Crass Is in Session
FOR MOST TEENAGERS, high school is one long science class: the Petri dish, the litmus test, and the sludge test rolled all into one. It is a time of hypotheses tied to self-doubt and self-examination (and, if Christian Grey had his way, self-flagellation). High school students waver and hesitate and consider a whole plethora of possibilities before deciding—or, more often than not, not deciding—what their next steps will be.
This indecision was likely a primary impetus behind Stephenie Meyer’s choice of teenaged Bella as the central figure in the Twilight Saga. She needed someone who could be both a clean slate and a messy blackboard, someone who was not yet realized as a sexual individual until presented with the most extreme of sexual partners and, later, equals. The teasing-out of her fledgling romantic impulses and the eventual fulfillment and satisfaction of them are what make her such an effective protagonist. We need our heroines to face conflict and be conflicted so that we can witness their evolution and realization. In the final tome of the series, Breaking Dawn, when Bella and Edward quite literally break the bed due to their passion, we see that Edward’s influence on her has both introduced her to new physical worlds and brought to fruition her nascent, inherent longings.
Anastasia Steele, to be sure, is no pillar of confidence when Fifty Shades of Grey begins. She is the very definition of a wilting flower, with all of the connotations sexual and otherwise that such a term evokes. Most enthusiasts of the series know by now that the primary inspiration for Ana was the equally fraught Bella Swan. But Ana’s main differentiating factor is that she is a college student; she has graduated beyond the lab test of high school and is ready for the sort of education that we do not readily attribute to those au lycée. It is a compelling decision on the part of E. L. James to choose this fulcrum on which to rest her story—compelling and fitting.
Whatever my other opinions about the trilogy may be, I find the verboten collegiate relationship that the author establishes in the first installment particularly sound. The student/teacher relationship is one that has appeared in art from time immemorial (paging Socrates!), but in pitting Ana as a finals-studying coed against the willful, dangerous, punitive power of business magnate Christian Grey, James makes explicit the steamy pedagogy that piques the fantasies of many a fledgling academic, while avoiding the creep factor that would define a similar relationship written about a high school student and educator.
After all, college is the real sexual awakening for many people. I spent my undergrad years at Princeton, with its simultaneously gorgeous and lugubrious Gothic arches (networked in the famed ivy of yore), its atmosphere of reverence and academe, and, yes, its frequent bursts of bacchanalian delight. Here was at once a maddening intellectual paradise and a social playground, a gathering of similarly ambitious, often physically stellar, and sexually ravenous young men and women who fell into a frequent collegiate dichotomy: they either paired off and became entirely monogamous or trafficked in the kind of copious hooking-up that could be best compared to rabbit coitus. Naturally, as an awkward, dorky, if gregarious, student, I found all of this alternately thrilling and terrifying.
I shall emphasize the latter, for I was gay, though damn if I would confess it (lest I be damned). For however much I adored Princeton—and I still do to this day, in myriad ways—it was often a place that gave off the air of homoeroticism while still conveying a certain level of homophobia. Countless rituals played on the inherent sensuality of shirtless, athletic, lithe young men “roughhousing” and streaking, but when it came down to it, being actually queer mimicked that other dichotomy: you were either fully out and proud or you bore your identity quietly, moving as your other silent brothers and sisters did like so many dark satellites in the evening.
I remember when I applied to take a seminar on the history of human sexuality taught by a world-famous feminist scholar; I joked to my best friend that the fifteen of us who had actually gotten into the class after applying were the most sexually frustrated people on campus. And, indeed, even though many of us would eventually come out as queer later, only one or two of the students in the course publicly identified as such at the time. Meanwhile, I wore my L.L.Bean turtlenecks and drank vanilla lattes and thought insanely that I was a Sphinx of sexual discretion.
And even though, senior year, a few of us gay guys moved into a dorm called Foulke Hall and rechristened it “Queer as Foulke,” we still kept a low profile in terms of our sexuality, opting for closed-door encounters that led to a rumor here, a possible confirmation there—a whole world of confusion and mussed sheets and hair. In college, we were playing at being gay the way people were playing at being adults: we were back in the Petri dish, just with more germs.
I lament the missed sexual opportunity that college presented to me. Too scared to come out fully, I slept through the kind of sexual examination that brings an entire universe of feeling to many people. Yes, it is a universe with as many perils as pearls, but I do envy those who had the chance to benefit from this romantic panorama and rejigger its contours to fit their own preferences. I felt a swell of pride when I recently visited Princeton for my tenth reunion and saw that the queer community was flourishing, with more students openly discussing their sexuality, a bona fide LGBT center founded on campus, and even a queer dance party scheduled the Saturday evening of the annual Reunions weekend. It felt like progress, like that naughty class that had eluded many of us was finally in session.
Perhaps this is why I find Ana and Christian’s relationship enticing. Oh, to be the kind of college student who could find herself the unwitting, and then witting, accomplice of such sexual exploration. When Christian speaks at Ana’s college graduation, he not only, as a literal motivational speaker, represents the culmination of Ana’s awakening as a BDSM protégée, but also is an emotional lynchpin: he is the jolt that upends her otherwise staid romantic approach. Although I don’t think a secret dungeon of toys would have been advisable during my Ivy League epoch, I do think that a similar guide might have jumpstarted my own exploration and quickened my sexual self-acceptance. Again and again, E. L. James reminds us that Ana is undergoing an academic transformation as well as a corporeal one, and the connection between the two becomes more and more pronounced—as well it should be. James seems to be telling us that the most important lessons in college are not found in leather-bound books but in leather-bound … well, I’ll duly submit to whatever wording that you choose to finish that sentence.
I do think that this is why so many readers have connected with this story: it represents to them either their own sexual educations or, more likely, the kind of sexual education that they wish they’d had. Reading Fifty Shades of Grey, for them, maybe for me, maybe for you, is like hearing about someone’s Rhodes Scholarship when you just passed an AP exam. Oh, how I’d like to study for that final.
RAKESH SATYAL is the author of the novel Blue Boy, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the 2009 Award in Prose/Poetry from the Association of Asian American Studies. A former book editor at Random House and HarperCollins, he has edited such prominent queer voices as Armistead Maupin, Paul Rudnick, Terry Castle, and Vestal McIntyre. He also sings a popular cabaret show that has been featured widely in the press, from DailyCandy to Page Six to the New York Observer.