Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 28

Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber made a video from which you will never recover.

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you may be unaware that I’ve been pretty obsessed with Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s romantic new song, “I Don’t Care.” The song tells the story of “a party we don’t want to be at,” but reassures the listeners that it’s okay “when I’m with my baby.”

There is absolutely no way that someone sat down and listened to this song, in which the lyrics never make it clear that the two men singing the song aren’t lobbing cute lines like, “Tryna talk, but we can’t hear ourselves/Read your lips, I’d rather kiss ’em right back” and “‘Cause I don’t care as long as you just hold me near/You can take me anywhere/And you’re making me feel like I’m loved by somebody” to each other instead of some unnamed woman in the song.

“But Jenny,” you might be thinking, “Just because a woman isn’t explicitly mentioned doesn’t mean that they’re not singing about women.” Which is true…about any other artists. Both Bieber and Sheeran write music that is aggressively heterosexual, dropping “girl” liberally, almost as if assuring everyone that, no, definitely the person I am singing about is a woman. Sure, not every single song tosses in feminine pronouns or descriptions of long hair and dresses, but most songs in their catalogs make it clear that they are straight, straight, straight men who love the ladies.

Not this song, friends.

Not this one.

And it is glorious.

But I’m not here today to prove the queerness of the song to you. No. I am here to discuss the absolutely bonkers video that accompanies it.

Click the jump to step into a world of bizarre pleasure you never dreamed existed.

 

We begin with a fairly normal scene of a miserable Ed looking uncomfortable in a suit in a fancy restaurant:

Which is totally on brand for Ed Sheeran. Looking uncomfortable seems to be his default mode. But it’s weird that he’s badly green-screened into the image, right?

Not…not as weird as it’s going to get, folks…

Believe it or not, this is still par for the course with Ed Sheeran. If you’re not familiar with his videos beyond the panty-incinerating dance sequence in “Thinking Out Loud,” you are likely unaware that sumo suits, muppets getting vehicular blowjobs, and balloon people are conventions to which his fans have become more or less desensitized. I mean…

This still absolutely tracks. My eyebrows did not lift once.

Okay. I get it. I value comfort…but the socks are what kill me. Why are they pulled up so high? The panda suit, okay. The socks, though, man.

The good news is, they go perfectly with the “neighborhood dad who wants everyone to know that he’s down with the new slang” beach outfit…

…that Ed wears to this pool party populated by…

…sexy…horse? girls?

I mean, at this point, this is what we’re getting, right? It’s quirky, it’s fun, it’s–

JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD AND SAVIOR GOD MARY AND ALL THE SAINTS WHAT IS THAT?

We cut to Ed in the kicky tracksuit your grandma wears at the retirement village in Punta Gorda when she’s feeling particularly sassy on her morning powerwalk with the girls. My guess is that he’s running away from the Corn Bieber, but we really can’t tell with Miserable Panda Ed frowning in the foreground:

This video is full of quick cuts. It’s almost too much. The only thing I can compare it to is that sequence in The Worst Witch when Tim Curry shows up and starts singing about Halloween while absolutely every object you’ve ever seen is represented in some form but less than half of them have anything to do with Halloween. I’m not even a minute into this video and my eyes already hurt and I’ve forgotten what the sky looks like.

I wonder if the woman in this shot knows what’s going to happen in the final cut. I struggle to imagine that there was any sort of storyboard involved in the planning of this video. I struggle to imagine that they actually rented this panda suit and it’s not just something Ed owns.

I need to stop at this point and explain that I’m really only pulling out the most bizarre bits here. So far, I’ve skipped over three Eds singing in front of a backdrop of balloons, Miserable Panda Ed hanging out poolside, and a sexy tennis playing woman with an animated cat’s head practicing her serve. That’s the scene that is interrupted by an even worse greenscreen job of a shirtless Justin Bieber gliding in on an MS Paint generated magic carpet:

Okay, I said I was only picking out the “most bizarre bits,” but I have to be honest, I really can’t tell what is and isn’t strange about this video anymore. When mere seconds later, Cat-Head Tennis Lady is replaced by Bieber with an animated panda face swinging a racket while a cheerful hippopotamus mascot dances behind him, nothing about it strikes me as particularly strange. This is reality, now.

The lyrics that precede Ed’s tiny head poking out of a banana costume superimposed over some else’s much larger body on a jet ski are, “you can take me anywhere.” I would argue that this entire video is proof that you probably can’t take Ed or Justin anywhere.

After we see Miserable Panda Ed floating through the cold, endless void of space in an astronaut suit that quickly becomes what could have been a late-eighties MTV promo, we zoom out to reveal that scene is the backdrop for a wholly different hippopotamus mascot to dance in front of:

I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Record Executive: Gentlemen, you know we support this record. It’s going to be the hit of the summer and we stand behind you 110%. But the mascot costume budget you’re asking for…is it possible at all to cut back?

Sheeran: [angrily, slamming his fist on the table] This is horseshit!

Record Executive: We’re not axing the mascots entirely. But look here: “One hippopotamus suit, blue. One hippopotamus suit, pink.” Maybe we could pick one color of the hippopotamus suit and use it for both scenes?

Bieber: Look at me. Look me in the eye right now. If we don’t get that pink hippo suit, I walk. Do you hear me?

Sheeran: He’ll do it, man.

Bieber: Oh, I’ll totally fucking do it. I’m out the door right now. My artistic vision will not be compromised!

Sheeran: You know what? Fine. I’ll just bring one of my hippopotamus costumes from home.

As much as I would love to believe that it’s either Sheeran or Bieber in that costume, I would also love with my whole heart if it was a struggling young actor who not only auditioned for this gig but will also put it on his resume. “Mom? I got the job.”

So, this is where the video does absolutely nothing to assert the heterosexuality of the song. While superimposed on those loungers, Bieber sings, “We’re at a party we don’t wanna be at.” We? It’s just you and Ed there. Me being the person that I am, I already assumed they were singing to each other. This cements it in my mind. Now, I’m not suggesting that Bieber or Sheeran are being unfaithful to their significant others to have a guy-on-hobbit fling. Let’s be real; Justin is way, way out of Ed’s league. Justin is physically perfect, he has the face and voice of an angel and the rock-hard abs of a Turkish oil wrestler. I mean, he might be missing out on something good here; ugly guys do try harder in the sack.

I think I got off track somewhere. Look, it’s not like this video is doing my neuroatypical brain any favors in the focus department.

Alas, it was Justin Bieber in the bear suit. “Mom? No, I didn’t get the job. They had to scale back for budget reasons. Something about a hippo suit.”

Terminator Twelve: Rise of the Beebcorn.

Actually, I think a Beebcorn would be Justin Bieber with a unicorn horn. Which I am shocked is not in this video.

Terminator Thirteen: Rise of the Beebcone.

Seriously, though. I have to really give it up to Bieber for being secure enough in his sexuality to sing a love song duet with another guy and dress like an ice cream cone dancing beside the image of a sexy, shirtless stud. I’ve always thought of Bieber as the kind of douchebag who would liberally pepper his conversations with “no homo,” but he’s just rolling with it.

Is that a fucking dinosaur?

This is the exact moment Justin Bieber realized that Ed Sheeran is probably a furry.

Again, I’m leaving a lot out. I just can’t cover it all. Have you noticed some of these time stamps on the screenshots? It’s incredible, the sheer amount of visuals they pack into every second. Bieber gets eaten by Pac-Man. Multiple Miserable Panda Eds dance in unison as Bieber pops up from every corner of the screen. Beebcorn is superimposed into a real cornfield beside an honest-to-the-red-earth farmer. You just cannot keep up. It’s like the Louvre; you can’t possibly see everything on one trip.

Terminator Fourteen: Rise of the Beebconepegataur.

Holy shit. Spellcheck didn’t ding Beebconepegataur. Is that…

…is that a real creature?

Just chillin’ shirtless with my furry bro at this romantic picnic. Definitely not going to fuck that horse in my Beebconepegataur Animorph form later.

There’s a cow now?!

Record Executive: Can you maybe…is the cow necessary?

Bieber: [crushing a water glass to powder in his fist] We don’t have to explain our art to you!

The rapid-fire dadaist masterpiece images keep on coming, with Banana Ed being eaten by a monkey, both Miserable Panda Ed and Bear Suit Bieber in a bamboo forest with a real panda, Ed’s ridiculously oversized head on a baseball player’s body, Ed with an animated panda head taking off his jacket in what appears to be a clumsy attempt at seduction, and…

Sheeran: No. This is all wrong.

Video Director: What is?

Bieber: First of all, the cow is clearly a guest of the bride.

Video Director: I didn’t realize it would matter–

Bieber: [biting the head off his own cardboard cut-out] Everything matters!

Sheeran: You’re fired, Josh.

True Story: This is what it looks like inside Carly Rae Jepsen’s brain at all times.

After Beebcorn, the teddy bear, and Ed in a heretofore unseen Easter Bunny costume appear on The Price is Right hosted by Ed in his bathrobe and singing into a hairdryer like a microphone, we get this:

Video Director: I’m just not sure it’s a good use of our time to insert another centaur shot–

Sheeran: [breaks a half-full bottle of champagne over his own head] We’re both centaurs! That was the deal!

Bieber: We both get to be centaurs!

Sheeran: You’re fired, Todd.

At this point, I am 100% sure that my blind readers are getting the descriptions of these images and going, “There’s no fucking way and I don’t appreciate being lied to.”

Just when you think, okay, they can’t possibly add anything, they’re going to have to start recycling shots, you get Skydiver Ed, Beebercone dancing with dual luchadores (that have to be Bieber because the legs aren’t chubby and pale enough to be Sheeran’s) against a backdrop of kawaii lemons, Awkward Suit-And-Tie Ed on a tropical beach with Shirtless Bieber, Beebcone running with the bulls in Barthelona, I mean, it just keeps getting stranger and faster until everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever heard, your entire being is consumed by the vast depths of weirdness that washes over you in a tidal wave of fever dream, graphic-design-is-my-passion ecstasy.

True Story: This is what it looks like inside my brain at all times.

Record Executive: You need my car for what now, exactly?

Bieber: We talked about this, Brad.

Sheeran: Give us the fucking keys, Bradley.

There’s a horse mask floating in front of animated pasta, being chased by the luchador. Ed’s head on a sexy girl in Daisy Dukes being pushed on a swing by the pink hippo. A lady with a hawk. As the video approaches its end, the visuals keep smacking you in the face. Did you do a bunch of angel dust? Or is this really happening? Ed’s dressed like Austin Powers. Yet another mascot, an alligator, is grinding on one of the sexy video girls.

There is absolutely no way this video wasn’t conceived during a mushroom trip in Lisa Frank’s garage.

The experience ends with Sheeran shuffling awkwardly out of a hotel in his panda suit, carrying the head. Ha ha, just kidding. That’s what happens at the end of the video, but the experience doesn’t end until you watch it two more times, send the link to all your friends, talk about it on social media, and write a two-thousand word blog post about it when you should be doing literally anything else constructive with your time. Only then do you understand what you’re really supposed to have taken away from the inexplicable thing you just saw:

Both Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber need to get some ink on their legs because it’s absolutely jarring that only their upper bodies are tattooed.

All (cursed) images belong to Warner Bros.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister, chapter sixteen or, “Shop ’til you drop (dead of boredom)”

I apologize for the shortness of this recap, but the chapter is short and pretty much unnecessary until the last page.

In which we open the chapter with someone waking up.

The warmth of her body seeps into mine. Enjoying the feel of her skin on my skin, I open my eyes to greet the misty morning and the lovely Alessia. She’s fast asleep and curled around me like a fern, her hand on my belly, her head on my chest. My arm is wrapped possessively around her shoulders, holding her close, and she’s naked.

Setting aside the part where “naked” was already implied by “skin on my skin,” remember how in Fifty Shades of Grey nearly every single chapter began with Ana waking up and ended with her going to sleep? There’s nothing wrong with starting a chapter with someone waking up (in fact, one of my favorite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, begins with the protagonist waking up), but when it becomes an over and over and over again pattern, it makes the book feel longer. I really feel like doing this consistently, every single chapter, tricks the brain into believing it’s been reading all day long, even when it hasn’t. It also provides a reader with a natural stopping point, when you want them to keep turning pages. My advice: use this sparingly. Let your characters get in bed, sure, but don’t necessarily put your reader in the POV of drifting off to sleep. Stop before their eyes close. This is really difficult to do in romance novels, and I find myself using the sleep/wake device more often than I’d like, so learn from my mistakes and E.L. James’s infuriating patterns.

Anyway, it’s implied that they have morning sex, then we cut to:

The sun is shining. The air is crisp and cold. “No Diggity” blares over the sound system as I drive up the A39 toward Padstow.

I have never. In my life. Laughed so hard at something so unintentionally funny in a book before. “I need a really cool song to show how hip and sexy my hero is,” thought the author. “Aha! I have just the thing.”

Anyway, Moss skips going to church with Demelssia because she might find out he’s an earl, so they’re off on a drive.

She flashes me a quick crotch-tightening grin.

That’s her superpower. The dread crotch-tightening grin.

Man, she is captivating.

Man, captivating seems like the only adjective E.L. James knows.

Moss thinks about how sexy Demelssia was in bed, and he’s like, she seemed to enjoy the sex. Which. Okay, if “seemed to enjoy” is where you’re setting the bar, I guess.

My blood heads south at the thought.

Moss is suffering from priapism and it’s only getting worse. Like, come on. One’s dick can only get so hard before it becomes a medical emergency. I’m just imagining the end of his penis blowing out like an overcooked hot dog. Which I think is a description I applied to Christian Grey, so the hits keep coming.

I feel buoyant–[…]

Then get in the sea and let’s find out.

So, they’re going on a shopping trip so he can buy her clothes. And of course, she doesn’t want him to buy her anything because she has her pride or whatever. Like, that pride didn’t stop her from taking hand-me-downs and a free place to live and round-the-clock protection for her friends and a sexy escape to a luxury hideaway, but clothing is where we’re drawing this line.

I sigh. “They are a gift for all your hard work–”

“They are a gift because I have sexual intercourse with you.”

We have to know that she’s not prostituting herself. We have to know that our heroine would never do that.

Honestly, this detail wouldn’t bother me at all if she was like, no, I don’t want to feel like I owe you anything. But that’s not how it’s framed. The implication is that it’s bad to accept gifts from men you’re having sex with because then it’s transactional and therefore, shameful.

I try a different tack. “I’m going to buy them for you anyway, whether you’re there or not. So you can come with me and choose something you like or leave it to me.”

The different tack, see, is him steamrolling over her wishes.

We go into Demelssia’s POV, where she decides that no, Moss is right.

She trots beside him along the quay, trying to ignore the scandalized voice of her mother that rings in her head.

He is not your husband. He is not your husband.

She shakes her head.

Enough!

She’s not going to let her absent mother make her feel guilty. She is in England now. She is free. Like an English girl.

Remember how we just heard in the last chapter all about how she doesn’t feel any shame? What happened to that? Also, pronoun-wise, her mother is in England now.

Demelssia thinks sexy thoughts about Moss while they walk through the streets of Padstow.

Padstow is a filming location for Poldark.

Moving on.

Alessia is amazed people can express their affection so freely on the streets. It is not the same in Kukës.

