NSFW: I Know Who You Slept With Last Summer

EL James and a new book, Open Wide! Photo credit: Dailymail.co.uk

Recently, I deleted a dating app because the results were lackluster. Like other curiosities I collect on my phone, there was no Christian Grey to be found on the app; and usernames like "Top4U", or "Looking 4 Dom"- ballsy, if you hadn't already googled what "Dom" meant, didn't impress as the enigmatic billionaire's. 

By now, we'd have known 50 Shades of Grey to be the epicenter of every woman's libido, all told from the perspective of protagonist/conquest Anastasia Steele. Whether its to be ferociously provocative, like begging to be slapped and f**ked, or genteel, whereby some form of romance is ought to be inspired from all that slapping and f**king, every woman who has acquainted with its now-familiar plot has a strong opinion about sex. Feminists think that the book is sexist (and that comes as no surprise with all the submissiveness buttressed in it), while others think it's liberating to have a discourse about sex this way today. Regardless, author EL James has opened a can of worms and 50 Shades is to be its conversation piece. That our submissive homegirl Anastasia Steele is that talked about chick every female loves to hate, or hates to admit to be, is a phenomenon that isn't quite yet flaccid, but just getting hard.

Fogging reading glasses worldwide, a new novel titled Grey has hit the shelves on 18 June, retelling the same story, except, through the lens of its namesake anti-hero, Christian Grey. It's sold 1.1 million copies in 4 days and has another 2.1 million ready to rockslide. Despite critical reviews, this novel is also its most intense.

"I have a sudden urge to drag her out of her seat, bend her over my knee, spank her, and then fuck her over my desk with her hands tied behind her back," reads one excerpt from the new book, when Anastasia first popped the question if Christian were gay. And no, to beg a second reading of the same plot, you'll find out that he wasn't even bi.  

Alright, let's come clean with ourselves: It's one thing to watch good sex on your laptop with a box of kleenex beside, and it's completely another to read about it on a public bus. They're two different communications, to be enjoyed separately. "Christian Grey is a complex character and readers have been fascinated by his desires and his motivations, and his troubled past," says EL James on the Dailymail. What Christian Grey has also evoked, for which the visual has yet to expatiate, is the fantasies we can only get from the pleasures of reading. He may be vapidly imagined, but his backstory should slide off your dirty mind like an ice cube. His sex is characterized, whereas there are no characters in pornography, and even if there were, there wouldn't any good acting involved either. Sexual desires, not sexual footages, are what 50 Shades is driving sales home with. "I'm going to make you cum like a freight train, baby," should be read like an afterthought. 

However, if you're going to make a social commentary, you're going to be feeling quite sore. From reading. Fault-finding would be like demanding to be part of the flogging between Ana and Christian, you just won't fit into the pages. Moreover, because book sales aren't as divisive as your opinions, it's most fun to take the backseat and read it as it is, with the same voyeuristic interest as at swiping through your neighbours' Tinder profiles. Trawling through the pages with a passionate scrutiny for potentially sexist scenes is simply a waste of time. At face value, the predictive backlashes aren't anything spectacularly new about 50 Shades of Grey. (What else could you contribute, apart from the I'd-never-let-anyone-clamp-my-nipples protest?) At the raw, reading Grey should be like reminiscing last year's crazy sex from your partner's point of view, all over again. You wouldn't waste precious sexual energy on wondering why you guys never dated afterward. 

Photo credit: Dailymail.co.uk

One common critique that hasn't been agreeable to the books' style of writing is that there are better erotica on the shelves. That's true- the writing's as bad as its scrupulously honest. But comparing, say, Miller's Tropic of Cancer and James's Grey is antagonistic. Tropic of Cancer, published in 1934, is disproportionate to 50 Shades today. While both were (and still is) reflective of its times, the only difference being that the former had only marginal success in contrast to EL James's popular sexualized work is due to the social pressures impressed upon women then. Here's an excerpt of Tropic of Cancer:

Later, when I had taken up with Claude, and I saw her night after night sitting in her accustomed place, her round little buttocks chubbily ensconced in the plush settee, I felt a sort of inexpressible rebellion toward her; a whore, it seemed to me, had no right to be sitting there like a lady, waiting timidly for someone to approach and all the while abstemiously sipping her chocolat. Germaine was a hustler.

And here's one from Grey again:

My cock agrees and stiffens in greeting.

I'll take that as an approving nod. Because back then, women weren't allowed to publicly discuss their sexuality. Salacious literature had to be smuggled behind discreet book jackets, where the only place to let off steam from last night's private reading was in the even private corners of the office cafeteria. Now, sexuality is being celebrated. It's as openly talked about, written about with whim, and whined about, to whoever's willing to lend an ear. This may not justify the stalking, creeping, prowling, pounding that's to appear anywhere in the book, but it has opened up a sensitive area that's been waiting to be prodded.

Therefore, the relevant critique one should consider before purchase isn't why anyone should be reading this; rather, the question of, what does this say about me? 50 Shades isn't the virus that's plaguing literature, in other words, it's literature that's contagion to people to judge a book simply by its cover. Frankly, 50 Shades isn't even really literature. It's cliterature, as the Dailymail accurately names it to the list. It's a genre of readable porn, culturally more relevant than the old fashion likes of Nora Roberts, on your kindle or iPad, or in the pages of its physical copy. It's something to be enjoyed without being afraid of falling prey to judgement- as compared to the stifling past. And if that's distasteful that sex should sell, we should, thus, be reminded of who bought it the first place. 

