Wanted: Fifty Shades of Sexual Wholeness
NOT LONG AGO, a dominant man near and dear to me complained that Fifty Shades of Grey was far too pious for far too many chapters. “I mean, no sex for a hundred pages?” Call him a typically impatient male if you must, but I don’t wholly disagree with him. While the slow burn of erotic romance can be a delicious torment, keeping readers squirming while waiting for that yearning desire to flare into the fires of consummation, Fifty Shades’ flame took so long to ignite, I wondered if its pilot light had gone out.
And while we waited, we weren’t teased and tormented with a convincing escalation of slowly unfolding attraction. Instead, E. L. James wooed us not with what I had hoped would be Christian Grey’s dominant nobility and Anastasia Steele’s smart innocence, but a showy parade of conspicuous wealth. She marched out the spacious private office, private helicopter travel, luxury cars, and the elegant, extravagant private residence to entice us into the world of BDSM in a Daddy Warbucks kind of way (complete with Ana’s wide-eyed clueless innocence standing in for Annie’s bug-eyed optimism).
I had hoped for a more thoughtful, and well-paced, examination of a woman’s sexual self-discovery, of the mutual responsibility both Dominant and submissive share, and, ultimately, the promise of a future together where erotic intimacy and exploration would remain paramount. (What can I say? I love a happy ending. Especially one that promises orgasms for all.)
But a book can’t be all things to all people. And since James’ trilogy was predicated on certain Twilight structural elements—the story arc of falling in love, marrying, and starting a family; the male protagonist’s troubled, brooding, moody nature—its plot and characters could deviate only so far.
Still, I can’t help but wonder what the books might’ve looked like had the Twilight influence been less overarching. For one thing, we’d have more fascinating, less exasperating protagonists.
In some ways, Ana is a competent submissive. She’s receptive, able to soak up her erotic experiences with Christian and incorporate them into her identity with an ease I bet many of us long for in real life. Ana is conscientious, reasonably transparent, and honest, and that’s a pretty good starting point for a woman exploring submissiveness (and sex) for the first time. She doesn’t top from below and manipulate Christian into giving her only what she wants sexually. Instead, she tries what he wants, then advocates for herself. She agitates to have her needs met only after the pitfalls of Christian’s limitations reveal that her emerging needs will go unmet.
Nor is she characteristically a smart-ass masochist (SAM), a “bottom” who goads a top into punishing her. A SAM routinely creates drama within a scene to secure specific forms of pain play a specific way. When Ana engages in tugs of war with Christian, it’s within the context of the overall relationship and not during a scene. And that’s a notable distinction when we’re talking about BDSM. BDSM relationships have no special immunity to the vagaries of life, and because they live and die the same as other relationships, smart couples (and more extended polyamorous configurations as well) handle problems as a matter of their relationships, not their play.
That’s not to say that Ana’s infallibly is well constructed. Initially, she’s an untidy character and we have to suffer through an unrealistic level of clueless Ana before we get to the smarter and discerning Ana. I had far more difficulty with her blatant ignorance than I did her virginity. My children and their friends are roughly Ana’s age and, frankly, I know who among them are virgins and who aren’t. A number of them aren’t sexually active and don’t plan to be until someone meets their rather particular standards. But at the same time, they aren’t ignorant. You don’t get through college or into young adulthood these days without learning that BDSM exists. You may not be an aficionado, you may not even dabble, but you know its basic tenets and practices. Heck, BDSM FAQs were available online back when we paid for internet by the hour twenty years ago.
While Ana earns some admiration from me, I have bigger, ongoing problems with Christian Grey. Clearly, E. L. James borrowed his moody, temperamental brooding from Twilight’s Edward Cullen, and then built a scaffolding of BDSM around him in an effort to make him even more morbidly fascinating. Unfortunately, damage and dominance don’t mix well. “Fifty shades of fucked up” isn’t a bragging right. It’s a red flag, and any knowledgeable submissive would think twice before taking up with a damaged Dominant. (Of course, Ana isn’t knowledgeable, so …)
I’m not a big fan of Christian’s knowledge base, either. An experienced Dominant would know not to use silk neckties. Fabric was the first thing I was taught to abandon when exploring bondage; back then, it was silk scarves, but silk neckties pose the same problem. If a submissive thrashes about, the fabric tightens up. Ignore it and you run the risk of having your circulation cut off, maybe even suffer nerve compression. That’s how leather handcuffs became de rigueur. Madonna’s kinky prancing and posing, no matter how hot and convincing her performance, had nothing to do with it.