This has finally helped me put my finger on what bugs me about the depiction of Albania. There is no distinction made between cultural norms and law. The heavy emphasis on, “This was forbidden by law, that was dangerous to do under communism” is never distinct from, “We don’t do that.” It’s not that people in Albanian aren’t allowed to express affection in public. There aren’t laws or penalties for doing so, at least, that I can find through deep googling. It’s just not a cultural norm. More of a, “What would the neighbors think” issue that wouldn’t exist for someone who lived in a less-strict family. But when it’s phrased this way, it sounds like a definite law. It sounds like, okay, this thing is totally forbidden, when it isn’t. It just isn’t a part of life the way it is in other places.

They go into a store in Moss’s POV:

Alessia is hanging on my arm like a limpet.

Ah, what woman wouldn’t swoon to be described thus?

A young sales assistant approaches us. Blond and breezy […]

Uh-oh.

The sales assistant, Sarah, is immediately helpful. You know, so we can finally find out just how thin Demelssia is.

“I think you’re a small, either a UK size eight or ten.”

That’s a US size six or eight. In other words, totally inconsistent with our previous “a fourteen-year-old’s pajama hand-me-down fits” description.

While Alessia tries on some clothes, Moss thinks about how she’s Not Like Other Girls:

I’ve been shopping with women before, but they’ve always known what they wanted. I am dragged along on these trips either to pay or to give an opinion that will be ignored.

Pfff. Women. Am I right?

He considers sending her shopping with Caroline in London. You know. The place where the kidnappers are? Then he’s like, oh wait, no can’t do that.

I frown. What am I doing?

I’m fucking my daily. That’s what I’m doing.

In my mind I hear her cry as she orgasms. My dick hardens at the memory.

Dude, do you need to go to the hospital?

Yes. I’m fucking her, and I want to do it again.

That’s why I’m here.

In the women’s clothing store? I don’t think Blonde Sarah is going to be thrilled with that. I doubt she gets paid enough to wipe the ensuing arterial spray off the walls.

He thinks about how this shopping trip is “redistribution of wealth,” and I immediately begin construction on a guillotine. Then he picks out a dress for her and she tries it on. Obviously, she’s the most gorgeous woman who ever gorgeoused:

Her hair cascades down below her breasts, which are swathed in a soft fabric that clings.

Everywhere.

Breasts. Flat stomach. Hips. The dress stops short at her knees, and she’s barefoot. She looks sensational–a little older, maybe, but more womanly and sophisticated.

Damn, I guess now that she doesn’t look like a child, his erection can go away.

The fabric clings to her arse, too.

Well, Moss, it would be kind of a fucking weird dress if it was tight all over but baggy in the ass.

The weirdest thing happens in this chapter, you guys. After Moss pays for the clothes (in Demelssia’s POV so we can hear how much money he’s spent on her and more about how Albanians would never kiss in public), they leave the store without the blonde woman hitting on Moss.

I know. I got lightheaded, too. I think the simulation is truly failing.

Moss decides Demelssia needs shoes, too. In his POV. I shit you not, there are seven POV switches in this single chapter.

Ah. Shoes… the way to every woman’s heart.

Women be shoppin’. Am I right?

(Please tell me that reference isn’t too old.)

I’m skipping over a lot of the shopping because we really don’t have to care about the boots they buy, other than Moss’s disappointment that they can’t find “high-heeled fuck-me shoes” for her to wear. He suggests they recycle her old boots, but they’re the only thing she has from Albania, so he says they’ll have them resoled, instead.

Alessia tries not to dwell on Maxim’s generosity. It is rude in her culture to reject a gift, but she knows what her father would call her if he knew what she was doing. He would either kill her or have a heart attack. Probably both. She’d already dishonored him, and until recently she had the bruises to prove it. Once again she wishes he were more open-minded–and less violent.

So, her father is abusive, and over lunch in Moss’s POV, she tells him:

“You buy me all these things, and I can never pay you the money. And I don’t know what will happen to me when we go back to London. And I am thinking about my father and what he would do to me”–she pauses and swallows–”and to you, if he knew what we had done. I know what he would call me. And I’m tired. I’m tired of being afraid.”

How does Moss respond to this?

“That’s a lot to think about.”

He does go on to tell her that he wants to make sure she’s okay, and she’s like, okay, I’m grateful for that.

Her response angers me. I don’t want her gratitude. I think she’s got some old-fashioned notion about being my mistress. And what her father has to do with us, I don’t know. It’s 2019, not 1819.

…but so far, Demelssia has consistently been portrayed as an NPC from a Fiddler on the Roof LARP or something, so IDK why this is all a big, sudden shock.

What do I want? From her?

I’ve had her beautiful body.

And it’s not enough.

It hits me.

Her beautiful body?

Like a sledgehammer. Right between the eyes.

Ah, if only.

I want her heart.

Fuck.

So, they’re in love now, I guess. Whee.

My Impression So Far: The more this book goes on, the more it reads like a reskin of Fifty Shades of Grey but with a different type of kidnapper and some Poldark for extremely bland seasoning. We’ve also spent more time in this chapter focusing on what he’s buying for her and how sexy she looks in it than we do on his reaction to the revelation that she’s been abused. It’s more important to know that our hero’s dick is hard than it is to know what he’s going to do to protect Alessia, aside from sweeping her away on vacation and buying her things. This absolutely tracks with the author’s style, so IDK what I was expecting.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister, chapter fifteen or, “I was so bored, I forgot to include this part of the title.”

No real news, except The Mister did move up from #4 to #3 on the New York Times bestseller list. It has yet to reach #1 on either NYT or USA Today. Which is a great example of exactly how the success of one title doesn’t automatically translate into the success of the next title, even for authors with blockbusters.

Since it’s a slow news day, it’s a great time to remind everyone that any typos or misspellings in the quoted text are my fault unless otherwise noted. I’m really bad at typing. Also, remember that I don’t post the full text of the chapter, just selections, and I sometimes might not mention a detail like, “he took off his shirt,” or something before an excerpt where he’s shirtless. Consider any inconsistencies in that vein the result of omission, unless I point it out.

This is also another great time to remind everyone that I have a book out that has been deemed “adorable” by readers, and you can find out more details here.

Since Alessia losing her virginity was a big moment for…Maxim, we spent the entire sex scene looking through his eyes. Now, it’s Demelssia’s turn to react to having sex for the first time.

Maxim is heavy on top of her, his breathing forced and urgent, while Alessia lies panting beneath him. She’s overwhelmed with sensation and bone-deep fatigue, but most of all by his…invasion.

This is always exactly how you want a woman to feel after sex, by the way. You want her to feel like Poland. Or an Ash tree overcome with beetles. You just want to really make her describe your penis-in-vagina actions in the least positive way possible.

He gets off her and asks her if she’s okay.

She makes a mental inventory of her body. In truth she’s a little sore.

Thanks for being truthful about that, narration. I never thought you’d lie to me until this very moment. Now, I doubt completely. My heart is as shattered as Alessia’s hymen.

She had no idea the act of love was so phyical. Her mother had told her it would hurt the first time.

And she was right.

Though I’ve asserted that E.L. James hasn’t read as many historical romances as she claims, she’s read at least some. Obsession with how much losing one’s virginity hurts, how much you bleed, is kind of a weird focus in historical romance, especially in days of old. I love when I read books where the heroine is a virgin and her reaction is like, wow, this feels different than I expected, instead of oh, the trauma, the pain, the blood, now I have emerged a whole woman on the other side of this rite of passage that must always contain pain to prove my purity.

SHAMELESS PLUG: My new book features a no-big-deal loss of virginity. Did I mention I had a new book out?

Don’t look at me like that. Momma’s gotta eat.

Demelssia thinks about how after the pain and her body got used to him, she enjoyed it.

At the end she’d lost all sense of self and shattered into tiny little pieces, exploding inside–and it had been…incredible.

Now, at that point, she’d had two orgasms with Moss and one that we saw her have solo. It’s only after Moss’s dick gets involved that the orgasms are incredible, though. So, while this wasn’t the full-scale awakening that Christian gave Ana, Moss still does get to be the expert in Demelssia’s pleasure on some level, providing her with an intensity of experience she couldn’t have without him.

He lays down beside her and covers them both up and asks her again if she’s okay and if he hurt her, and she just doesn’t know what to say, so she hesitates and Moss uses that moment to hijack things back into his POV.

I do not understand why E.L. James just didn’t write the entire book from Moss’s POV. She clearly doesn’t care about Demelssia’s experiences or thoughts. At this point, Demelssia has lost her virginity after being raised in what amounts to purity culture and gets a few paragraphs to react to it after the fact, while the entire thing was narrated by a guy who’s had so much sex that at this point it should be like having his taxes done. That’s how unimportant Demelssia is in the scheme of this book. She is not a person, she’s a roadmap for Moss to use while he finds himself or whatever. Just write the whole damn thing in his POV.

Anyway.

I’d been transported from the depths of despair to an earth-shattering climax, but my rosy, postcoital, best-fuck-ever glow vanishes like a magician’s rabbit.

Magicians make rabbits appear.

I reach down and yank the condom off my dick, disgusted with myself.

The following is a faithful transcript of my conversation with Mr. Jen regarding this line:

Me: I’m going to read you a sentence. Or, no, part of a sentence. I’m going to read you part of a sentence, and you just tell me what you think about it. And you don’t have to be nice. I didn’t write it.

Mr. Jen: Okay.

Me: “I reach down and yank the condom off my dick.”

Mr. Jen: [long pause] …yank?

Me: Yank.

Mr. Jen: [long pause] Yank.

Me: Yup.

Mr. Jen: Not…pulled?

Me: Not pulled, not rolled, not removed. This condom was yanked.

Mr. Jen: Huh.

Me: What would happen if you “yanked” off a condom?

Mr. Jen: Well, it would stretch out. And then it would do the rubber band effect. But full of your cum.

So, feel free to imagine Maxim snapping the head of his post-orgasm cock with a rubber band, I guess.

When I drop it on the floor, I’m shocked to see my hand smeared with blood.

Her blood.

Thank Christ! If it was someone else’s blood, it would be fucking weird!

So, like his predecessor, Moss just tosses condoms on the floor? I find this interesting because we know he was a huge slob at home, but he threw the condoms in the trash there.

Anyway, Moss tells Demelssia he’s sorry he hurt her, and she’s like, eh, I was expecting it would hurt the first time.

“So you’d be willing to give it a second try?”

“Yes, I think so,” she says, giving me a coy smile, and my cock thickens in approval.

Again? Already?

Dude hasn’t even had time for his erection to go down and it’s on the rise again?

So, they do the whole was-it-good-for-you conversation, then Moss tells her to say his name because he likes hearing it, and then he says he’ll go run a bath. In the bathroom, he thinks about how “giddy” he is.

Sex with her is better than being amped on coke…any drug.

False. Nothing is better than drugs.

I’ve finally laid my daily.

Check that off your to-do list, I guess.

He thinks about how usually, once he’s had sex with a woman he’s basically done with her, but he doesn’t feel that way about Demelssia. And I have to say, that’s a pretty big fucking chance to take, isn’t it? If you’re sooooo in love with this woman, but you know there’s a possibility you’ll be disinterested in her once you close the deal, wouldn’t you have thoughts about that? Wouldn’t it make you resist wanting to have sex with her? Wouldn’t a competent author examine that before the deed is done?

Yes. The answer is yes. But we’re not dealing with competency on any level here.

I run my hand through my hair in an effort to tame it and remember her blood on my hand.

A virgin.

I’ll have to marry her now.

Go hang the sheets off the balcony so the townspeople will know that you deflowered your virgin bride and any issue from her womb is your legitimate heir.

I snort at my ridiculous thought as I wash my hands, but I wonder if any of my ancestors found themselves in that position. Two of my forebears were involved in well-documented, scandalous liaisons, but my knowledge of my family history is sketchy at best.

I’m sure your ancestor Ross Poldark was involved in some kind of scandal from fucking his maid and marrying her. Things turned out okay-ish for them.

Moss thinks about how he should have paid more attention to shit like their lineage and how to keep the earldom in the family and all that. Then he goes back to the bedroom, sees Demelssia, and thinks:

My daily.

She’s still just the help to him. How charming.

Because he’s naked, she’s shy and doesn’t want to look at him. Then she does and he teases her about it and pulls the covers off her and they’re both naked and headed to the bathroom.

“You don’t have to be shy.” I tease a strand of her hair and wind it around my index finger. “You have great hair. And a great body, too.”

Yes, I’m sure her hair, not her nude body, was her very first concern.

There’s a picture window behind the bathtub, and they gaze out at the sunset over the seat together, which he says is as beautiful as she is.

She’s more than beautiful. She’s the whole package. Bright. Talented. Funny. And courageous. Yes, above all, courageous.

So, when are we going to get to see this “whole package”? Because talented, we’ve seen. But she never speaks in anything other than short sentences and they’re not particularly funny. Maybe they’re meant to be, but she’s been written almost too childlike to have an intentional sense of self-aware humor. Also, courageous? We know she ran from the traffickers at the beginning of the book and when they came looking for her, but since Moss got a chance to rescue her, she’s basically done whatever he tells her to do. I’m not saying her earlier actions weren’t courageous, but she just kind of clings to Moss now, awaiting instruction. He hasn’t seen her do anything courageous.

Then again, Ana was “courageous” and “brave,” too.

She quickly twists her hair into a gravity-defying knot that perches on her head and sinks beneath the bubbles.

Here, the knot on her head sinks beneath the bubbles, rather than her body sinking beneath the bubbles, which is what is supposed to be happening. This is what we call “something an editor should have noticed.”

We go into Demelssia’s POV so she can tell us how expensive the bath gel is and, no shit, how much better the sunset is in England as opposed to Albania:

The sunset in Kukës is spectacular, but it sets behind the mountains. Here the sun is sinking languidly into the sea, illuminating a golden path on the water.

This book should have been called, Albania is good, BUT.

Anyway, we hear more about how her vagina hurts.

She’d done it.

Done what?

It.

So, here’s the thing. This is the wrong tense. James chose to write in the present tense. The past version of the present tense is…past tense. “She’d done it,” is past-perfect, a.k.a., “even paster tense.” Demelssia’s thought should have been “She did it,” or “She’s done it.” Yet another “something an editor should have noticed.”

Honestly, I’m less of a stickler for stuff like this if it’s written in the first person. I tend to view the first person as the narrator talking directly to me, no matter which tense they use. It’s when it gets into the third person that it comes off wonky to me. Your mileage may vary.

Her mother would be shocked. Her father…she shudders to think what he might do if he knew.

So, she has that thought, then goes on to think about how great the sex was, how she wants to do it again, but then:

She feels no shame.

This is another moment where we’re being told something we’re not seeing on the page, or seeing the opposite of. After sex, she’s too embarrassed to look at him naked, she can’t even speak to him at first, then she thinks about what her parents would think of her. That doesn’t scream, “totally unashamed,” to me. And you know what? I don’t find it all that convincing that a woman raised in a super conservative way wouldn’t have shame. I’m not saying it’s right, but I haven’t been Catholic for like, years, and I still feel a little twinge of, “Shouldn’t have done that,” after sex sometimes. I think it would have been okay for Demelssia to feel shame and interrogate those feelings.

But that would cut into the time we need to take to talk about Moss’s willie.

