Section 3 says “The Dominant and the Submissive agree and acknowledge.” Hmm-two categories of contract language, neither of them appropriate.

Let’s consider just a few of the contract’s failings: Grey is a telecommunications mogul, and he has evidently absorbed the semi-literate contract verbiage regurgitated by his high-priced lawyers.

Steele might be at risk of falling asleep before the first thwack of a riding crop, or whatever. But based on the ponderous and mealy-mouthed prose of his contract, he’s no hunka hunka burning S&M love. If I could be bothered to read the book itself, I might end up with a more rounded view of the Mr. But I saw in Dowd’s column that the first volume, “ Fifty Shades of Grey ,” contains a contract, so of course in the name of art I had to check it out.įive minutes later and $9.99 poorer, there before me on my Kindle was the contract in question, in chapter 11. After all, I’m hardly in the target demographic.

(The names alone scream “Crushingly banal!”)Įven though I apparently live in the epicenter of this phenomenon, I had been prepared to ignore it. I had been vaguely aware of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, described in this Maureen Dowd column as “bondage-themed romanticas that have evoked hysteria, whipping up a frenzy with the housewives of Long Island and rippling out from there.” They feature a dashing mogul, Christian Grey, and the object of his stern affections, the winsome Anastasia Steele.

Fifty shades of grey contract word doc