Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Sybil Vane.”
    â€œNever heard of her,” said Helen.
    â€œI’m afraid it may remain that way,” said Dorian. “She’s a mediocre actress—too mediocre to be terrible, in fact. She merely blends in with the dreadful scenery.”
    Helen laughed at the sound of her own wisdom coming out of Dorian’s mouth. Like any disease looking to thrive, it was good news to be contagious.
    â€œMy dear,” she began. “No tawdry girl like that could be anything but mediocre. She’s designed to be a decorative sex object. Girls like her never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.”
    Dorian considered Helen’s words. He thought of how beautiful Rosemary was, with eyes so blue they could color the sky; her bashful smile; her chestnut hair that fell like dark leaves around her pale, heart-shaped face. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. The curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily. Her cool, ivory hands around his hard cock had been so delicate and willing to learn.
    â€œThere are beautiful women who are also geniuses,” said Dorian, returning the glasses to Helen’s lap. “Do you think my nature so shallow?”
    â€œNo, I think your nature so deep. My dear Dorian, I am analyzing women at present for the very motive of your pleasure. But you seem to gaze upon these gazelles as potential players in actual conversation. For that sport, there are only a few women in London worth talking to, and you’re talking to one of them now.”
    â€œWhat about Rosemary?” he asked. “Would you relegate her to the lowly majority, or does she get residence in your high quarters?”
    â€œRosemary is a fine painter,” Helen said. “She can articulate a paintbrush wondrously. But she puts everything that is charming in her into her work. The consequence is that she has nothing left for life but her prejudices, her principles, and her pitifully common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently, are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of secondrate sonnets makes one quite irresistible. Such a person lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize. Rosemary is no exception. Why, the picture she painted of you! All her desires turned to oil.”
    Dorian shook his head. To hear of Rosemary discussed this way was maddening. He couldn’t remember ever having felt so defensive of—nor intrigued by—someone. He thought of Rosemary’s little animal screams as he plunged into her, and how she’d writhed under his mouth when he feasted between her thighs, moving her closer and closer to oblivion. How sweet she had tasted. And what desires she had—turned to oil, perhaps, but also to sexual juices that had run down his lips and chin. Helen had no idea!
    â€œRosemary has not merely art in her, but she has personality also, and you have often told me that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age.”
    â€œYes, that does sound like something I would say,” said Helen. She was distracted, fishing around in her reticule. She withdrew a plump cigarette.
    â€œYou fucked her, didn’t you?” said Helen.
    Dorian felt his mouth drop open. Well, she had some idea, alright.
    â€œOh, the scandal of it all,” mocked Helen. She lit the cigarette and sucked with a hiss. The musky smell of opium enveloped them.
    â€œYou must have a cigarette,” continued Helen. “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.”
    She held the