She’s fascinated and embarrassed at the same time.

Large. Hooded. Flexible. Not how it was earlier.

So much has been made of that line and how terrible it is. I feel like I’ve spent so much time in the bad book trenches that I just can’t even react to that description at all. I’m like, sure, it’s bad. But the things I’ve seen, dear reader. The things we’ve seen together. This is nothing. This is almost good writing in comparison to “music to my dick.”

“You’ll get used to it,” he says, and his eyes sparkle with humor. Alessia wonders if he was referring to the champagne…or his penis, which makes her blush even more.

I’m thirsty…but not for dick.

So, it’s not enough that we’re hardly ever in Demelssia’s POV. We have to skew into Moss’s while we’re in her POV, as well. When he gets in the bath:

He grins, waiting for the water to spill over the sides of the bath–but it doesn’t.

How does she know that’s what he was grinning about? Or thinking at all? She doesn’t, but James is so enamored of her hero’s POV that she absolutely can’t stay out of it.

He takes a glass from her and clinks the one she holds. “To the bravest, most beautiful woman I know. Thank you, Alessia Demachi,” he says, and he’s no longer playful but deadly serious, gazing intently at her, his eyes darker, no longer sparkling.

So much of this reads like a rewrite of Fifty Shades of Grey, in which after her bloody, painful defloration, Ana and Christian bathe together, there’s a lot of talk about his dick and how fascinating it is, and a weird focus on the expensive the bath gel he uses. And the bravery. Christian calls Ana brave throughout the books, but if memory serves, the first time he calls her brave is after their first time because I remember thinking, “What’s so brave about fucking you?” There’s even a line in both books that randomly points that the bathroom has double sinks for seemingly no reason, interrupting a more important train of thought during the consideration of the sex that happened.

Demelssia realizes that she doesn’t know Moss’s last name. She actually thinks it’s “Milord” because that’s what people have called him in town. He tells her his last name and of course, she has to sound it out because she’s the world’s oldest toddler and it’s a great opportunity for James to point out how simple this Albanian peasant is.

Skimming over the next bit, all you really need to know is that he washes and massages her feet and legs and it gets her horny. No, sorry, “wanton.” Because she knows “wanton” but not “truck.”

Yeah, I’m never letting the truck thing go. Learn to live with it, everyone.

Anyway, they get out of the bath and he mentions that she doesn’t have to get dressed if she doesn’t want to, because Danny won’t be there until dinner time. And of course, Demelssia thinks about oh, he won’t tell me who Danny is, so expect some jealousy to come up.

We go back to Moss’s POV and the cheap bastard does this:

Downstairs in the kitchen, I switch on the lights and put the champagne in the fridge while I consider Alessia Demachi.

That shit is going to be flat in an hour. You’re rich. Throw it away. Don’t make Demelssia settle for flat champagne.

He thinks about how she’s so sexy, and then goes right back to angst about whether or not he should have fucked her. Like, dude? The time to be all, “Should I fuck this woman?” was before you fucked her. The deed is done. Some things cannot be unscrewed.

I wonder what Kit would have made of Alessia.

You’re not fucking the staff, are you, Spare?

We keep hearing about how kind and good Kit was, but he always sounds like a total dickhole.

At least Moss and Demelssia drink more of the champagne before it goes flat.

So, anyway, like minutes after Moss tells Demelssia not to get dressed if she doesn’t want to, Danny shows up. IDK if he thought he was gonna get a three-way going or what. Moss intercepts Danny outside to get the food. And she tells him that the potatoes have been microwaved? Like, I’m sorry, but if I’m an earl, my baked potatoes better be good and goddamn well done in the oven. Which, by the way, is why the universe will never let me be rich. I will demand too much.

So, earlier in the book, I was imagining Danny as a younger woman. Now, we learn that she has white hair and has worked on the estate since he was a kid. And…he’s making her carry dinner all the way from the main house to his sex nest.

You know what, Danny? Microwave those potatoes. Spit on them, too.

But lest you worry that Danny might still tempt Mister Maxim away, here is her description:

[…]always in her plaid skirt and stout shoes, never in trousers. No. I smile; it’s Jessie, her partner for twelve years, who wears the trousers in that relationship. Briefly I wonder if they’re ever going to marry. It’s been legal for long enough. They have no excuse.

Don’t worry! Danny is a lesbian! Who wears “stout shoes”. And her partner, who has an equally androgynous, male-leaning name? Is super butch! Isn’t that humorous?  One is the girl and one is the boy!

God, I can’t wait for E.L. James’s much anticipated M/M novel that won’t perpetuate any stereotypes at all.

There is a way-too-long interaction about putting the baked potatoes in the oven to crisp them up and who is going to put them in the oven. It’s Moss, by the way. Moss does it. There’s also stew involved, but at this point, I’m so fucking bored with hearing every damn move they make to get dinner on the table that I feel like I’m making dinner and I’m like, fuck it, just put a pizza in the oven and call it a day.

Moss asks Demelssia if she knows how to play chess, and she’s like, a little, and he’s like, oh, I wonder what that means, and I’m like, it means she can play chess a little, this is not a hard concept to grasp and would you like me to make a powerpoint or can I just throw my Kindle directly into the sea right now?

Anyway, she touches his hand and he nearly jizzes himself.

She licks her top lip and deliberately traces her index finger over the back of one hand.

Whose hand? It’s never specified, but we assume it’s Moss’s hand because:

A tremor runs from my hand up my arm and directly to my dick.

So, your dick is on your shoulder? Is that what I’m getting here?

They play a game and of course, she’s excellent at it. Why? Because it’s the only primitive form of entertainment that exists in Albania.

“There is not much to do in Kukës. At home we have an old computer but no games console and clever phones.[…]”

Clever phones.

From the travel website Lonely Planet:

Mobile coverage is excellent, though it’s limited in very remote areas (though most places have some form of connection including Theth).

[…]

Albania has good mobile coverage though it can be spotty in mountain areas.

[…]

It’s very straightforward to buy a SIM card with mobile data from any mobile phone/internet provider. Prepaid SIM cards cost around 500 lekë and include credit. Special two-week ‘tourist’ packages are available. These include phone calls, text messages and internet data.

Oh, and regarding the internet, again, from Lonely Planet:

Free wi-fi is ubiquitous in all but the most basic hotels. In larger towns many restaurants also offer free access.

Albanians! They’re just like us!

No, seriously. They have all the same fucking stuff. And what really pisses me off is that if E.L. James visited Albania “for research,” she would have stayed at hotels. She would have probably taken her clever phone and used her magic card. These would have been basic things she wouldn’t have been able to avoid learning! She has to know that she is depicting the country incorrectly because she has been there.

Anyway, back to this fucking trainwreck. Hey, want to talk about more inconsistencies in Demelssia’s English? She says she likes to read books.

“Oh yes. Many, many books. In Albanian and English. I wanted to be an English teacher.”

She wanted to be an English teacher.

She doesn’t know the word for “truck.”

“But you enjoy reading?”

“Yes.” She brightens. “Especially in English. My grandmother smuggled books into the country.”

SHE HAS BEEN LEARNING ENGLISH HER ENTIRE LIFE FROM ENGLISH BOOKS AND A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER. SHE WAS GOING TO BE AN ENGLISH TEACHER. THE ONLY REASON ALESSIA IS DEPICTED AS NOT BEING ABLE TO SPEAK VERY SIMPLE ENGLISH IS BECAUSE E.L. JAMES CHOSE TO DEPICT HER THAT WAY.

Now, I don’t know why she made that choice. And it is, perhaps, unfair to assume that E.L. James is simply a xenophobic garbage person. But I’m really starting to lean toward that explanation.

We’ve also got a very weird time/history/age issue going on. They talk about how dangerous it was for her grandmother to “smuggle” in these books that Demelssia has been reading…but again, Demelssia is twenty-two (or twenty-three, at this point I’ve forgotten because I don’t give a shit). She wouldn’t have been alive during those communist years. She wouldn’t have a memory of that danger. And yes, she is saying that her grandmother smuggling books in during communism was dangerous, but Demelssia wouldn’t have any memory or experience of living that way, so it’s a weird detail to include. Like, she’s constantly reminding him of the time her country was communist before she was born. It feels so forced, like, “Look at me, readers! I, E.L. James, know the history of Albania.”

Which would be a lot more impressive if she didn’t spend like 99% of the rest of the time talking about how shitty and backward the whole country allegedly is.

Anyway, Demelssia beats Moss at chess and they talk some more about her life in Albania.

“You say you wanted to be an English teacher. What happened?”

Her university closed. She already told you this.

“My university closed. They had no money. And my courses stopped.”

She was literally studying English at the college level.

And she didn’t know the word for “truck.”

Also, she mentions that she taught English. In a school.

And she didn’t know the word for “truck.”

But perhaps the most frustrating thing about Moss learning, for the second time, that her university closed, is that it means he must not have been listening to her before.

Moss and Demelssia have dinner, and Demelssia insists on serving it to him.

Surreptitiously I watch her as she busies herself in the kitchen. Her movements are neat and elegant. She has an intrinsic, sensuous grace, and I wonder if she’s ever been a dancer.

Why not? You’re a model/DJ/photographer/pianist/composer/earl. She might as well be a dancer on top of all her other shit she’s got going on.

When she turns, her glorious hair spills down around her elfin face, and with a delicate flick of her wrist she flips it out of the way. Her long, slender fingers holds the knife as she slices open the baked potatoes, releasing wisps of steam. With her brow fixed in concentration, she spreads butter on them, and she stops to lick some melted butter from her index finger.

My groin tightens.

It’s nice to know that I’m not alone in my potato horniness. This description of baked potatoes is the only time my groin has stirred at all in this novel so far.

Back in Demelssia’s POV, she says she’s going to cook for him the next day:

“Do you?” he asks.

“Cook?” Alessia places her hand on her heart, affronted. “Of course. I am an Albanian woman. All Albanian women cook.”

I mean, obviously! All Albanian women are peasants who exist only to do domestic chores! Duh!

“One day,” he says, “will you tell me the whole story?”

“Story?” Her heart begins to thud.

“Of how and why you came to England?”

“Yes. One day,” she says.

One day. One day! ONE DAY!

Hey, that’s my emphatic device! How are people going to tell the difference between your shitty book and me making fun of it, Erika?!

Her heart skips a beat. Those two words imply a tangible future with this man.

Yup. That’s what Demelssia is gonna naturally focus on when asked if she’ll share the story of her harrowing flight from human traffickers. That’s definitely the reaction that a deeply traumatized person with PTSD is gonna have. Cupid’s arrows all the way.

Alessia is confused about how men and women interact in England.

It’s different in Kukës. She’s seen enough American TV shows–[…]

She’s seen American TV shows but has no idea whatsoever about sex or relationships. This is perhaps the least believable thing in this entire book. That’s literally all American TV shows are about. Even the ones that aren’t about romance have romances and relationships in them. Unless all she was watching was Wheel of Fortune.

So, they eat their dinner and Moss offers her banoffee pie and she’s like, no thanks, I’m full, and he forces her to eat it, anyway:

“You are teasing me. You want me to want your dessert?” she says.

“I want you to want a great many things. Right now it’s dessert.” Maxim smirks and licks his lips. With his fork he scoops up a small piece smothered in cream and offers it to her. “Eat,” he whispers, his voice seductive and his heated stare mesmerizing. In response, she parts her lips and accepts the mouthful.

And obviously he was right in forcing her to eat it because she loves it.

I’m so mad about this scene because, in my latest book (that I have plugged enough in this recap), the heroine makes the hero a banoffee pie as a Christmas present. I guess I could have changed it, but I was like, “No! My book was written before this one came out, damn it! I’m keeping my pie!”

Anyway, Demelssia licks some pie off his finger:

Mmm…he tastes clean. Male.

In case you were wondering what gender banoffee pie was.

Anyway, they have more boring sex that I’m going to skip lots of.

His hands slip into the waistband of her pj’s

Her pj’s what?

and cup her bare backside, kneading her flesh as he rubs his nose over her clitoris, on and on.

 

So…um. Yeah, you know what? I’m just gonna move on.

“Maxim!” she cries, scandalized, and she tries to pull his head away.

“Hush,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.” And his tongue replaces his nose as he resists her feeble attempts to stop him.

Yeah, hush, Demelssia. It’s okay for him to do a thing you don’t want him to do during sex because he knows better than you do what you really want.

They fuck up against the wall but Moss is just literally too good at sex and they have to switch to the bed because she can’t handle how great he is at it. Not joking, there’s like a whole paragraph about it.

Alessia cries out as she explodes around him once, twice, again, […]

It only counts if it happens three times. And I’m glad to see that explosive orgasms have followed us into this book. I was worried she wouldn’t explode or detonate during sex at least once.

After the sex, we POV switch into Moss watching Demelssia sleep, and then he remembers the nightlight and he gets that all set up and goes to sleep to end the chapter.

My Impression So Far: I expect the xenophobia, lack of consent, and show-don’t-tell to ramp up in the coming chapters. James started off fairly strong in the consent arena until the hero started banging the heroine. Which adds another disturbing layer to the style of James’s writing: once you say yes once (or, in the case of Alessia, twenty-six billion times until you convince the dude you want to fuck him), that’s it. You’ve said yes to everything from pie to oral sex. Because once he gets his dick in, he owns you.

New Release: WHERE WE LAND

Well, yesterday was a weird day. I’ll tell you that for free. But do you know what today is? Do you know?

That’s right. It’s release day!

For college drop-out Lauren Scott, Kalamazoo, Michigan, is the perfect place to lay low and avoid her politically mobile East coast family. Though working two jobs and counting every last penny is a thousand times harder than accepting checks from home, she can’t fulfill her parents’ conservative expectations without sacrificing her conscience.

For struggling singer-songwriter and full-time nurse assistant Daniel Ebbing, Kalamazoo is the place he wants to escape. Ever since the death of his mother, Daniel has regretted not returning to England with his father. Moving across an ocean costs far more than he anticipated, and his bank account is caught in a one step forward, two steps back dance.

Now, fate has made them the solution to each other’s problems. She needs a roommate. He needs a cheap place to live.

What could go wrong?

Amazon • Smashwords 

So, quick rundown of this book:

New Adult contemporary romance
Sarcastic heroine with rock solid personal principles.
Cinnamon roll hero
Nobody is a billionaire
Look, if someone can write a Harry Styles book and we’re all just giving it a pass, I can exercise my Ed Sheeran crush in prose.

Now, please enjoy this free look at the first chapter of Where We Land.

The chimes above the door at Sugar Magnolia, the only store in Kalamazoo that could meet the needs of both stoners and disc golf enthusiasts alike—although there was a staggering overlap of those two demographics—heralded the arrival of customers who annoyed Lauren Scott on sight. Though working at a headshop was as chill a job as she could have ever hoped for, the proximity of the store to Western Michigan University’s campus led to Friday night influxes of feral white bros like the ones who strolled through the door.

“Hey, guys!” she called with her best customer service voice. “How’re you all doing tonight?”

They were doing high already, judging from the cloud of stench that clung to their hoodies, polo shirts, and cargo shorts. Lauren could appreciate a nice, lingering pot scent, but Axe body spray was not a successful cover for cheap ditch weed hot-boxed in somebody’s car. They ignored her greeting and headed over to the racks of Frisbees, pausing to laugh uproariously at a blown glass pipe shaped like Pickle Rick.

