Now that I can dance 'Sexy Bitch' on a stage
In this ode to adolescence in the 2000s, there comes a point where I don't know where his memories end and mine begin.
PalmIt's the late 2000s and it sounds Sexy Bitch, by David Guetta featuring Akon. I just downloaded it to my computer and put it on the pink iPod nano that accompanies me every day on the way to and from school. When it's time for recess, I'll show it to my friend, who I know will suddenly appreciate that it's a theme. We'll imagine ourselves dancing to it, wearing the incredibly uncomfortable white patent leather high heels we bought out of sheer impatience, because we haven't had a chance to show them off yet. For now, we only wear them to take photos at home and upload them to Tuenti. This weekend she'll sleep over at my house, we'll order some pizzas, and then we'll go find a movie at the video store. The latest and goriest of Saw, if possible, thank you. It's not for girls our age, but we're grown up now, and my dad turns a blind eye. Just like when, after dinner, we locked ourselves in my room and blasted our latest musical discovery on the speakers.Damn girl. Damn, you's a sexy bitch.". We don't understand any of the lyrics, although we can guess what "sexy" means.
We haven't seen any of them live yet, but we're already longing to get up on stage. In the meantime, we try to do all the things they won't let us do. I'm going to sleep at a friend's house, and my friend, who's coming over to mine. Where we'll really be, is at a party. DNI. Every now and then, we'll walk around to see who we run into, to feel noticed, for a while, by some scoundrel.
"There were four or five of us, or probably more than half of the dolls our age, who wandered around with a plastic cup in their hands, looking for someone to look for us," says actress Carolina Yuste in her philosophical-choni novel. All my violence is yours (Hat, 2025). In this ode to adolescence in the 2000s, there comes a point where I don't know where their memories end and mine begin. "That instant, that moment-now when I'm standing in the middle of the dance floor with my eyes probably closed and my lips turned out, is one of the few in which I care very little about the gaze of anyone who dares to judge me." These oases existed. We shared them. We took refuge there, while we waited for the age at which we would truly be grown up to arrive.
It's 2025 and it's playing Sexy Bitch, by David Guetta featuring Akon. We're partying at a club with my friends, and one of them pulls out his digital camera, which is also back in fashion. He takes a picture of me, and I experience what it's like, literally, to be one. flashbackThe music and the light send me straight to a moment just like this one. déjà vu and I tell myself that it's over, that all those years have flown by and that this was the moment we had longed for. Dolly Alderton, in Everything I know about love (Column, 2023), painted a precise portrait of how I feel right now: "Thank you for so vividly idealizing the minutiae of adulthood when I was a teenager, because the relief of finally living them has made almost nothing seem like a burden to me (...). of shampoo bottles; that the lights in the house don't go out at a certain time; that I can stay up watching movies or writing until 4 a.m. on a weekday if I want.
The next day I wake up at my dad's house, where I slept over so I wouldn't have to take the car the night before. Despite my hangover, I suggest we look at the photos he keeps like a treasured heirloom inside a laptop that miraculously still turns on. And there it is again, the 2000s, my pink iPod, the leopard print, the pajama parties. I look tenderly at that doll and, for once, I don't feel sorry for myself. For once, I want to impress her. On the car ride back to my team, playlist to keep me in that temporal nebula, to stimulate my memory a little more, to help me recreate the small details I thought I'd forgotten. The Black Eyed Peas, Nelly Furtado, Rihanna are playing. And I ask that doll what she thinks about adult life. My dear, I don't know if it lived up to your expectations. In the end, it turns out it was much more than dancing. Sexy Bitch with friends. But it's well worth it.
