Fifty-one Shades: A Parody (First Three Chapters)

I growl with frustration at my reflection in the mirror. Damn my hair – it’s fifty shades of fucked up. The situation I’m in is fifty shades of fucked up. I’m supposed to be studying for my finals; my roommate, Kathleen, should be the one fussing with her hair in front of the mirror right now. Instead, I’m trying to brush my hair into submission. Why is my hair so kinky? I need to stop sleeping with it wet, because it alway

I growl with frustration at my reflection in the mirror. Damn my hair – it’s fifty shades of fucked up. The situation I’m in is fifty shades of fucked up. I’m supposed to be studying for my finals; my roommate, Kathleen, should be the one fussing with her hair in front of the mirror right now. Instead, I’m trying to brush my hair into submission. Why is my hair so kinky? I need to stop sleeping with it wet, because it always ends up out of control. As I brush my long, brown hair, the girl in the mirror with blue eyes too big for her head stares back at me. Wait...I don’t have blue eyes! Then I realize I haven’t been looking into the mirror. I’ve been staring at a poster of Kristen Stewart for five minutes. My own hair is actually fine.

“I’ll have an, uh... Earl Grey tea.”

He looks shocked. “You don’t want coffee?”

“I drink coffee sometimes, but Starbucks’ coffee tastes like burnt ass,” I say.

“Actually, it tastes nothing like burnt ass, Anna.”

Now it’s my turn to be shocked. “And how would you know what burnt ass tastes like?”

He laughs. “That’s for me to know...and you to find out.”

“How do you know all of this?”

He pulls his Blackberry out, opens an app, and pushes the device across the table to me. It’s opened to the “White tea” entry in Wikipedia. I read a few lines, and realize he just quoted the article word-for-word to me. “You just copied Wikipedia! Even I know not to do that,” I say. “My professors tell us that all the time.”

“Your professors are idiots, Anna,” he says.

“So you weren’t just reciting this article word-for-word?"

“Who do you think wrote the article, Anna?”

Woah. This guy writes for the Internet!

you have a philosophy of business?”

“No man is an island,” he says. “Islands are made of dirt and rocks and trees. I don’t know any people made of such things. Therefore, people are not islands.”

Wow. Was this hot guy a philosophy major in college?

I blush. “Oh, stop.”
“No, it’s true,” he says. “I have no idea what’s going on inside that pretty l

I blush. “Oh, stop.”
“No, it’s true,” he says. “I have no idea what’s going on inside that pretty little head of yours...”
“To be honest, I have no idea either,” I say, looking down at the table to avoid his powerful gaze. “

“I like my tea like I like my men,” I say. With the last name “Grey.” But I realize that’s too forward, so I add, “Black.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I mean, not that I exclusively like black men,” I say, trying to recover. “I like other kinds of tea. And men.”

“Have you ever tasted...white tea, Anna?”

The receptionist looks up from her computer. “Please sign in, Miss Steal,” she says, pushing a clipboard with an attached pen across the desk to me. “You’ll want to take the elevator and go to the ninetieth floor.”
I look at her blankly. Being from the small town of Portland, I’ve never seen an elevator before. “What button do I press to get there?”
She smiles. “The one that says nine-zero,” she says as I sign in.

The building is a ginormous 175-story office building that juts into the sky like a glass and steel erection. It’s fifteen minutes until two when I arrive – just in time for the interview. I walk through the glass doors and into the lobby, which is also floor-to-ceiling glass and steel. This fascinates me, because buildings back in Portland are made of grass and mud.