Letting her I’d-be-happy-to-help smile drop, she hid behind the display of incense on the counter. She pulled a stick of strawberry from one of the jars and lit it up, hoping to cover the Eau du Bro. The strip mall Sugar Magnolia resided in stood directly across the street from the campus’s west exit and within spitting distance of a number of fraternity and sorority houses. Despite the recent legalization law, selling marijuana was still prohibited, and cops stopped in plenty to make sure the store only dealt in smoking accessories. A “tobacco shop” couldn’t afford to reek of pot.

She checked the time on her phone and tipped her head back, closing her eyes in frustration. She still had two hours to go. God, I hope Jason gets back from break before the Abercrombie & Dick crew starts asking to see every damn item in the case.

The plastic shower curtain that served as the back room’s door pushed open, rattling on its rings. Jason stepped out and, at the sight of the customers, ducked behind the incense display with her. He peered through a plexiglass case of Zippos, studying the customers intently. He glanced to Lauren, put his thumb on his chin, and flexed his index finger twice in the ASL sign for “Who?”

She held her hand below the counter and fingerspelled “B-R-O-S.”

Becoming friends with Jason in ASL 101 had been one of the top five smartest things she’d done in college. It was possibly the only useful thing she’d done before dropping out.

Jason rolled his eyes and grabbed a fitted baseball cap from beneath the counter. He slid it on backward, unlatched his hemp necklace, and stood up, outfitted for battle.

“Hey, what’s good, y’all?” he called to the group of decidedly caucasian dudes whose response when faced with the possibility of talking to a cool black guy was nothing short of ecstatic. Lauren shook her head fondly. Jason was like a chameleon, able to shift from mode to mode depending on the customer. Acting was a way of life, he was fond of telling her. Customer service gave him a chance to hone his craft outside of his classes and rehearsals. She’d once watched him assist sales with a stoner Frolf enthusiast, an old-school metalhead, and a bachelorette party at the same time, somehow finding a persona that could relate to all three at once. The chimes jingled again. Lauren glanced up.

The guy who lowered his head as he walked through the door really didn’t need to. He was kind of short. His shaggy ginger hair was tousled like it had been recently rubbed vigorously with a towel. A red plaid shirt open over a faded Frankenstein tee and jeans ripped at the knee marked him out as a likely time traveler from the 1990s, but he seemed more shy than suspicious, so she didn’t worry too much about him causing trouble or shoplifting. Which was good. The door had barely closed when it flew open again, and her roommate, Chelsea, whipped in like a hurricane. And Hurricane Chelsea required a lot more attention than some nerd who didn’t look like he exactly craved interaction with salespeople.

Damnit. I’m probably going to have to bust a hobbit for shoplifting.

“Hey, bitch!” Chelsea drew out the word in a long, nasal delivery that made Lauren’s skin crawl with unease. The higher Chelsea’s voice pitched, the more likely she was to be angling for something. “I need like, the tiniest little favor.”

Of course, you do. “What favor? I’ll decide how tiny it is.”

“So, I have a date with that guy from Insta,” Chelsea began, reaching into her purse for her phone. Her fingers flew dramatically over the screen before she turned it so Lauren could see. The Aaron Paul doppelganger had been all Chelsea had been able to talk about for a week that had felt like a lifetime. “But it’s like…tonight?”

Lauren’s stomach sank. “No. Nope, no, nope. Not tonight.”

“Please?” Chelsea wheedled, her hands clasped dramatically together, pressing the phone tight against her chest like a love letter in an Elizabeth Gaskell novel. “I know you need the shift. I heard you ask Paul for extra hours.”

Damnit. Chelsea had her there. With the recent hike in rent—and Chelsea’s “forgetfulness” about the last two electric bills—Lauren really did need a bigger paycheck that week. But she’d been working both of her jobs eight days in a row already, and Friday nights at Boogie’s were the worst.

“Come on. It had to be tonight?” she asked impatiently. “Douchebag with a guitar night?”

The Weasley standing by the “staff picks” bong display made a weird cross between a snort and chuckle. He glanced up guiltily, flushed at being caught eavesdropping, then averted his eyes again.

“Ugh, fine,” Lauren groaned. “I’m upping our ‘Wonderwall’ bet, though.”

“That’s not fair!” Chelsea whined.

Lauren shrugged and held her hands up. “It’s not fair that I’ve had to cover the electricity for the past two months either.”

Chelsea blew out a long breath of frustration. “Fifteen.”

Lauren narrowed her eyes. “Twenty. The last guy did an uncomfortably passionate rendition of ‘All Star’ by Smash Mouth. I’m not budging.”

Chelsea stamped her black leather ankle boot on the cracked tile. “Oh my God, fine!”

“You call Paul and tell him we’re switching. I’m not off the clock here for another couple of hours. Text me what he says.” There. My Friday night signed away. Not that she would have been doing anything with it, anyway.

Chelsea shook her phone in the air in victory. “Yes! Thank you! You’re the literal, literal best.”

“Yup.” Lauren lifted her hand with a pained smile and watched Chelsea leave, the chimes above the door singing again.

The ginger approached the counter, clearing his throat. Lauren was used to nervous customers. They usually didn’t have an I.D. because they weren’t eighteen. This guy was definitely over eighteen. Maybe he was just garden variety shy.

“Did you want me to open the case?” she asked, nodding toward the display he’d been studying.

He looked over his shoulder, then said, “Oh, no. Um, just a pack of Zig-Zags? One hundred millimeters.”

So, he’d been waiting the entire time Chelsea had been there. A-plus customer service there, Lauren. “Sorry about your wait.”

He reached for his wallet. “No, it’s not a problem at all. I just didn’t want to interrupt.”

Lauren’s brain paused a second. People came to Kalamazoo from all over; three colleges and two major pharmaceutical companies made for an interesting mix. But an English accent wasn’t one she heard a lot. It made the guy seem even more like a Weasley than before, and she smiled to herself as she turned to get the papers off the shelf. A Harry Potter joke would probably not be appreciated.

“Okay, that’ll be a dollar-twenty-five,” she said, punching it into the iPad that served as their cash register.

“What kind of incense is that?” he asked, pulling two crumpled dollar bills from his wallet.

“Strawberry.” Lauren took the cashbox from under the counter and unlocked it. “Do you hate it?”

“No, I like it.” He opened his wallet again. “How much?”

“Well, it’s twenty-five cents apiece or ten for two dollars,” she said, counting out his quarters. “But since you had to wait through my roommate’s drama, and since you’re the only person I’ve ever met who actually liked the strawberry one, I think you should take five on the house.”

“Yeah, all right.” He put his hand out and Lauren dropped his change into his palm. He pocketed it and stepped aside, taking one of the long plastic bags in front of the incense display. While he opened it, he asked, “May I ask what the ‘Wonderwall’ bet is?”

She couldn’t see the harm in explaining it while he bagged up the sticks of incense. “She and I both work at Boogie’s, on Academy. They have live music on the weekends, and it’s pretty much always some douchebag with an acoustic guitar, and they almost always sing ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis. Chelsea thinks I’m exaggerating how often it happens, so we made a bet, and now every time one of these dorks plays ‘Wonderwall’, I get ten dollars of her tips from her next shift. And if they don’t play it, she gets ten dollars of my tips.”

“But tonight, it’ll be twenty. If the douchebag with the guitar plays it,” he clarified.

“Right. Because she’s a pain in my ass.” She pushed the rolling papers across the counter. “Don’t forget these.”

“Thanks.” He held them up and gave them a little shake as he backed toward the door. “And thanks for the, uh, the strawberry.”

“Have a good night,” she called after him. Her phone notification dinged at the same time the door chimes went off. As expected, Paul had immediately approved the switch. He was probably stoked about it; Lauren was faster than most of his baristas. So, she’d go off to her second job on aching feet. What was new?

It wasn’t as though she spent time with her friends anymore. Not since she’d gone from college student to de facto townie. It was amazing how hard it was to synch schedules while employed at two full-time jobs, and she never had the money to go out, anyway. The only constants in her life were Chelsea and Jason, and it helped that she worked with both of them and lived with one. If she had to monetize her social life, she would. Her parents had stopped sending her anything a while ago.

“When you get your priorities turned around…when you want to be an asset to this family, then we’ll help you. But we won’t help you squander your potential.”

Ugh. Thanks, Dad.

It had never been about her potential. Her father just didn’t want his daughter’s opposing political views messing with his senate campaign.

Jason led the bros to the register. Lauren stepped into the back room and leaned against the wall. It would be so easy to just walk away from her life. Go back to college and money from home. Get her degree. Or just stand beside her father at some rallies, swallow her shame, and accept the checks.

She wasn’t cut out for it. She wasn’t really cut out for anything.

When she heard the chimes over the door herald the departure of their worst nightmare, she emerged again. Jason already had the baseball cap off. He ruffled his short, spiky dreads. “Oh my god. Girl, I never thought they were going to leave. I really didn’t. I thought they were going to ask me where to buy drugs.”

“At least they didn’t try to sell you drugs. Remember that time?” Lauren reminded him.

“Do I sound like I do drugs?” Jason demanded. “I have the voice of an angel. I can’t smoke anything. Especially tonight.”

The comment shot a thought through her head like a bullet through the fuselage of a plane. “Oh no…”

“Uh-uh.” Jason shook his head. “You did not just switch shifts with Chelsea on the night of my recital. Again.”

“Okay, but to be fair, I only did that one time before and her grandmother had just died, and you have a recital like once a month.” Jason wasn’t just a musical theater major. He took every extracurricular opportunity to sing in front of a crowd that he could possibly get, from jazz choir to glee club to community theater. But he also stuck by her when she’d dropped out, so supporting his passion wasn’t exactly a hardship.

Until it came to scheduling her support.

“What was her excuse this time?” he asked, drumming his fingers on the counter.

“Date,” Lauren said, unable to meet his eyes. “I know. I know she takes advantage. But besides you, she’s all I got. And last time I checked, Antoine didn’t want me moving in with you guys.”

“I don’t want you moving in, either.” Jason examined his fingernails. “I’ve seen your bathroom. It’s a mess. I don’t know how you live like that.”

Lauren walked around the counter and went to the rack of novelty ashtrays to straighten them. Not that they needed straightening. She just had to do something with her hands. “The bathroom is mostly Chelsea. And I live like that because I don’t have a choice.”

“No. You have a choice. You’re probably the only person I know who chooses to be poor on purpose. Don’t pretend you’re on the same level as people who aren’t a phone call away from hope,” Jason scolded her.

He was right. In a way. She did scrabble for rent, eat rice and beans, and ride her bike even when the snow was so deep, she had to walk it most of the way on purpose. But it hadn’t been a choice. Not really.

She’d traded her parent’s money for the ability to sleep at night.

* * * *

Boogie’s Cafe was a wedge-shaped building on a wedge-shaped corner at the intersection of Academy and W. Michigan Ave. Lauren rode a winding route through campus to avoid the long stretch of Stadium drive that was too isolated to be safe. She’d never thought about that kind of thing when she’d had a car. People rarely got knocked out of their cars and dragged into bushes.

The ancient-looking single-pane windows of the old brick building were already fogged up from the inside. The lights were lower than usual on the main level so all the students that treated the place like a study hall would be in the loft. Acoustic guitar amplified via mic floated out the door as a woman exited. Lauren chained her bike to the no parking sign at the curb and pocketed the key to head inside.

Her second foot had barely crossed the threshold when she jolted to a halt.

Seated on a stool in the center of what was usually the reading area, the Weasley from earlier in the day strummed his guitar. His eyes were closed as he sang into the microphone, some song Lauren didn’t recognize. It must have been an original, and she’d caught the very end of it. As the last note faded away, the audience that had assembled at the tables and chairs around him applauded far more enthusiastically than Lauren was used to hearing for their usual Friday night musical acts.

“Thank you,” the guy said, leaning over to grab a bottle of water from the floor.

Lauren tried to tiptoe along the back wall unobtrusively, hoping he wouldn’t notice her. Hoping he’d forgotten how huge a bitch she was. God, she hoped he wasn’t the kind of person who was going to gloat or make a big deal out of something as small and insignificant as being insulted directly to his face. She chanced a look at him. He locked eyes with her as he twisted the cap back onto the bottle. Adjusting his guitar on his knee and his fingers on the strings, he cleared his throat and said, “Anyway, here’s ‘Wonderwall’.”

I’m still alive. Kind of.

As it turns out, that go-get-’em Trout work ethic of mine can’t conquer this cold and flu season. I even missed a performance of my show. I’ve never missed a performance (that I wasn’t teching; you can get subs for tech) since I started doing community theater like thirty years ago, but this crud hit me hard. We’ll resume recaps next week.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister chapter fourteen or, “The Return of Buster Hymen”

I am so, so ill, and so, so full of every kind of OTC cold medicine you can safely mix (and some you can’t) that I was tempted to just make this entire recap, “Then they had sex.”

But it’s really, truly bad. As compellingly written as the terms and conditions of the warranty on your new refrigerator, as sexy as the cracked concrete floor of a franchised oil change garage, this is not something I can skip over. Oh no.

Especially not after the staggering generosity everyone showed yesterday and today. Sweet Jesus, I almost feel guilty. You guys literally funded next month’s rent! I cannot thank you enough. Even though I look like I’m auditioning for the role of Zombie Outbreak Patient #3 in a musical production of The Walking Dead, I’m gonna deliver. I’m gonna detonate all around you and start to move, really move. I’m gonna take you into this muted pastel room of pain with me. It will, however, be a short recap because the chapter is short and there’s really not a lot you can say about four pages of kissing.

Get on your masochist bikes. We’re going for a super painful ride.

So, Demelssia is like, oh, shit, I thought playing this piece for Moss would make him happy, but she was not prepared for Dead Brother Grief Fest 2019.

Three weeks is no time. No wonder he’s still grieving.

And she thinks about how her grandmother has been gone for a year and she’s still grieving, and I want to say, you know, I actually like this. I like that Demelssia acknowledges in her POV that grief isn’t something that just stops after the funeral. My baby brother died in 2000 and it fucked me up for life. We have a weird cultural attitude about grief and how long it’s supposed to last and oh, we’re malingering, we’re wallowing if it still bothers us down the road, but I gotta tell you if you’re lucky enough to never have experienced grief, it lasts forever. I’m so happy that James didn’t downplay it.

So, basically, Demelssia is like, I have to make him feel better, so she kisses him, and we go into Moss’s POV, where Demelssia tells him, “I’ve got you,” echoing the bazillion other times he’s said this to her.

I want to crush her to me and never let her go. I can’t remember the last person who consoled me in my hour of need.

Um.

Your sister-in-law?

Remember when you grief-fucked her?

Gradually, my grief recedes, leaving only hunger in its wake.

But not for food, wink wink nudge nudge.

I’ve been fighting my attraction to her since I saw her standing in my hallway holding that broom.

Really? Was that when you were kissing Demelssia in your laundry room or buying condoms with the intention to fuck her and throw her to the kidnappers?

She’s exposed my grief. My need. My lust. And I’m powerless to resist.

Oh, okay. Well, as long as you have no self-control, then.

I’m lost. Lost to her compassion, her courage, her innocence.

Because nobody likes a ruined sex trafficking victim, right?

