I never read the book. I couldn't read it.
I really tried. I swear, I did.
But after a few full chapters of, "I HATE this man/Why am is so ATTRACTED to this man" nonsense, I gave up and read an article that listed all the sexy parts.
And they weren't sexy. In fact, they mostly pissed me off.
Maybe it's just me, but a guy ordering me to give up all control and let him tell me what to do in bed or anywhere else is not okay.
I kept wishing he'd hooked up with a serious sistah from, say, the South Side of Chicago, who would've looked at him and done that "chicken head" thing.
And then said something like, "Fool, you mus' be out your natural mind -- Massa Lincoln freed the slaves a loooong time ago."
Now, I like erotica. A lot. I even like porn -- some of it. I'm a real 60s chick who grew up right smack dab in the middle of the so-called "sexual revolution." And I spent a few wild years traveling with some of the most notorious rock bands in the business as a rock critic and features reporter.
That may, in fact, be the problem. This book...didn't even come close to some of the scenes I've seen.
I avoided getting involved in them, too. It always seemed as if the women weren't having the same experience the guys were. But they wanted so desperately to be in with "the band," that they did what they were told. Even when what they were being told -- to do -- was obviously something they wouldn't do anywhere else, for any reason.
I wasn't havin' that. I was already in with the band, for one thing -- I was a reporter. I didn't need to sex anybody to have "access." If anything, they needed to sex me to get their names in print.
But that isn't how I roll. The only hot licks I was interested in from them were the ones they played on their guitars. And they loved me for it -- whoa, what was that again? They loved me for not doing what they wanted me to do?
There's another book in there somewhere. But it probably wouldn't sell 90 million copies.
So anyway, maybe that's why books about women who give up all control to men sexually or otherwise don't appeal to me. This one really didn't.
But a whole lotta people of all sexes apparently loved them some Fifty Shades. And could not stop talkin' about the movie trailer last week, either -- even Brian Williams snarked his way into a feature story about it on the NBC Evening News.
When it was over, he smiled and said, "My goodness, would you look at the time..." the way you do when you're trying to get away from someone you really don't want to talk to.
I hear you, brutha Williams.
But a lot of people we talk to will be talking about this movie a lot. Already are.
More power, as they say. But you can put away those handcuffs, baby. Mama don't play that...