but I’m starting to seriously question my mental and sexual fitness, because I was left sweaty and panting reading “The Help” during all the scenes where the woman of the house didn’t have to do anything except have her friends over for tea parties, while she paid someone else almost nothing to polish all her silverware, cook all her meals, clean up her house and take care of all her children. For a more in depth analysis of how erotic that was for me, you can read all about it here.

So when I recently borrowed my coworker’s copy of “50 Shades of Grey”, I thought it might be dangerous in my hands given how easily excitable I am by seemingly innocuous best selling fiction. But it was not to be.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but the only moaning coming from my lips after reading that book was about how crappily conceived it was.  And you can tell by my use of “crappily” that I am pretty much a master writer and literary critic, but I must confess that I really wanted to tear my eyes out of their sockets to spare them the agony of reading such drivel. What is wrong with me? America has voted. And this book is supposed to be the ‘feel good’ book of the century. People are even reading beyond this first one.

To be fair to me and 50 Shades, I didn’t read from page one. I opened the book somewhere randomly in the hopes that I would find myself in the middle of all the enticing erotica I was hearing about from just about everybody on the planet.  I got myself in a quiet, private place ready for my whole world to change over the story about some rich dude who likes rough sex with college age virgins.  I don’t have a lot of time, so I just wanted to get right to the point and induce a nice, healthy orgasm so I could get back to the business of loading the dishwasher for the second time that day and I didn’t have to interrupt my husband while he was watching golf all of our kids.

Lucky for me, the page I opened to was in the middle of what appeared to be a sex scene.  But I only got through about six sentences before nausea set in, and then headache formed behind my eyes by the fourth paragraph and finally by the third page, I really thought my nose or ears were going to start bleeding, or maybe I was having a stroke Jill Bolte Taylor style.  Not because of the subject matter, but because of the writing. I was so distracted by how dumb the chick appeared to be, how unbelievable the dude was, and how badly the author overused every cliche in the universe, I just couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t just forget that I’ve read thousands of books by people who can write and push through to concentrate on the sex part. I was (and still am) very disappointed with myself.

But I really tried. I swear. “Concentrate!” I warned myself. “Focus on the stuff that is supposed to be arousing! It’s time you got your freak on. Forget that your Diet Coke is getting warm downstairs, that you don’t really know where your toddler is and the property tax bill was due yesterday. Get over any notion you might have about realistic relationships and enjoy yourself.” But nooooo. All I could concentrate on was the inner dialogue that the girl was having and immediately an SNL parody popped into my head (not the one the actually did) and it just killed any chance of the sexual arousal I was trying desperately to manifest. 

The part I came in on went something like:  He got out of the shower and ordered me to the bed. He really likes me!! He pushed me down and I was naked. We’re really doing this. He told me to turn around. OMG. Yeah OMG is right.  This is so dumb. And so bad. And not in the Michael Jackson way.  I don’t know what I expected – I know nobody has compared it to James Joyce, but I guess for all the hype the book elicited, someone would have warned me how painful it is read porn written at a pre-kindergarten reading level.

To be fair to the now incredibly rich person who wrote this, I didn’t read the whole book. I didn’t even read 5% of it. I don’t even know the characters’ names, so you can be mad at me for passing judgement based on only a few pages, but in my defense, I value my eyeballs. Clawing them out is time consuming and impractical for a mother of three.  I need to be efficient  and I thought “50 Shades” would be a sure bet based on all the chatter.  Instead of a happy ending, I almost maimed myself.

So its back to “The Help” for me for those times I just need a little somethin’, somethin’ to get me through a tedious Saturday afternoon.  But surely there are other books out there with a flare for English and content for mature audiences that were not taken directly out of an 11 year old’s guess at what having a boyfriend might be like one day?