Fifty Shades of Jay

A few months ago my wife and her Book Club friends began giggling about the new trilogy they were reading; and as soon as I heard the heated debates about who should play - gasp! - "Him" in the movie, I discerned that their latest literary conquest carried with it an unusually risque flare.

Both the rapidity and dedication with which my wife and her BFF's devoured the books were quite impressive, and I naturally became intrigued... even more so a few weeks later when said wife/BFFs made their pilgrimage to New Haven (along with a thousand other women) to meet the brilliant British author who had turned her personal musings into an international bestseller.

Interest grew when I told a writer friend who was covering the New Haven event for our state's paper of record that my wife would be attending. Her blunt response upon hearing of my wife's interest in the author and her trilogy: "Wow... you must be exhausted."

The straw of intrigue that broke this camel's back, though, came in the halls of my kids' elementary school. It was Open House night and parents were being lead chaotically from classroom to classroom by their adoring children. My wife started talking to another mother about "the books" - and while being pulled by her first or second grader in the opposite direction, this mother managed to announce with a suggestive smirk: "My husband's quite happy too."

Enough!

I couldn't take it anymore... I had to know: What, exactly, was this Fifty Shades of Grey? And why the hell did it have a cosmic hold on every 20/30/40-year-old woman in Connecticut?

First, the simple answer: Fifty Shades of Grey is an accidental novel originally written by British author E.L. James as a series of blog entries. It became so popular that Vintage Books picked it up, published it and awarded the movie rights to Universal Pictures, thus rendering Ms. James an instant multi-millionaire. (Since this is the desired career path for all of us writers, Ms. James' success story leaves me slightly impressed but mostly dripping with bitter jealousy.)

The plot itself was billed by my wife (and countless others) as a Pretty Woman-type love story... an analogy I'd wholly accept were the Julia Roberts character a sexually naive virgin instead of a hooker and the Richard Gere character a dark, disturbed sadist instead of - well, Richard Gere.Yet nonetheless, I get it: lonely yet insanely rich business man falls for an unlikely woman. Very cute.

But there had to be more. Had the fairy tale plot been enough to turn women into blushing goo, they'd simply sit home and watch Disney movies every night. What, then, sets this apart? The answer, for lack of a more scientific term, is quite simple: the sex.

I've never read one of those cheesy romance novels, but I've always envisioned them reading something like the more lurid passages in Fifty Shades of Grey. Christian (the rich sadist) often touches Ana (the virginal protagonist) "there." Then she "writhes and moans" as he "finds his release." Its suggestively comical. Kinky, too. In fact there was quite a bit of that S&M bondage stuff; and although I personally don't participate in that - ehem - "lifestyle," I'm not so naive as to deny it exists. For fans of that particular fetish, Fifty Shades must have been a dream come true; for the rest of us, it was a mere nuisance that had to be overlooked and overcome.

Whips and chains notwithstanding, I still admire any book that brings sex into the conscious mainstream of the middle-aged female soccer mom. Sure its a little unnerving to know that my mother-in-law, sisters-in-law and countless other female relatives have read, but I think most of us men are willing to take one for the team in the name of a greater societal good. As a man reading this book, though, three tenets come to mind - none of which are relatively new or far-fetched: first, women love powerful men; second, at some primal level they yearn to be controlled; and third, women love the challenge of a truly effed-up guy.

What I truly didn't expect, though, was the wildly contrarian nature of Ana.

She wasn't a pushover. She held her ground, wouldn't give in. She wouldn't even sign his silly sex contract - which made her more desirable to Christian, to me and, I suspect, to any other guy out there brave enough to read these books. As a friend of mine once famously said "I could never be with a girl who likes me that much." A tad hyperbolic, but I understood his point: even the most powerful of men like to be challenged. Sure we like to joke that in a perfect world we'd all have wives/girlfriends/live-in nannies that just did whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, however we wanted, et cetera. And while such a relationship might be fun in theory, most of the men that I know (myself included) could never last with a woman who invariably kiss their ass.

Ana had nerve, she had spunk... she had self-esteem - and to me, that was the best part of Fifty Shades of Grey.

My wife has encouraged me to read the second two novels in the trilogy, but I imagine I'll pass. Not that there's anything wrong with them, per se... I just think I need a break. I'll ask her for the thirty second version of how it all ends and then finally turn my attention to the new John Grisham book about baseball that's been burning a hole in my nightstand for weeks.

As for E.L. James and her Fifty Shades of success? On behalf of every soccer dad in America I guess I should simply say "thanks"... but that sounds far too corny and is patently not me. Instead, I'll close with the soft, seductive words of Christian Grey.

"Laters, baby"... (though I still don't know what that means).