From Bad Bunny to menopause: from talking about parties and to talking about doctors

The most enthusiastic of the group sends us advertisements for throwback parties to the WhatsApp group in the hope of exciting us and forcing us to see each other. I rejected one because the ad used songs by El Canto del Loco and La Oreja de Van Gogh. I have no masochistic inclinations. There are those who refuse "remember" sessions. The commodification of nostalgia is exhausting and it's as if our parents got together to dance to songs by Karina or Los Diablos, like in that joint tour of old glories they called Mágicos 60. With the adolescent insolence of those times, it seemed like something for old people. Now, a faction of friends is planning a plan that invites us to live on the edge: a snack on a Sunday at ten in the morning.

We meet at a cafe that was called something like Antojo’s or Capricho’s, with a Saxon genitive that should only be allowed in neighborhood hairdressers so their salons would look international and luxurious.

I like the bar as much as Amaia Montero's voice. A menu full of avocado and bread rolls for ten euros. Since I arrive with my face bashed up – my eye, like an eggplant – as a result of a fainting spell, I am obliged to be the first to update the others on how my life is going. Well, worse than a Saxon genitive on a shop sign. I drink a bit of my friend's smoothie. "I love it," he assures, although I think it tastes like crushed grass. He tells us that his father has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and has started chemotherapy. Another friend is panting and wheezing, as if the air conditioning isn't working at full capacity. Early pre-menopause. "It comes and goes. It drives me crazy. And until you haven't had your period for a year, they don't declare you menopausal," she explains. I find the idea of menstruation as the Guadiana fascinating. "With the 70 euros the psychologist charges me per session, I won't dedicate a single minute to this topic. Let him go and leave me alone," she concludes.

Between my dark glasses inside the cafe, the hot flashes, and the prospect that if we were worse off we'd be dead, I show them how they left my chest at the Emergency Room to give me an EKG. A half-shorn sheep. We laugh and order another batch of fancy mini-croissants, renamed with a name I no longer remember so they can charge more for them, while we speculate whether in the throwback parties of 2046 Bad Bunny songs will already be playing.