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

Reason 41

12.12.02

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.

41. [Plate 8]

Grace Violated

Oh, God. Oh, damn. Oh, no. This is just too awful. No kidding, there

honestly and truly are some things that man was not meant to know. What

your child screaming in pain and terror sounds like. How it feels to lose

a part of your body in an industrial accident. The agony of realizing

that you've done something unforgivable. The fact that these things

happen all the time doesn't excuse them. If anything, it only makes them

worse.

I'm not going to tell you this story. I'm not!

Grace was raped. You wouldn't think this would happen to a whore. Any

sensible villain would order the all-night special and simply not pay

afterwards. But rape isn't about sex (read Susan Brownmiller's book if

you doubt me), it's about power.

But that's not the worst of it.

True story: Many years ago, a civic group I was involved with had for a

guest speaker somebody from Women Organized Against Rape. This

organization exists to support the victims of sexual violence, to offer

them counsel when they need it most, and to do their best to get the

criminals behind bars. After her presentation, one white-haired gent

raised his hand. "Can you tell us about a case you were involved in?" he

asked.

The woman then told us about an infant ? an infant! ? who had been

molested by her sitter.

"Could you tell us about a different case?" the man asked.

So the woman, who admitted she'd had grotesque luck so far, told us about

another assault upon another infant.

The man cleared his throat. "How about a case where the victim was a

little older?"

There are problems with the male gender, granted. But only rarely am I

embarrassed to be a man. This creep made me cringe. Because what he was

looking for was not insight, but a jolly good rape fantasy to take home

with him.

In a strange way this sensitized me. Since then I've noticed that movie

and television depictions of rape are always shot in extreme close-up,

with fast cuts, sweaty flesh, little grunts, and heavy breathing. Which

is to say, they're filmed sexy. The scene in Stanley Kubrick's A

Clockwork Orange in which Little Alex's rival droogs are interrupted just

before gang-raping a large-breasted blonde, whose clothing they've

snickeringly cut away from her with their bolshy big knives feels strange

and inhuman because it's shot objectively, from a distance, with a fixed

camera. It's not shot ? as virtually all other media rapes are ? from the

viewpoint of the rapist.

Susan Brownmiller's book is titled Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.

It makes rape out to be a very bad thing. I read as far into it as I

could bear to read, and then I set it aside. At that moment, I promised

myself that I would not depict a rape in my fiction before finishing the

book. And I have not, so I have not.

There! You've been spared the pain of going through a graphic description

of exactly what happened to Grace. I know you're grateful. I'm absolutely

certain you didn't want to hear the details. You're happier without them,

I swear. They were nasty. They were gross. They were nothing you wanted

in your mind.

I'm sure you'll find another way to get your rocks off.

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This is the 41st 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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