So, they kiss more, then she pulls back and looks in his eyes, and she tells him she’s never even been kissed by anyone but him. They kiss again. Two pages of tedious kissing written with all the burning passion of a dental hygiene textbook:

I kiss her again, tempting her lips apart with my tongue, and this time I’m met with the tip of hers.

Then he grinds up on her and that gives her pause, so he asks if she wants him to stop and I have to check and make sure I have the right author’s book open on my Kindle.

“You’re beautiful. I want you.”

Her lips part as she inhales.

“I want to touch you. Everywhere,” I whisper. “With my hands. With my fingers. With my lips. And with my tongue.”

When you use Grammarly, there’s this thing that pops up and is like, “Whoa there, Pulitzer Prize Winner, but you have some really repetitive sentences going on and it’s monotonous as hell.” I mean, not in those exact words. But whatever software James is writing on should have that feature, and it should use those exact words.

So, Moss stops like every two seconds to ask if he’s going too fast, if she’s still into it, etc. and while I appreciate that James took at least some direction from the criticism lobbed at Fifty Shades of Grey, it begins to feel a little bit like a virginity fetish, or like we’re supposed to be super turned on by her inexperience, which always makes me a little bit…eurgh. I’ve written virgin heroines. My book that comes out next week (WHERE WE LAND, it’s out Tuesday, buy it) features one. But the emphasis put on Demelssia’s virginity and uncertainty in this scene make it really, really feel like she’s not ready to have sex at all, and that Moss gets off on that. For example, when she finally does make an assertive move:

She stills for a second, then grips my hair firmly, tugging hard, and kisses me with ardor–greedy and feverish.

“Easy,” I breathe. “Let’s take this slow.”

he is the one who steps things back and tries to return to a dynamic where she’s timid and hesitant. Why? After going on about how much he likes “willing” women in all the past chapters, when she’s finally enthusiastic about sexual contact with him, he adjusts the situation so that he can continue being unsure about whether or not she wants him.

Her moan is soft and husky as her head falls into the palm of my hand.

Shouldn’t have untied the green ribbon, I guess.

It’s music to my dick.

There is no photo. No gif. No witty reaction to capture the tremendous horror of this line.

All I can think of is “The Music of the Night”. I already hated that song. Now it’s worse. Somehow, without knowing the depths of her awesome, terrible power, E.L. James has made me hate The Phantom of The Opera even more than I already did.

There’s more gross virginity fetishizing in the guise of obtaining consent:

I cradle her face with both hands and brush her lips with my thumb. “Talk to me. Do you want to stop?”

and when she’s like, nah, let’s do this, he’s all:

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

She nods.

“Tell me, Alessia. I need to hear you say it.”

Okay, but she said it. She’s said it numerous times. At one point, she specifically asked him to kiss her. She straight up says during this exchange, “do not stop.”

Face shining with what I hope is lust and excitement, […]

Bro. If you don’t know, even after she has firmly, verbally established that she wants to have sex with you, you need to not be having sex with people because there is some issue here with understanding what constitutes consent.

Oh god, if we find out he raped Elizaline “by mistake” or some bullshit and that’s why he got kicked out of school, I’m going to set a junkyard on fire.

They go upstairs and he does more fetishizing of her childlike innocence:

She’s shy.

She’s innocent.

She’s stunning.

She ends up with her back against his chest while he kisses her neck and undoes her bra. Then he gets his hand down her enormous panties while she throws out a Zot and some other Albanian and he tells her to speak English.

I kiss that spot behind her ear,

You know. That one.

and slip my hand inside her pajamas and slide my fingers over her sex.

She’s shaved!

My very first thought was, “because the traffickers made them do it at the rest stop.” And it got immediately unsexy. Well, I mean. It was already unsexy. This just catapulted it into, “I, Jenny Trout, may never feel tingling in my genitals again,” territory. You’d think after what she told him about being forced to shower that he’d have the same thought and be like, oh man, this is wrong, I shouldn’t be doing this with this chick, she’s been through it. But of course, he doesn’t. He’s just thrilled that she’s completely bare down there, which makes the whole innocence angle even more troubling. I’m not saying, oh, people who like a bare vulva are pedophiles. That’s not where this is going. What I’m saying is, we’ve heard all about how innocent and untouched and totally unaware of everything having to do with sex she is and how much that arouses him, and then she’s sporting a bare pussy, something we tend to think of as grooming we do to be more sexually appealing. He’s getting this fantasy woman with a pornstar lack of pubes and an effortlessly perfect body, but he’s also getting the fantasy of “breaking in” a virgin.

You guys. It’s gross.

So, he starts playing with her clit:

“Yes,” I whisper, and continue stroking her. Teasing her. Arousing her. With my fingers.

Thanks for specifying. For a minute, I thought you might be using a garden hose.

Her legs start to tremble. And I tighten my arm around her. She’s close.

Does she know?

So, again, the fantasy of being the man who unlocks her sexuality entirely.

“I’ve got you,” I whisper, […]

Her orgasm is now on par with a total emotional meltdown over dead brothers and kidnappers.

She whimpers and suddenly cries out as her body slowly convulses,

How does one slowly convulse? I’d like to practice it the next time I seize.

and she comes apart in my arms.

I’m just imagining all her limbs dropping off and hitting the floor.

My jeans feel several sizes too small, and I want to rip off her pajamas and bury myself in her. But she needs time. I know this. I wish my cock understood.

Well, I wish my brain understood, so we’re in the same boat.

He takes his jeans off and gets into bed with her, and there’s more talk about how shy she is.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.

I want her to get up, put her shirt on, and go, “You know what, Mister Maxim? Why don’t you come find me when you’re sure you want to do this.”

Then there’s more kissing. Just. So. Much. Kissing. I don’t mind characters kissing. But Jesus Christ, lady, there are only so many ways to describe tongues and mouths touching and you landed on precisely two and just kept running with those.

My fingers slip under her waistband and she pushes her sex into my hand. I have her. In the palm of my hand. I groan. She’s wet.

She’s ready.

Fuck.

Slowly, slowly, I ease my finger inside her.

She’s tight. And wet.

Hang on, now, is she wet? And is your hand somehow involved? I’m so used to having things repeated three times that I just can’t tell if we only hear about them twice.

“Time to say good-bye to these,” I murmur against her belly.

And then he rips out her intestines.

Nah, he’s talking about her pants. But that doesn’t come up until after more of Demelssia’s dialogue.

Tasting her skin, I skim my lips down her throat to her gold cross. I twirl it with my tongue, enjoying the taste, […]

Do you also enjoy chewing on tinfoil, Moss?

There’s more tit play (there was some before, as well), more Zots, and hey, let’s get a vaginal weather report:

Yes.

She’s wet. Still.

It’s been like maybe three minutes.

So, here’s the sequence of this sex scene so far:

Kissing
Partial undressing
Fingering
Orgasm
Kissing
Partial undressing
Nipple play
Fingering
Partial undressing
Nipple play
Fingering
Orgasm

It’s so. Fucking. Boring. It’s just the same thing, over and over.

Finally, it’s time for the penis in vagina part.

Reaching for a condom, trying to keep my body in check, I whisper, “Are you ready? It’ll be quick.”

Too late.

He asks her one more time if she wants to have sex with him, then he almost unmans himself just putting on the condom.

Slowly. Slowly. Slowly, I sink into her.

See, here I know that he’s doing it slowly because it’s stated three times.

Sadly, though she does cry out, we don’t get to hear his dick turn her into a pirate the way Christian’s did to Ana.

[…]I take her at her word and begin to move. Into her.

Oh, I thought you meant like, to Scotland.

Once. Twice. Thrice. Again. And again.

Whoa. Whoa. That’s five times. Slow down. Some of us didn’t go to expensive, Albanian-capital-teaching schools.

So, he’s thinking about how he doesn’t want to come yet, and she’s writhing under him and begging him to do more.

I move once, twice…a third time,

This is the same page as when he moved once, twice, thrice. We’re talking, a few short paragraphs apart.

Anyway, she has a screaming orgasm with zero clitoral stimulation and:

I come. Forcefully. Loudly. And calling out her name.

IT’S OVER NOW, THE MUSIC OF MY DICK!

via GIPHY

[IMG: gif of the Phantom of the Opera clutching his scarred up head and crying]

 

My impression so far: Not great. The “sexy” writing swings from cringeworthy to boring to repetitive, sometimes blending all those elements into a single sentence. The first sex scene in the book, the one with the nameless harlot or whatever, is hotter than this, and it didn’t even get to the penetration. Maybe I just can’t get aroused by a hero who’s so turned on by the heroine’s lack of experience and knowledge. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s been less than twenty-four hours since she was running away down his fire escape and sobbing in his car about how she was almost sold as a sex slave.

I’m clearly not the target audience here. I don’t know who is, but I probably don’t want to know.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister, chapter 13 or “Are you going to start a secret smelting company, too?”

In news directly from the mouth of hell, E.L. James has coyly teased that she may or may not write a BDSM novel featuring gay men as the central couple. 

[…]James says she’s been swamped with fans begging for her to write a book that features gay men.

Who are these fans? Turn on your location. I just want to talk.

And it’s not just men asking her to pen the erotica, women are writing in and asking for some man-on-man action too.

I highly doubt it’s any men asking her. It is 100% white Christian moms with “Live, Laugh, Love, Pray” wall decals, three desperately overscheduled “Greybies” named Mykklaryn, Renesmee, and, of course, Christian, who participate in dozens of conflicting afterschool activities that feed their mothers’ pathological transportation martyr needs. The I-would-like-to-speak-to-your-manager army is desperate for an audiobook they can listen to quietly while waiting in the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru, then cite as evidence that they’re not homophobic, they just vote for strongly anti-gay candidates because they agree with them on other issues. Oh, and sure, they donated to their megachurch’s conversion therapy camp, but they read poorly written butt sex scenes so they just can’t be bigoted.

And gay men, if you are a huge fan of E.L. James, I need you to explain why you’re so into painfully heterosexual and extremely homophobic “erotica” when there are hundreds of thousands of other choices out there.

James’s coquettish “never say never” quote is the most infuriating fucking thing I’ve read in a while. And I have a Twitter account. Yes, bitch. Say never. Say the fuck never. No one, be they gay, lesbian, bi, pan, or queer, needs your straight ass fetishizing them for your ravenous audience and their dubious tastes. We have enough condescending straight women pulling that bullshit in M/M fiction already.

James says the idea interests her because having two men in the relationship would take away the power dynamics based on gender roles.

I cannot wait to read her BDSM novel where there are no power dynamics. I’m sure it will be thrilling, completely accurate, and well-researched.

Also, probably Supernatural Wincest fic.

Now, let’s get back into her current fanfic. Oh, I mean, totally original work that is definitely not a Poldark AU.

They walk hand in hand along the coastal path and stop by an old ruin.

“What is this place?” Alessia asks.

“It’s an abandoned tin mine.”

Alessia and Maxim lean against the chimney stack, staring out at a choppy sea that’s crested with white surf as the chill wind whistles between them.

Ah. Well.

Moss tells Demelssia that he grew up there and that his brother is dead now.

He digs his hands deep into his coat pockets and stares out at the sea, his face bleak, carved like stone.

via GIPHY

So, they have a little moment of grief and discussing his family. And he doesn’t ask her any questions about her family, but she’s okay with that because she changes the subject so she doesn’t have to discuss them. She tells him there are mines in Kükes, which is kind of an understatement, especially when she mentions that this particular ruined mine looks like, “the chimney on the road to Kosovo.” If you look up the area, there’s definitely more than one chimney on that “road” (which is a major highway) between two real, actual, no shit modern places that have thriving mining industries, including the world’s largest Chromium mine, which is the one in Kükes that Demelssia is talking about.

So, remember, the town with the world’s largest Chromium mine has no credit cards or stores.

Moss suggests they walk to Truro the village of Trevethick to get lunch. And of course, so E.L. James has a chance to air her feelings about Albania just not being up to her English standards:

The stone and whitewashed houses are like nothing Alessia’s seen before. They look small and old, but charming nonetheless. The place is quaint–pristine–with no trash anywhere. Where she comes from, there is garbage and construction debris in the streets, and most of the buildings are build from concrete.

Oh, the horrors.

Yes. That’s actually Kükes. That’s the hellscape of trash and construction Demelssia is talking about.

Or, is she talking about London? Because IDK, that pretty much describes the London I went to on vacation once, and everyone knows that brief tourism paints a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of a country.

At the waterfront two stone quays stretch out to embrace the harbor where three large fishing boats are moored.

What’s that classic song Nat “King” Cole did about L-O-V-E? I think we can use that as a template here.

P is for the plagiarism she skirts

o is for the “original spin” she puts

l is lazy writing

d is Winston Grahm’s and she needs to get off it

a, absolute trash so fuck her

r is for the repercussions for this shit

k is knowing that there’ll be none

I’m telling you Poldark is freely up for grabs!

Yeah. Doesn’t scan. You see how late this recap is gliding in. If you want perfection, go find that Blue’s Traveler song I rewrote about Lani Sarem. I’m not making Weird Al money here.

Anyway, yeah. Trevethick is Truro.

There are two pubs in Trevethick, one called The Watering Hole and the other The Two-Headed Eagle. Because The Red Lion was already taken. She points out that Moss’s tattoo is on the sign, and an elderly vicar with a “tr” name is just exiting. He greets them and asks who Demelssia is.

“Father Trewin, our vicar, may I introduce Alessia Demachi, my…friend, visiting from overseas.”

Which fucking sea?! The Adriatic? Would you really refer to a place you can literally drive from as “overseas”, UK people? Like, once she opens her mouth, he’s going to know she’s not an American. Unless he’s never met an American before because he’s a royalist and those bloody colonists have something come to them.

Anyway, the vicar pulls a page from my grandmother’s handbook and reminds Moss what time church starts, then they part. Moss asks Demelssia if she is religious, but she doesn’t get a chance to answer before they go into the pub and are greeted by a dude who unironically calls Moss “Milord.”

Again, I beg of you, UK people, chime in here. Do you address actual earls with “milord” or is this one of James’s bougie fantasies?

We jump into Moss’s POV, where he learns from the barman that “Megan” still works there. And this is a bad thing. Which means brace yourself: the evil bitch who likes Moss is coming.

Demelssia takes off her hat:

With her loose, dark curls falling almost to her waist, her shining eyes, and her radiant smile, she is an exotic beauty.

“The Issue With ‘Exotic’ Beauty,” Teen Vogue
“Exotic Is Not A Compliment: How the term stems from colonialism,” Empress
“Why I Hate Being Called an ‘Exotic Beauty'”, Glamour
“Why Calling Me ‘Exotic” Isn’t a Compliment”, Rife
“Stop Calling Women Exotic,” Into The Fold

Now, Alessia isn’t a woman of color. But she is “ethnic,” so all of these points stand.

Anyway, wasn’t there an evil bitch lurking somewhere?

I turn around and Megan is standing in front of me, her expression as dark as her clothes. “Table for two?” she says with a saccharine tone and a smile to match.

Yes, but is she blonde?!

I stand aside for Alessia to precede me, and we follow in Megan’s dour wake.

I know that we’re supposed to read Megan as the vengeful woman scorned, who’s crazy for no reason, right? But we’ve seen how Moss behaves toward women. I’m betting this is totally justified.