Your Friends Are Not Empty Calories

#Jay

On a fragrant hot afternoon, my friends and I decided to stop over the Starbucks counter for a fix of its one-for-one's. I don't usually drink there, but I am a sucker for flash promos. Our eyes slitted at the menu as we pandered to our options before settling for each of its latest offer: Orange Honey Comb Crunch and Triple Coffee topped off with jelly- it's chin chou. They didn't sound delicious in name, nor looked as tangy or as jelly in print, but we married up nicely for it anyway. The barista had a cocksure look, cocking his head with a marker perched in one hand. He asked for our names, ready to mark our cups like a professional script artist. So when it got to my turn, I decided to throw him a curveball, "Amanda and Jay please- Jay, with a hashtag."

"O-Okay." His cool was lost on him by the time he stuttered.

"#Jay" had nothing to do with awkward baristas. It was an inside joke I felt familiar in sharing a laugh with my friends, which wasn't a very funny one in the first place. Though I won't distract with details like the other butt stupid things we flippantly do among those bantering during class hours, doodling lame caricatures on each other's steno pads, or stealing each other's pens (that I also never return), it was also a quip that'll probably live on as an anecdote for future round table chatters. Later, in that hour as we gathered, paced ourselves with the fraps, and drank in the calm, cool, collected interior of the coffee shop, I cracked up at something awfully funny, somewhere in between, and the rest of our time spent hence became a boisterous happening.

While our drinks may have been a letdown since it barely hit the tarty notes per advertised, my behaviour could have been poorer. I probably behaved like a fool, at that moment, when I wasn't acting my age. Had the jokes not ceased by the time we had to leave, I would probably have been asked to. In its brief hour, I felt like I was in a simpler time with a group of people I'm safe with. My friendship with the people I spend most of my work week with revealed a public affair where I'm allowed to be silly. And unlike those that we grow up from too quickly, mine still has childhood spunk that does not wither with age; however, it brings me back to its embrace.

It's the simpler times that tugs at our heartstrings. Then, good times spent were less contrived, less convoluted. Play time meant being crazy, not tipsy. Therefore, anything that simulates the same amount of fun that makes us go along with a certain degree of courage at being our stupid selves again should be applauded for. Funny, I almost forgot what it felt like to laugh today. Today, in an adult world, I guess the politically correct thing to do would be to wear a suit of seriousness, in which jokes should be kept clever. Crassness has no merit, a form of decorum between two people should be maintained, and anything below dirty bar jokes is considered immature, or even, God forbid, "lame". While being cool comes with a greater reponsibility that I'd have to behave aloofly with a steely exterior to upkeep its image, I was beginning to wonder if my image generation, one that has conscientiously worked so hard for to portray a teasing smart look, has much to live for if we were to all but play by its rules, in the first place. Have we forgotten, thus, how embarrassing, carefree, and careless we were before being introduced this sinuous path that is to be adulthood? Where's the fun if we were to grow up too quickly? Why grow up, for a lack of better phrasing, if we could still be happily stupid?

Friends don't let friends count their calories. They count the dollars saved when one promotion begins. And in a way, I would have its marketing acumen to thank for because it opens people up to continuously reach out for that one cheapo friend you can count on to share a drink with- and spend a great time over. Starbucks, which understands this cheap thrill, has my gratitude. Because like happiness, my friendships are saccharine and I'm its sucker.

Letter to Jack Kerouac (in a sentence)

Dear Jack,

By being the "crazy catholic mystic" that you were, you were meta-YOLO even before the Instagram age: When On the Road was published in the late 1940s, you gave America its great Western story, written, as you'd have called "spontaneously" with a bulk of collective insights amassed over the twenty years of high times spent with the rest of the gang- what the road did to you, you maniacally typed on a continuous, one hundred and twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that were cut to size and taped together, as quick as it's short of breath to read along in fast, punctuated, rhythmic sentences; what I would like to know, was how long it really took for God's chair to warm you up to such speediness, deftly stringing recounts after recounts of the vivid expressions you single-handedly captured- on the "scroll"- like the "three weeks" as I've later learnt in your reply on the Steve Allen show (though, rebuked as untrue, since, in three weeks, I'd still be reading On the Road, and again if there were some parts of America I would like to revisit in your novel); from Denver, to Hollywood, California, to the "dirty fag" part of town that New York played center stage, wherein most of your debaucheries found its way to the heart of the novel, I'd like to know if you invented the Beat, or did the Beat invent your characters like a cautionary tale every "Aunt Sally" would pander to; that the Beat also became the main event, overrunning every other character written by young adult fiction writers: Dean Moriaty, the protagonist whose manic episodes witnessed his rolling down the abyss in a torrent of self-destruction has become a summary of the romance we've had with being lost; Marylou, a loveliness that met with a quick demise by the maniac of her boyfriend, Dean Moriaty, whom she associated too cloyingly with, like the anima to our deep longing for love; and Sal Paradise, whom you've made him as you'd make us want to live just like him, such with the long winding snake roads that have connected the rest of the Beat life's forlorn disciples to the landmarks you've made sacrilegious, where all of them are but profane, relatable, in which nothing is holy except the unholiness you've inspired; only if you'd Google Maps then, perhaps too, your mystery novel would have been truncated to two pages long, as living on the road could have been told in those selfies you would have taken; those hashtags that millennials operationalize, which you would have corrected them over because drinking on a school night pales in comparison to what you were spearheading then; those couple of tweets you would have thrown in- #RIPME Marylou is askin’ for a 3some, get some, #YOLO- whereby everything would have gone south, instead; or have you speculated all that already? 

Best Regards,

TJ