(Disclaimer: One can tie neckties or silk scarves in ways that minimize unwanted stress and injury, but it’s not exactly beginner’s fare. Plus, Christian isn’t exactly a bondage technologist.)
So what would the mutual responsibilities of a Dominant and submissive look like? First, the Dominant really needs to have his shit together. If he has childhood abuse issues, he better have the metaphoric baggage unpacked and put away so neatly that his dresser drawers look like those of a compulsive neatnik. Self-control and self-discipline better be his best assets. He should be perceptive, and capable of reading his submissive’s state of being whether it’s during an erotic scene or when she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. He should encourage post-scene postmortem discussions where both parties review what worked and what fell short, a skill-building approach too many people overlook. A postmortem helps both parties understand one another more fully in the early months of a relationship, builds a practice of shared communication, and, done right, makes for some damn fine pillow talk. But overall? A sound Dominant needs to be really good at being in a relationship. He can’t afford to be “fifty shades of fucked up.”
Which means if she comes to you as a virgin, for Pete’s sake, don’t treat her virginity like an inconvenience, Bub. And you damn well better know that the odds of an inexperienced submissive falling in love with her first Dominant are extraordinarily high.
A responsible Christian would likely point Ana to a master’s degree worth of required reading. (Okay, maybe a certificate’s worth.) Ana, conscientious lass that she is, would delve into it and educate herself. Yes, Christian would orchestrate and lead her through a battery of incredible and tangible experiences, but he would also want a well-versed submissive, one who did not exist by his word alone.
Mind you, I don’t expect Christian to be a perfect Dominant incapable of error. Neither do I expect him to be a knight in shining armor, there to give Ana a perfectly princessly existence. I simply want Christian to be less messed-up. I want him to be a whole human being and reasonably well adjusted.
More of the BDSM artifice surrounds Christian than Ana and, although Ana quickly realizes she has a complicated Dominant on her hands, she doesn’t sacrifice too much of her autonomy in loving him. If anything, her autonomy grows over the course of the trilogy. But I often found myself wishing she’d had a few trustworthy go-to submissive friends. Few people engage in BDSM in a friendless vacuum and I too often imagined how James might’ve employed a submissive women’s discussion group to provide occasional didactic reality checks.
I was, however, impressed by Ana’s self-awareness at the end of Fifty Shades of Grey, after she urges Christian to use the belt on her. Yes, the aftermath’s a maelstrom of emotional confusion, but she astutely realizes how entrenched their individual limits are, how those limits prevent them from truly bridging one another’s deep-seated needs, and, seeing no way out of the impasse, chooses to leave.
Looking back over my reading experience, Ana clearly became an acquired taste for me. She’s not a highly perceptive person at the start of Fifty Shades, but she does learn quickly from concrete experience. Experience becomes her avenue to insight, and immediate hindsight is her GPS. She finds a way to navigate life, no matter how messy the route. She gains life skills and a stronger sense of self as she goes. In fact, Ana redeems herself well enough that I almost forgave her initial ignorance.
Perhaps I’ve forgotten the tenuous nature of first love’s discovery, how difficult it is to chart a course when you’ve never tested love’s waters before. We learn as we go in our first relationships, building our skills and competencies. Complicate a first relationship with Dominance and submission and the learning curve becomes all the more profound, the journey more arduous. Even if you come into BDSM with sexual and relationship experience, you’ll still face a learning curve.
Perhaps it’s easy to forget those early lessons once we’ve integrated our experiences and transformed them into personal competencies and proficiencies. It’s easy to castigate the beginner when we forget our own long-ago neophyte struggles.