Megan takes them to the best table in the place:

“This okay for you?” I ask Alessia, deliberately ignoring Megan.

Again. Any time a woman who is not the heroine is near the hero of an E.L. James story, the hero must ignore her and we must hear about this ignoring.

Jago arrives with our drinks, and Megan saunters off, presumably to fetch menus…or a cricket bat.

Again, you probably deserve it, Moss.

Moss and Demelssia go back to discussing religion. She says that the Communists banned religion in her country, and Moss is like, why do you have that cross necklace? And then Megan comes back and interrupts them with menus.

I ignore her.

Of course, you do.

“It was my grandmother’s. She was Catholic. She used to pray in secret.”

If there’s one thing missionaries are famous for, it’s keeping their faith a secret.

“So there’s no religion in your country?”

“There is now. Since we became a republic when the Communists fell, but in Albania we don’t make much of it.”

None of this is wrong. In fact, some of it sounds like it was paraphrased from Wikipedia:

“Not in Albania. We are a…what is the word? Secular state.

She knows “secular state” but not “truck.”

Religion is very personal. You know, just between a person and their God. At home we are Catholics. Most people in my town are Muslim. But we do not give it much thought.”

But I’ve got a nit to pick and it is a mighty one. Demelssia remembers her grandmother praying in secret. Why? The ban on religion was lifted in 1990. Demelssia wouldn’t even have been born yet at that point. And while yes, Albania is a secular state, that refers to the constitution. The government doesn’t fuss with religion now. It’s totally separate. But according to this site that I was easily able to google, only 25% of the population of Albania identifies as either not religious or don’t declare a religion. Almost sixty percent of the country is Muslim.

Google: it’s right fucking over there.

Hearing about all this makes Moss want to go to church. He asks Demelssia if she likes England, and she’s like, yes, because it’s so multicultural and she’s never been to a big city before.

“Not even Tirana?” Thanks to my expensive education, I know the capital of Albania.

 

via GIPHY

Only rich people get to know what the capital of Albania is. Sorry, plebs.

So, anyway, Demelssia has never been to Tirana. Like, most of the country’s universities are located there, but okay. Let’s say she went to one of the satellite campuses in Kükes, which do exist. And apparently, have no credit cards and are just heaped with trash.

Megan appears with her pinched, angry face and scraped back hair, and my problem subsides.

The problem is an erection he got looking at how beautiful Demelssia is. So, just so you’re aware, he desires the harpy Megan so little that his boner dies at first sight.

BUT IS SHE BLONDE?

Boy, is she still bitter. It was one summer seven years ago. One fucking summer.

So, what did you do to her, boy?

She’ll probably spit in my food–or worse, in Alessia’s.

Yeah, since you had no trouble with Megan’s spit before, clearly.

Demelssia totally notices that something is going on between the two of them, so Moss steers the conversation toward Demelssia’s family.

“Well, my father is old-fashioned, and I do not…how do you say? We do not see eye for eye.”

So, she absolutely grasps the concept of idioms. “Raining cats and dogs,” shouldn’t have been such an Amelia Bedelia moment for her.

Moss gets a sense that she doesn’t want to talk about her family, so he asks her about the country, instead.

She tells me Albania is a special place where family is as the center of everything. It’s an ancient country, influenced over the centuries by several cultures with different ideologies. She explains that it’s both Western and Eastern-facing, but more and more her country looks to Europe for inspiration. She’s proud of her hometown.

She literally just said it was covered in trash and everything in England is so much better, but thanks for your sixth grade report on Albania, Erika.

We are interrupted by Megan and fish pie. Megan plunks the plates down on the table and leaves without a word. Her face is sour, but the fish pie is warming and delicious, and there’s no sign that anyone spat in it.

I hope she dropped a whole handful of pubes in yours. Hers and the fucking vicar’s.

Moss asks Demelssia what her parents do. Her father is a mechanic, her mother is a homemaker. Demelssia says she went to university until it closed, and this really makes me think E.L. James does google things, because while researching something else, I found out that a university in Kükes did close in 2014. So, I mean. She is capable of doing a little googling. But there is at least one other university in that town. Why couldn’t she have been going there? Why is it so important for Demelssia to be tragic and uneducated?

They talk about his DJ job and he skirts telling her that he’s an earl. Then he asks her:

“[…] What about you? How old were you when you started playing?”

“I was four.”

Wow. Early.

Not really, I guess. According to two music teachers I polled, between age four and nine is ideal, but one of them said they won’t take a student until they’ve had at least some preschool. I guess once again, Moss is impressed by the average.

“Did you study music? I mean, music theory?”

“No.”

That’s even more impressive.

Wait, whut? How did she not learn music theory, but she can read sheet music? Like, sight read it, even? Music theory is straight up built into learning to play the piano. Maybe not advanced music theory, but am I supposed to believe Demelssia just dropped out of her mother’s sainted vaginë knowing how to read sheet music?

They leave the restaurant without us finding out whether or not the Dread Megan is blonde or not. I’m never going to recover from this. Anyway, Moss realizes before they pay the bill that Demelssia is “tipsy”. They stop at a local shop so he can buy her nightlight, which is really sweet, right?

She takes the package and returns to the counter, where I spy condoms.

Well, I might get lucky.

With the sex trafficking victim who’s here hiding from, you know, the sex traffickers.

And he straight. up. buys. condoms.

Demelssia is distracted by the lipstick display but turns down Moss’s offer to buy her some, and he thinks about how he’s never seen her wear makeup because OBVIOUSLY, she’s a natural beauty who doesn’t need it. As they leave, she spots Tresyllian Hall.

Tell her you’re the fucking Earl of Trevethick.

No.

Why not?

I will. Not yet.

Why not?

I want her to know me first.

Know you?

Spend time with me.

Who…who are you talking to, Moss? Your inner goddess?

They go back to the beach where once again he broods with his hands in his pockets while she revels in the majesty of the sea.

She is giddy. Excited. And in love. This is what it should feel like. Joyful. Filling. Free. The realization surges through her like the bracing Cornish wind and whips her hair across her face.

She is in love with Mister Maxim.

So, she’s in love with him. That’s all it’s going to take to get those over-sized novelty panties down and that trauma forgot.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she exclaims, breathless.

He grins down at her as he holds her close. “It’s my pleasure,” he says.

“It will be!” she quips, and laughs as his eyes widen and his mouth drops open.

She wants him. All of him.

Doesn’t know the word for “truck,” totally grasps the nuances of clever wordplay. CHECKS OUT.

In Moss’s POV, Drunk Ass Demelssia falls into a wave and gets all wet, and he has to run out and rescue her and lead her back to the house, where he kisses her and helps her take off her sodden outerwear. He tells her she should go change, then makes some phone calls. One of them is to his old buddy, Tom, who asks if Moss has “sealed the deal” yet.

Hey, were you loving this book (no you weren’t) but missing the long email and text exchanges from Fifty Shades of Grey? GOOD NEWS. We get to read Moss’s email to Oliver informing him that he’s in Cornwall and instructing him to pay Tom’s invoice. Then, he texts Elizaline. She asks him if he wants her to come to Cornwall, and he’s like, no, so she’s like, I’ll call you at the hall, and he’s like, I’m not at the hall, and she just won’t stop getting into all his business. But he doesn’t tell her what’s going on.

Moss goes off to look for Demelssia and finds her in the laundry room, pantsless, reading Jamaica Inn (DOESN’T KNOW THE WORD FOR “TRUCK”) and waiting for her jeans to dry. It never occurred to him that she might not have any others to change into.

I try not to look at her long, naked legs. I try not to imagine them wrapped around my waist. I fail.

And she’s wearing the Pink Panties.

IDK, if she only has the one pair of jeans, you might wanna steer clear of that panty situation.

Remember how in the last chapter she had to wear his pajama top and only his pajama top because she had absolutely nothing to wear to bed?

Alessia appears by the door a few moments later wearing SpongeBob pajama bottoms and an Arsenal FC shirt.

They were too small for Michal, the fourteen-year-old boy, but they’re too big on her. This is an important detail because we absolutely must not be imagining her as some kind of fatty, right?

Glossing over, glossing over, glossing over, she tries to come on to him but he’s like, you drank too much, she takes it as a rejection and runs off.

I know the look she was giving me.

Hell. I’ve seen it often enough.

Right before the process server handed you the restraining order, right?

A fuck-me, fuck-me-now look.

Isn’t that why I brought her here?

…no? You brought her there because she’s being followed by…kidnappers?

But she’s tipsy, and she has no one, and she has nothing.

If she wasn’t drunk though, he’d climb on that VICTIM OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING real quick.

If I fuck her, I’ll be taking advantage.

No shit?

But then he’s like, oh no, she’s playing sad piano, I might have to fuck her to make her feel better. Oh, and then take her back into danger:

Maybe I should take her up on her offer–fuck her and take her back to London.

Maybe he should have sex with her, then bring her back to where the human traffickers can find her. Sure. This is romantic. Why not. This is how love is now, I guess.

Meanwhile, In Demelssia’s POV:

The music slowly moves through her and out into the room, filling it with the somber colors of regret.

You know. Those colors. The ones of regret? It’s not even worth mentioning what the character with synesthesia as a defining character trait considers regretful colors because everybody just knows.

Moss apologizes for upsetting her, and she’s like, it’s about my clothes, isn’t it, and he’s like, no, also, please play something for me, and we go into his POV where he recognizes the song he was writing that weekend that she first inspired him. It was originally a song for his dead brother, and he starts crying.

I bury my face in her hair and inhale her soothing scent. And I cannot stop the tears sliding down my face.

Shit.

She’s unmanned me.

This is how I know that E.L. James is a god damned liar when she says she reads historical romance novels. If you read historical romance novels, you know, you know that a hero thinks he’s been “unmanned” when he ejaculates. As in, the hero must halt the heroine’s stroking of his shaft, lest she “unman” him. Pick up any Bertrice Small, Christina Dodd, Laura Kinsale, Jo Beverly, literally any classic historical romance novel and you’re gonna know this terminology does not mean to a romance reader what E.L. thinks it means to a romance reader.

So, I choose to read this as Moss just blew a load into Demelssia’s hair.

Sadly, Moss considers himself unmanned because the act of crying isn’t manly. Which is definitely not a toxic way to think at all. But he can and does cry in Demelssia’s arms.

Which means tomorrow we’ll be reading a sex scene, because he can’t be too “unmanned” for long.

My Thoughts So Far: I think I said all the fuck I wanted to say about this shit show already, so allow me to make a couple notes here.

First of all, as you can see, I’ve been embedding gifs from Giphy. It only just today dawned on me that those might not, in fact, have descriptive text attached to them for my readers who use screen reading devices. If this is you, let me know how the Giphy thing is working out. I can always put the description in the actual text.

Second, I so, so, so appreciate everyone who has thrown money into my Kofi account or signed up on my super disorganized and always running behind Patreon. My money situation is NOT GOOD and hasn’t been for a while. My book royalties have plummeted. After my husband’s mother died last year with negative bank balances, unpaid bills, and no pre-need for her funeral, and then I ended up with the lawsuit thing, we wiped out every last spare bit of money we had. We’re pretty much living off donations and Patreon at the moment and things are looking grim. So many of you chipped into the legal fund, sent money to help with the mother-in-law situation, and I never, ever stop appreciating that. Which is why I hate ever having to say, hey, money is tiiiiiiiiiight, but maybe if you’ve been meaning to donate but you haven’t, or it never occurred to you to toss a few bucks my way, it would be foolish of me not to mention it. I did so many years of living off food stamps and pretending to be a Big Successful Author that I definitely learned my lesson to be upfront about help if it’s needed. So, to all of you out there who support me with donations, thank you forever. And to those of you who can’t because we’re in the same boat, hey, aren’t Aldi’s frozen pizzas way better than name brand?! It’s SHOCKING how good they are.

I’m a liar. No The Mister recap today.

Hey all! I know I said I’d be back on Monday, but as it turns out, rehearsing a show by performing it in full every night for a week, then opening with three performances is like, exhausting? And somehow my feet hurt, even though I don’t have to dance? In any case, I need a recovery day. Thanks for your patience. Nightmare Born will stay on schedule and the recaps will be back tomorrow.

And go see War Paint at the Kalamazoo Civic. Two more weekends.

Jealous Hater Book Club: The Mister chapter twelve, or “WORLD’S OLDEST FIVE YEAR OLD”

Three things.

There will be no recap tomorrow, as it is opening night for the show I’m singing in, and I plan on relaxing all day.
Please remember that any typos or spelling errors in the quoted text in any recaps are probably my mistake, from my eyes crossing, unless otherwise noted.
England isn’t an island.

Moss runs into Demelssia’s room, where she’s still screaming.

Her words rush out in a torrent: “Ndihë. Errësirë. Shumë errësirë. Shumë errësirë!”

What?

She basically jumps into his lap, repeating herself, because god forbid we use a phrase just once.

“Errësirë. Shumë errësirë. Shumë errësirë,” she whispers over and over as she clings to me, trembling like a newborn foal.

And speaking like a toddler. She’s just repeating, “Dark, very dark,” over and over again. We’ve talked about her “broken English” but we need to really examine her “broken” Albanian. She doesn’t generally think in complete sentences in Albanian. Just random words over and over again. Meaning that even in her native language, her speech is stilted and simplistic. The infantilized heroine strikes again.

Moss is relieved once Demelssia tells him in English that she’s afraid of the dark because he was worried that she was raped while being sex trafficked. He doesn’t say so in so many words, but it’s implied:

Oh, thank fuck.

I’d imagined all manner of horrors and was prepared to fight any number of monsters, but I relax at her words.

I’m so glad you’re not going to have to actually face any of those monsters, Moss. I was really concerned about you.

“It’s okay. I’s okay. I’ve got you,” I repeat several times.

Twenty times overall. We know, we already discussed this.

Eventually, she recovers. We know that she’s recovered because she gets horny at him real quick:

She glances down at my chest, and a slow flush pinks her cheeks.

We’ve got a flush! Don’t worry, we’re going to play all the hits.

Moss tells Demelssia that he usually sleeps naked, so she’s lucky he put pants on. Okay, moving on, then. She tells him that she knows he sleeps naked because she’s seen him, and he takes that news pretty well. She apologizes for inconveniencing him with her psychological trauma, and he mansplains the darkness to her.

“[…] It’s not like London here. There’s no light pollution in Trevethick. The dark here is…dark.”

via GIPHY

Moss asks Demelssia to tell him about the dark or the nightmare or whatever. Probably so he can explain it back to her, but whatever. She doesn’t know the word “truck.” She tells him that a truck brought them to England, so just to clear up the “whether or not Demelssia has seen the sea” issue, it’s entirely possible she never did. They probably drove up to France and took the train over, with them in the back of the truck the whole time. Also, in fairness, I can buy that maybe she’d never been to the beach. If there are people who live in New York City and never set foot off Manhattan, then I can buy someone not making a ninety mile trip to the beach.

The good news is that she clears up that the truck was made out of metal. Also, she knows “metal” and not “truck.” But here I was, thinking she was brought to England in a cardboard boat.

She seems a little more reluctant to hug me this time, probably because I’m shirtlss but I’m not going to leave her to face these gruesome nightmares on her own. In one swift movement, I stand, cradling her against my chest.

