The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 23

08.01.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

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Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

23. [Plate 25]

Spanking

Not everything we want is good for us. Consider our perversions. When we

were young and beautiful, perhaps, we enjoyed dressing up in latex and

leather and being whipped to a fare-thee-well. Which made for a good

cardiovascular workout, but left unsightly welts. With the passing

decades, we may well have become increasingly reluctant to bare our

ever-less-perfect flesh to the judgmental eyes of sadists who, whatever

their virtues may be, do tend toward perfectionism.

So perforce we must journey from the receiving of pain to the giving of

it. But that too has its use-by date. A certain tendency toward the gaunt

and haggard only enhances the dominatrix, of course. But with age one

grows a little stooped, a little tired, a little soft around the jowls.

What executive, desirous of a refreshing grovel, can honestly fear being

slapped around by a woman who looks like his sweet old grandmother? What

satisfaction can we derive from fear that is only make-believe?

There comes a time when we're looking at the end of all our illicit

pleasures.

Thank God for grandchildren! The little buggers are forever breaking

this, stealing that, drawing on the wall with jam. And when they do, we

can take a shoe to their little behinds and wallop the bejesus out of

them, They wail in terror, and that's satisfying too– knowing that we can

still instill fear. It eases that tension that can only be undone by the

reception or administration of pain.

Best of all, it's good for the grandchildren! It prepares them for the

real world.

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This is the 23rd of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

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