While I came close to forgiving Ana her ignorance, I remained hard on Christian Grey’s shortcomings. Christian remains locked in a pathology that’s too nineteenth-century sex-negative for far too long into the trilogy. His sexual tastes strike me as a Krafft-Ebing paresthesia, a misdirected sexual desire. Combine this poorly constructed BDSM scaffold with an already brooding character and Christian becomes far too restricted in his ability to maneuver as a character—too unrealistic, as well. How can someone as brilliant and successful as Christian be so self-unaware? How can he be completely blind to the fact that he’s stuck, repeatedly acting out his broken BDSM scenario? That’s just too big a blind spot to ignore.
Thank God the good Dr. Flynn hands us a deus ex machina near the end of Fifty Shades Darker. When Ana seeks his opinion of Christian’s psychological makeup, the doctor explains that Christian had used BDSM as a coping and compensation avenue, somewhat successfully, too, until he met Ana. With Ana, according to Dr. Flynn, he “found himself in a situation where his methods of coping are no longer effective. Very simply, you’ve forced him to confront some of his demons and rethink.” At this point, James moves the trilogy beyond its shades of fucked up—convincingly, too, despite the artificial ploy.
Much to my dismay, however, Ana and Christian turn away from BDSM as Christian resolves his inner turmoil. I was keenly disappointed that James adopted a “he’s fixed now and doesn’t need this deviant stuff anymore” direction for her trilogy. Certainly people’s sexual tastes can change over time and their erotic repertoire can grow or diminish through the years. And I’m inherently enough of an erotic romantic that I can’t help but hope that sexually fulfilled and self-aware people find their happy ending in continued sexually rewarding experiences, whatever those experiences may be.
But I’ve also seen what happens when people turn away from their deep desire for BDSM because they can’t resist a competing, as-deeply-ingrained anguish that they’re wrong to want this and they stuff their need for BDSM away. They suppress and sublimate, sometimes succeeding for long periods of time, only to have the erotic need burst like a dam stressed by too many days of torrential rainfall. Often, they go on the down low, hunting down BDSM encounters outside of their marriages. Christian is, in my view, very much at risk for this behavior—and I want better for him and Ana.
So let me imagine them celebrating their silver wedding anniversary as I’d like to see it. Christian’s hair is graying at the temples. The lines of his youthful intensity have etched themselves in his face, giving him a distinct gravitas. Ana remains beautiful and breathtaking but youth no longer defines her looks. Grace and wisdom do. Coming into her own over the course of the trilogy has served her well beyond its pages.
They’re sharing a private candlelight dinner, Christian in a three-piece suit, Ana stark naked. Elegant silver handcuffs encircle her wrists. A length of silver chain connects them but allows enough leeway that she can feed herself. We’re treated to a sweet nostalgia as they harken back to nascent times and charmingly address one another as Miss Steele and Mr. Grey like the British Avengers television characters from the 1960s.
Somewhere in their marriage, Ana and Christian rediscovered their kinky tastes and integrated it into their lives, where it serves as a healthy means to a passionate end. Yet they employ it for more than sexual pleasure; they use it to express their deep love and appreciation for each other and all they’ve shared through the years. They honor each other with it.
And when Christian takes Ana to bed later that night, he’ll bring out that necktie, now ratty and threadbare. This time, he’ll know the proper way to tie together Ana’s wrists—he’ll apply a bit of Japanese rope bondage technique and wrap the tie a couple of times between her wrists.
Finally, orgasms for everyone. Through good times and bad, for better or worse, until death do them part. Yes, I love a happy ending. Especially if, in this case, it brings Christian and Ana fifty shades of sexual wholeness.
DEBRA HYDE has four erotic novels and dozens of erotic short stories to her publishing credits. Her lesbian BDSM novel, Story of L, won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian erotica. A modern retelling of the classic Story of O, it updates the original tale to reflect the contemporary lesbian leather world and the women in it. Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine named it and her heterosexual novel, Blind Seduction, to its “Fifty Hot Reads Beyond Fifty Shades of Grey,” calling Blind Seduction “a story about what happens after the BDSM seduction.” When not writing, Debra cocurates the monthly New York City reading series Between the Covers, bringing erotic storytelling to curious and avid audience-goers alike.