She gasps in surprise.

“I think you should sleep with me.” And without waiting for a response, I carry her to my room, flick on the lights, and deposit her on the floor beside the walk-in wardrobe.

Moss isn’t going to leave her to deal with her trauma on her own. Oh, no, no. Moss is going to acknowledge her trauma, then utterly ignore the fact that he makes her uncomfortable and force contact she doesn’t want. It’s imperative that he do what feels right for him, not what is actually right for her, the traumatized person.

Remember when E.L. James mentioned in that article that she doesn’t view Moss as a narcissist? Centering one’s self in someone else’s experiences and insisting you know what’s right for them is something a narcissist would do.

In his room, he gives her one of his pajama shirts and instructs her to go change out of her clothing and into that.

She blinks rapidly.

Shit. Perhaps I’ve really overstepped the mark.

You think?

He asks her if she’d rather sleep alone, which he could have totally asked her before he physically moved her to his room.

“I’ve never slept with a man,” she whispers.

Oh.

“I won’t touch you. This is just sleep–so the next time you scream, I’ll be right there.”

That probably does not sound as comforting as you think it sounds.

Of course, I’d like to make her scream in a different way.

Are you kidding me? You found out she’s a human trafficking victim, you’re like, oh, she’s afraid of me, oh, she must have been through so much, maybe she was raped, but wow, I’d like to throw my dick at her?

Of course, Demelssia wants to sleep in the bed with him. She goes off to change while he marvels that she’s twenty-three and a virgin.

Look. I don’t mind virgin heroines. I’ve written virgin heroines. I’m about to release a book with a virgin heroine right now. What I do mind, though, is the infantilization of virgin heroines. The ones that are pure, untouched, and constantly bewildered. As with Anastasia Steel, Demelssia’s entire characterization is formed around her purity. Virginity in lieu of a personality. Then the hero comes along and unlocks her sexuality, inspiring these feelings in her with nary a consideration of demisexuality. She’s always just straight up hetero once Dick Charming figures out that he fits perfectly. Her sexuality is allowed to arrive only once a man is there to take part in it. Those are the virgin heroines I can’t stand, and I really can’t stand the authors who are obsessed with every heroine being sexually pure and every other woman in the world being the sluttiest sluts this side of Sluttsville.

In the bathroom, we get a cut-and-paste PTSD moment:

She was alone.

In the dark.

In the cold.

With that smell.

Yes. We got it when you did this a few chapters ago.

She is, of course, grateful that he’s protecting her.

Her own Skënderbeu…Albania’s hero.

You know I had to look this dude up. He was apparently instrumental in stopping the Ottomans from conquering Europe. He was also so beloved by Albanians that in World War II, the Nazis named an infantry division out of Kosovo after him.

Don’t ever say you don’t learn shit here.

My favorite part about this is that the following lines, with nothing between, are:

He’s making a habit of this.

And she’s going to sleep with him.

He’ll keep her nightmares at bay.

The last antecedent with male pronouns is Skënderbau. So, she’s going to sleep with a dead guy to keep her nightmares at bay.

If her father found out, he would kill her. And her mother…she visualizes her mother fainting at the news that Alessia is sleeping with a man. A man who is not her husband.

Would her mom faint at the news that her dad murdered her?

Her dear, dear mother had sent Alessia to England thinking she was saving her.

She was wrong. So wrong.

So, I’m actually not ahead of the recaps anymore and I’m dying to know if her half-English mom had to send her to England to get her away from her violent Eastern-European foreigner of a father or what.

So, she puts on the pajama shirt (he didn’t give her the pants, obviously, because then she wouldn’t be half-naked) and goes back out to the bedroom.

Her gaze drifts from his startling green eyes to the tattoo on his arm. She has only glimpsed parts of it before, but even from across the room she can see the design.

A two-headed eagle.

Albania.

Moss tells her it’s a dumb thing he did in his youth.

Inscribed across his biceps is a black shield bearing the image of an ivory two-headed eagle hovering over five yellow circles that are in the shape of an inverted V. Alessia places her clothes on the footstool at the end of the bed and raises her hand to touch his arm, glancing at Maxim for permission.

Then we hop into his POV. Because how he reacts to her touching him is more important than her reaction to willingly touching a man despite her trauma.

I hold my breath as she traces the outline of my tattoo, her finger skating across my skin, her light touch echoing through my body, toward my groin, and I suppress a groan.

Remember how just a few pages ago she was screaming in terror and junk?

She tells him about how the two-headed eagle is a symbol of Albania, but not the yellow circles, leading to this perplexing exchange.

“They’re called bezants.” I sound really hoarse.

“Bezant.”

“Yes. It represents a coin.”

“In Albanian, we have the same word. […]”

Then…why did she repeat it like she was just learning it for the first time? And how does she know “bezant,” a medieval form of currency, but not a simple English word like, “truck?” Like, how often does “bezant” come up in conversation for her?

She asks him what the tattoo means, and he doesn’t want to tell her that it’s his family coat of arms and he got it because his mother hates tattoos, so she would be torn on whether or not she hated it. He tells Alessia that it was just a youthful folly and that it’s time to sleep.

I toss back the quilt on the bed and step aside so that she can climb in. She obliges, revealing long, slender legs beneath the pajama shirt that is way too big for her.

This is torture.

It certainly is for me.

She’s propped herself up on her elbow, and her glorious dark hair falls in a riot of loose waves over her shoulders,

I’m gonna stop you mid-sentence a second here. This isn’t overall important to criticism of the book itself, but I think it’ll be a handy writing tip for the people who come here for that type of thing. “Riot” and “loose waves” don’t really go together. We hear “riot of curls” a lot, because we view curly hair as a chaotic force of nature (as someone with naturally curly hair, I can confirm this), untamed and out of control (again, can confirm). But “loose waves” implies a relaxed grace, like water gently lapping at the shore. Honestly, “riot” and “loose” don’t work together in a lot of contexts. Unless it was like, “A tiger got loose at the zoo due to unsafe conditions, sparking a zookeeper riot,” or something. And even then, I feel like zookeepers are too chill to actually riot.

Wait, what was my point, again?

Not important. Anyway, when describing your heroine’s soft, romantic appearance, “riot” is seldom the correct word to use. The sentence goes on:

past the contour of her breasts, and onto the bedding.

HOW THE FUCK MUCH HAIR DOES THIS BITCH HAVE?!

 

via GIPHY

She looks gorgeous and I’m going to have to keep my hands off her.

Yes. Yes, you do. For all the reasons I have outlined here and in the last recap.

She asks him what “folly” means, and he tells her it’s a foolish action, and I say out loud, “Much like paying money to read this book.”

He gets into bed with her and leaves the light on, so she won’t be freaked out by the dark, thinking again:

This is going to be torture.

Thanks. I didn’t get that from the twenty-six thousand other times you’ve mentioned it. There’s a section break and we’re in Ross Poldark’s  Moss’s dream:

I’m warm.

I’m happy.

I’m home.

A girlish laugh catches my attention.

I turn my head, drawn to the sound, but I’m blinded by the sun and can see her only in outline. Her long, raven hair flows in the breeze, and she’s swathed in a translucent blue housecoat.

Okay, take off the housecoat part, and this is pretty much a spot-on description of the cinematography from, yes, Poldark, when Ross is lying wounded on the battlefield remembering Elizabeth. But whatever, it’s a common dream-sequence conceit. The thing that’s truly annoying about this passage is that the entire thing is written with that weird, reverse-tab thing where the first line of the paragraph isn’t indented, but the subsequent lines are.

I wake with a start.

Again, you can’t wake up in an E.L. James book without being momentarily shocked that you didn’t die overnight. And of course, what has happened with Demelssia in the night? I bet you can guess!

Alessia has trespassed onto my side of the bed, and she’s nestled under my arm, her hand balled in a fist on my abdomen, her head on my chest. Her leg intertwined with mine.

She is all over me.

I was certain. And I mean certain. That this description was used almost word-for-word in one of the Fifty Shades books. I was astounded that it was not. So, this feels repetitive and overused on its own.

And my cock is wide awake and rock hard.

Oh no, I have this erection and nobody to bless with it.

My heart rate flips into overdriive as I make a mental list of all the possibilities this scenario presents: Alessia in my arms. Ready. Waiting. She is so tantilizing, so close…too close. If I roll over, she’ll be on her back, and I can finally bury myself in her. I stare up at the ceiling, praying for self-control.

If you have to use rigorous mental discipline to avoid raping a sleeping woman, you probably shouldn’t be alone with a woman in your house, Moss.

I’m so hard and want nothing more than to grab her hand and it wrap it around my erection. I’ll probably explode if I do.

I can’t believe I’m sitting here weighing whether or not it would be worth it in the grander scheme of things for him to actually do it, on the off chance that “explode” meant he would burst apart in a wet, red spray of chunks and viscera all over the god damn walls.

But before he gets a chance to molest her, Demelssia wakes up and skitters away.

She gasps and scrambles to put some space between us.

“I was enjoying your visit to my side of the bed,” I tease.

“This woman is fleeing from me in terror,” Moss Troldark thought, sexily. “I should flirt with her.”

Okay. I’m gonna quote a line here. And you’re going to either roll your eyes, laugh with bitter nostalgia, or insist that I’m making it up, that it can’t possibly be in the book.

But it is in the book.

It’s so in the book.

“Hungry?” I know I am. And not for food.

Look. Every single writer has a pet phrase they use too much. Laurell K. Hamilton has “I rarely wear base,” and “I glowed like I swallowed the moon.” Stephen King’s characters always have cracking knees. George R.R. Martin has characters eating “capons” like you can buy them at 7/11 and Jacqueline Carrey’s Phaedra doesn’t fall, she’s “measures her length on the ground.” Every writer does it.

But none of those are as annoying and cliché and just outright stupid as “And not for food.”

She nods that she’s hungry and he’s like, wait, is that “yes” or “no” and she’s all pleased that he remembered that detail about her country. And then we go through the whole Christian Grey rigmarole where Demelssia’s nightmares are magically cured by sleeping beside (and all over) Moss. He uses that moment to tell her that he dreamed about her, and then says:

“You look very desireable.”

At least he held off until she was awake? I guess? Is the best we’re gonna get here?

Then he remembers that she’s a virgin. Not a damn thought about the fact that she was kidnapped by sex traffickers. Just that she’s a virgin, and this complicates his plan.

Her simple affirmation is like an ice bath to my libido. I’ve only slept with one virgin, and that was Caroline. It ws my first time, too, and it was a disaster that nearly got us expelled from school.

Wow, now here’s some backstory I’m interested in. How do you have sex go so wrong that you get kicked out of school? And the way the rest of his thought goes makes it sound like he was literally just so bad at sex that his school expelled him:

After that my father took me to a high-class brothel in Bloomsbury.

If you’re going to start fucking girls, Maxim, you’d better learn how to fuck.

Like, does that not sound like his dad is saying, “You better learn how to fuck because you’re so awful at sex, you’re never going to get into college?”

Anyway, Moss tells Demelssia that he doesn’t want to sleep with her until he gets to know her. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t seem to consider that she might not want to get to know him or sleep with him. He’s just like, this is what I want, I want you to also want it, so we’re going to get to know each other so you’ll give me what I want.

We’re still in Moss’s POV when he goes off to take a shower and jack off while he thinks about her.

A virgin.

I frown. Why am I making such a big deal of this?

I don’t know, because you haven’t been given any assurances that you’re actually going to get to have sex with her.

At least she hasn’t been brutalized by those fuckers.

Yes, at least you don’t have to have sex with someone who has been raped. Also, I’m stuck in this place where I’m thinking, you know, on the one hand, virginity is an archaic construct, but on the other hand, how dare someone think that rape constitutes losing one’s virginity. Virginity means you’ve never had sex, and rape is an act of non-consensual violence that happens to involve sexual contact. The whole thing about “well, she wasn’t raped, so she’s a virgin,” buys into the purity culture myth that helps keep rape victims, especially young, female rape victims, in a state of constant shame over the fact that they’re “soiled.” Can we keep the evangelical nonsense out of this book, please?

Obviously, at some point, he’s going to have to think about the fact that maybe she isn’t going to want to have sex with him because of what she’s been through, right? Well, first, we have to think about what’s wrong with her that she’s still a virgin at twenty-three. He wonders if it’s because she’s religious, or if it’s because premarital sex is taboo in Albania. Now, I’m not saying premarital sex doesn’t happen in Albania, but according to my husband’s Albanian friend, sexuality is kind of taboo. Maybe that’s just her family or upbringing, but she made it sound like attitudes toward sex lean toward the conservative.

His second line of thought is that she just plain doesn’t fit his preference:

I like sexually adventurous women who know what they’re doing, know what they want, and know their limits. Breaking in a virgin is a big responsibility. I towel dry my hair.

“I towel dry my hair.” That is a fucking masterpiece. I want to frame this and hang it on the wall. He goes from, “This sex trafficking victim that I’m supposed to be protecting isn’t what I want, sexually. Also, you break in virgins like new shoes. And oh, here’s what’s happening with my hair.” It’s just so comically bad.

Honestly, this book did not start out like this! I really feel like maybe she sent them five chapters or something, they showered her with money, and nobody ever read the rest of the manuscript.

So, now he’s going to think about her trauma, right? Nope! Third on our list is whether or not she wants a long-term relationship! He’s not good at relationships! His two longest relationships were with a grasping social climber and a drug addict! Who’s in rehab! Because she did too much coke–wait a second.

Surely now he’s going to consider that maybe she might not want anything to do with him and that they’re in a situation where maybe she might not realize that refusing him is an option. Haha, nope. Nope, that never comes up, so we jump into her POV.

Demelssia is in the shower, too, thinking about how her bathroom at home was “rudimentary” and the floor had to be mopped every time anyone bathed. And this is apparently actually how it is in a lot of Albanian homes, so there’s like, one other thing that E.L. James actually got right. Note, it’s not something she’s writing in a positive light at all. All we ever hear is how much better England is than Albania.

Anyway, Demelssia gets off in the shower, too, because of course, she’s into him, despite all the other stuff I’ve been saying Moss should consider. She thinks about how safe she feels with him, how she’s never met any man like him but also she’s never met hardly any men at all.

Not having brothers and kept separate from her male cousins in social situations, her experience was limited to the few male students she met at university–

Hold up.

University.

Oh yes, that’s right. Magic credit card girl who has a childlike grasp of her own god damn language? She went to college.

Downstairs, Moss is blasting super loud music, because he knows how to behave when he has a guest. She gets dressed and goes downstairs…

To find him dancing while making her breakfast.

Remember how that exact same thing happened in Fifty Shades of Grey when Christian found Ana dancing and making breakfast? IDK, it just seems like a lot of Fifty happening in this chapter, what with the clinging to another person to chase away bad dreams, and the angst over the heroine’s virginity, and the hungry…but not for food, and now this?

But breakfast isn’t important. Demelssia finally looks out the window and turns into Dora the Explorer:

The sea!

“Deti! Deti! The Sea!”

Wanna guess what “Deti” is, from context?

She wants to go down to the sea, so they do.

The sun is shining, but it’s bitterly cold in the howling wind. The sea is a chilly blue, flecked with white surf, and we hear the boom of the waves as they crash against the cliffs on each side of the cove.

You know who else spends a lot of time on the beach in a cove surrounded by cliffs on the Cornish coast?

Wow, that was great alliteration, Jenny. A+, you deserve a Mentos.

They go back into the house and turn down the music and have a half-page discussion about the number of eggs each of them is going to eat.

This chapter is super long and this is the point where it basically repeats everything that just happened with the breakfast and going to the sea, so pardon me for skimming a bunch. They eat breakfast and Moss asks his concierge or whatever to get him a pair of boots for Demelssia then argues with her over who will do the dishes. She doesn’t want him to do them, saying it’s her job.

“Today it isn’t. You’re my guest. Go.” His tone is clipped. Stern. A frisson of apprehension runs up her spine. Please,” he adds.

Okay,” she whispers, and hurries out of the kitchen, confused and wondering if he’s angry with her.

Please don’t be angry.

Why does James think it’s so fucking romantic for her heroines to actually fear the hero? It’s the most disturbing thing.

Demelssia goes upstairs and we spend a couple of paragraphs in Moss’s POV so he can wonder what he did wrong and so he can answer the door for Danny the estate person to arrive with the boots. Then it’s back into Demelssia’s POV where she thinks about how he sounded like her abusive father.

I’m sorry, why is this sexy, again? Also, why do we need yet another E.L. James character who has an abusive parent who is compared to the love interest? What is even happening here?!

She goes downstairs and plays Bach angrily, she and Moss make up, and he asks if she…wants to go down to the beach again.

What happens when they do?

“The sea! The sea!” she cries, and twirls around, her arms in the air. Her earlier pique is forgotten, her smile is wide and her face bright, lit from within by her joy. I stride across the coarse sand and rescue her discarded woolly hat. “The sea!” she shouts again above the roar of the water.

Well, I’m glad she’s got that out of her sys–

She runs toward me with childish abandon and grabs my hand. “The sea!”

On a scale of one to “I can’t go within five-hundred feet of an elementary school,” how uncomfortable do you feel reading this?

My impression so far: I don’t mind a romantic suspense, woman-in-danger plot. I don’t mind isolating characters together in a dramatic circumstances. But this is all done so badly. There are so many opportunities for Maxim to grow and James charges past them like, “Out of the way! My horny readers need me!” in a desperate attempt to get to the sexy parts as soon as possible. For example, how would this chapter have looked if Maxim responded to Alessia’s nightmare by forsaking his own comfort and sleeping on the floor of her bedroom, or just outside the door? How would it have looked for him to have a romantic dream about her in those circumstances, then wake to fantasize not about sticking it to her while she’s unconscious but ashamed that he would have a sexual response, even one he couldn’t control, because he knows she’s been through something horrible and that shouldn’t be his first concern?

There is no reason this story couldn’t have worked as a compelling romance. It just doesn’t work as a compelling romance here because James writes trauma as if it’s something one must get over as quickly as possible in order to avoid inconveniencing the people who want to interact with you. She pays far more attention to detail when describing Maxim’s horniness than she does to Alessia’s tragedy; there are pages upon pages devoted to how much Maxim wants to bone Alessia, and then the odd paragraph or so where Alessia will think, “Zot, the smell!” or “very dark!”

Like, we don’t even know what “the smell” is. Unwashed bodies? Urine? Excrement? We haven’t found out in twelve chapters, but I can name three flower scents from this chapter alone that remind Maxim of Alessia in his sexy dream. The things Alessia remembers are unpalatable, so James glosses over them. That should have been a huge red flag to the people who edited this book that it was neither particularly well developed in terms of characterization, but also that it attempts to sanitize the horror of human trafficking. This book should never have been released in the state it’s in, especially when the changes needed are fairly small and easy to incorporate.

If you remember from the Fifty Shades of Grey recaps, that was why I wrote The Boss (and if you’re new here, you can find links to it for free in the sidebar). I wanted to prove that it was possible to write a book with similar themes without the abuse and stalking and pathologizing kink. I’m damn sure not going to try to write a sexy human trafficking book, but I know for a fact that the underlying concept here could have worked if the person writing it had a shred of human empathy. Because the opportunities are present right there in the text, just like they were with Fifty.

She just chose not to do the work.

Jealous Hater Book Club: The Mister chapter eleven or, “Beer and Crying”

E.L. James has given another interview, this one on AzCentral. 

“But with Alessia, I had to go to Albania to get a better idea of what she is like and where she’s from and all of that, because it’s actually very difficult to find information about Albania.”

I have googled literally every single thing she has gotten horribly wrong about Albania and found the answers within seconds. Your lack of knowledge is not everyone’s lack of knowledge.

When the interviewer suggests (hilariously) that Maxim is a narcissist:

“Well, I’m not sure I would go as far as to say that he’s narcissistic. I just think he’s not had to deal with so much. And I think everybody, in a sense, is a victim of circumstances, whether they’re in privilege or not, and it forms your worldview.”

Ah, yes. The victimhood of being so rich you never have to work a day in your life. May God afflict me wish such tragedy.

The article is solid gold, from her openly admitting that she couldn’t write Alessia in first-person because she couldn’t think of a way to not give away the story, calls critics vicious and nasty, opines that hate is the “opiate of the masses” and says she was “miserable” during the filming of Fifty Shades of Grey.

You know. The movie where she terrorized the screenwriter and director off the franchise with her temper tantrums until she was given carte blanche with the sequels.

All right. Time to get to the vicious, nasty opiates. The first hit is free.

Delmessia wakes up in the car in her POV.

All she sees is a piercing light above a large steel door and a smaller wooden door to the side. The rest of the view is shrouded in darkness, though in the distance she hears a faint rumble.

That will be the sea. They need to be near the sea because Poldark. They’re gonna need to brood on a cliff.

She is here. Alone with him.

She shoots him an anxious glance. Now that she’s sitting in the dark, with this man she hardly knows, she wonders at the wisdom of her decision. The only people who saw her leave with him were Magda and the security guard.

So, let’s keep in mind that our heroine is still afraid of her rescuer.

The rumble in the distance is louder. She wonders what it is.

Is she unaware that England is an island? I feel like she could put this together.

They walk through a door into, IDK, I guess some other outside place?

Together they walk to the gray wooden door. He unlocks it and pushes it open, ushering her ahead of him. He flips a switch inside the gatepost, and small lights embeded in the side of the flagstone steps light the path down to a stone courtyard.

I cannot get a picture of this in my mind. I guess I need to spend more time on Pinterest.

An imposing contemporary house lit by uplighters in the ground stands before them. Alessia marvels at its modernity–all glass and white walls, bathed in light. Maxim unlocks the front door and guides her inside. He flips another light switch, and subtle downlighters illuminate the alabaster space with a soft glow.

If uplighters and downlighters are actual terms for lighting in the UK? You’re all criminals and I’m calling the police.

They are standing in an open hallway beside an impressive cloud-gray galley kitchen that’s part of a vast wood-floored room. To the rear there are two turquoise sofas with a coffee table between them, and beyond that shelving stacked with books.

Books!

Let me guess, they don’t have those in Albania.

There’s a lot of talk about the modernity of the house, the floating staircase, the sofas, etc.

“It looks bigger than from outside,” Alessia says, intimidated by the scale and elegance of the house.

I’m sorry, Demelssia, but it seems you’ve wandered into another classic British show. Enjoy your adventures through time and space, though.

Of course, Demelssia thinks about how long it would take to clean the house. She’s been a cleaner for how long? Was she a cleaner in Albania and that’s why she thinks in this context?

She also thinks he must be a very successful composer to own the place because he hasn’t told her what he actually does for a living (nothing) yet. He asks her if she wants anything to eat or drink before she goes to bed.

“Wine? Beer? Something stronger?” he asks, and she steps closer. Where she’s from, women generally don’t drink alcohol, though she’s sneaked a raki or two, but only in the last couple of years, on New Year’s Eve. Her father doesn’t approve of her drinking.

Her father doesn’t approve of many things…

Her grandmother had given her wine. But Alessia had not cared for it. “Beer,” she says, because she’s only ever seen men drink it–and to spite her father.

Here we have what I assume is the beginning of a pattern in which Demelssia will be Super Feminist because she does quiet little things in her head because fuck the patriarchy.

I’ll get real excited about her rebellion if it ever manifests outside her head.

Perhaps the most unrealistic part of this scene, however, is that she drinks beer for the first time and enjoys it.

Moss asks her if she’s hungry, she says no, and we go into his POV. For two paragraphs.

Two.

In those two paragraphs, he thinks about how he has no clue what to do next, so he offers her a tour. And we go back to Demelssia’s POV.

Now that she’s further into the room, Alessia notices the gleaming white upright piano against the wall beside her.

A piano!

I call bullshit. How would she not notice the most important thing in the world to her? It would be like if I walked into a room and Patti LuPone was sitting quietly in a corner and I just kind of casually overlooked her. It would never, ever happen.

Moss points out the balcony.

“The sea is beyond.”

Did he think she was going to assume the sea was in the house? What a fucking weird way to put it.

She races to the glass. “I’ve never seen the sea!” she whipsers, squinting through the murky dark and flatting her nose against the cold glass in her desperation to catch a glimpse. To her disappointment, there is nothing but a jet-black night beyond.

We are at the point in the story where James is writing Alessia as a rube so simple that she doesn’t know you can’t see in the dark.

So, remember how she’s afraid of him and like…the victim of sex trafficking?

“You’re tired.” Maxim glances at his watch. “It’s half past midnight. Do you want to go to bed?”

Alessia stills, gazing at him as her heartbeat soars, and his question hangs between them full of possibility.

Bed? Your bed?

“I’ll show you to your room,” he murmurs, but neither of them moves. They stare at each other, and Alessia can’t decide whether she’s relieved or disappointed. Perhaps more disappointed than relieved–she doesn’t know why.

I don’t either! She was sitting in the car like, oh no, we’re alone, the subtext here is that I hope he doesn’t rape me. Now she’s like, I hope this man I’m afraid of will take me to bed.

I’m not sure there’s another living author who writes sexual tension so badly.

She is curious. She likes him. But she knows nothing about sex.

Just in case you were worried that she’d been sullied during her human trafficking days, don’t. She is, as someone mentioned in the comments on the last recap, the only virgin in the brothel.

True story time: I once went to a workshop at a conference in which the presenters asked for examples of modern romances based on fairytales. I mentioned Pretty Woman. One of the authors said, “No. That’s incorrect. She’s a prostitute. You can’t have a prostitute in a romance.” Like I was the stupidest person she’d ever met.

She went on to talk about her historical paranormal romance in which the heroine…worked in an old west whorehouse. But it was okay! She never actually had sex with anyone! And then she and all the bad whores died in a fire! So her ghost was a virgin!

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with so many women in this fucking genre?

Anyway, Moss takes Demelssia to her room and she sees their reflection in the window.

Mirrored in the glass, he’s tall, lean, and more than handsome, and she looks wan and scruffy beside him. In every way, they are not equals, and that’s never been more apparent than at this moment.

IDK, I think it should have probably been the most apparent when you were emptying condoms out of his wastebasket and scrubbing his john, but okay.

What does he see in me? I am only his cleaner.

That’s what I’m wondering. Not because of the cleaner thing, but because you have like, zero personality, at least where your interactions with him are concerned.

She thinks about how hot Elizaline is, and how drab she is in comparison because, again, this is Poldark.

Moss tells her that he gets how weird it must be for her to be there with him, but that he couldn’t just leave her unprotected. He tells her to think of it as a vacation so she can work through all the crap that’s happened to her.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Mos qaj.

Yeah. I’ll still notice that use that stupid repetition of three even if you switch into Albanian.

Moss gives her a kiss on the forehead and leaves her in the bedroom, where she immediately sits on the floor and cries.

In Moss’s POV, we get a “previously on” moment:

What a day!

That first sweet kiss, I groan thinking about it–interrupted by those fucking thugs–and then her sudden disappearance and mad drive to that godforsaken corner of West London.

And her revelation. Sex-trafficked.

Fuck–that was one hell of a shock.

And now we’re here. Alone.

Thanks for that. I had a comical 1980s mishap that resulted in wacky amnesia and I couldn’t remember what happened in the last two chapters.

Oh, and sorry, BTW, that your sexy moment got interrupted by a kidnapping attempt. That must have been really hard for you.

It took every shred of self-control not to pull her into my arms and…And what? Even after all she’s told me, I can’t keep my thoughts above my waist. I’m like a fucking horny schoolboy.

I think a horny schoolboy would even realize that fantasizing about a sex trafficking victim is probably a terrible thing to be doing.

Leave the woman alone.

YES. PLEASE DO.

But the truth is, I still want her and don’t my blue balls know it.

I don’t care about your balls, sir. I care about the woman who was SEX TRAFFICKED.

He goes on and on about how he knows he shouldn’t want her, but he’s infatuated, he burns for her, etc., right down to vaginal moisture:

But I want her wet and willing–I want her to want me, too. I know I could seduce her, but right now if she were to say yes, she’d be doing so for all the wrong reasons.

Besides, I promised her that I wouldn’t touch her unless she wanted me.

That should basically be your policy toward every single person in the world, but okay.

When did I acquire a conscience?

Well, you had one in the first chapter when it had a voice that spoke to you. But previous to this incident, did you not have enough of a conscience to hold you back from touching women who didn’t want to be touched by you? If so, I would recommend going to see a doctor. Or someone in a position of authority and is some kind of mandated reporter.

He realizes that due to the differences in their circumstances, they can’t be together.

And if I take advantage of her, what would that make me? No better than those fuckers with the Eastern European accents.

Is that…I mean, is that what we find villainous about them? Their Boris and Natasha schtick? Not the whole human trafficking thing?

Moss goes off to bed and hears Demelssia crying through the door of her room.

I’ve had my fill of wailing women over the last four weeks: Maryanne, Caroline, Danny, Jessie. An image of Kit’s lifeless body comes to mind, and my own grief rises raw and unexpected.

So, you hear the kidnapped woman you basically re-kidnapped and you’re like, ugh, crying women. That sucks. How can I make this all about me?

He knocks on her door before he opens it to find her on the floor sobbing.

Her grief is a reflection of my own.

No, her grief is her grief. It has nothing to do with you. He holds her and says, “I’ve got you.” Which he says, by the way, twenty times in this book in twenty similar situations. It started at the train station.

Anyway, she falls asleep in his arms and he thinks about how great it is that he can save “this beautiful girl,” which I guess means that if she was ugly, he wouldn’t give a shit that she was sex trafficked? Like, seriously, there is no way that James wanted readers to get that impression. But she put it in the story.

I wonder once more if I haunt her dreams like she haunts mine.

I’m pretty sure she probably has like, PTSD induced nightmares, but sure.

After he tucks her into bed, Moss goes to his room.

I’ve taken Alessia away from all that she knows. She’s destitute, friendless, and totally alone. Well, she has me, and I have to behave myself. “You’re going soft in your old age,” I mutter, […]

He’s…going soft because he won’t make a move on a human trafficking victim? Jesus Christ, seriously, Erika, I beg of you: pay attention to how the words you put in your books sound, in the order in which you put them.

Moss falls asleep.

It’s the shrill sound of her scream that wakes me.

She just realized what book she’s in.

My impression so far: An entire chapter of arriving at a house and going to bed. We’ll sell you the whole seat, but you’ll only need THE EDGE.