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Bodies in Freedom: a Barcelona Story

We fucked like there was no tomorrow. In a frenzy. Bodies yielded to pleasure. I got to your place late after being told that J had agreed to run for office. That was a relief and it made my decision easier. If J stood, I didn’t have to. I got his message when I got home, after you’d awkwardly left me at the night bus stop to go off and lose yourself in a night that promised nothing. I saw the message and expected to feel shaky but what ran through my whole body was a feeling of being rid of a gag that had been suffocating me. I’d almost say I started breathing again. When I got to your place, I was still disconcerted but feeling this buzz of freedom. I wanted to fill with my body the whole space that had just opened up before me. I was drunk, high on freedom. You were high on coke, not that I cared (almost always I’ve not cared, I don’t do drugs, that’s your thing, that’s your life and I’m not going to judge it or share it either). I thought I understood that you wanted to talk, and I didn’t care about that either. I didn’t know how long this sensation of being boss of my own life, which I’d forsaken so long ago, was going to last.

I don’t know how many hours it lasted. I remember the dampness of bodies, I remember caresses, invading you with my pleasure because there was too much for me, I remember the feeling that I was occupying the whole room, I remember not feeling cold and confusing your moistness for mine, I remember a knee digging into my chest but don’t know if it was yours or mine, I remember feeling you inside me and all of a sudden I was coming then guiding your hand to my clitoris, I remember teeth on my neck, lots of caressing, your disconcerted expression wanting to go further but not knowing where to look for me. That night was mine, from then on, for the first time in ages. I remember thinking, “I’ve got to sleep” while you, glued to my back were licking my shoulder and my hand was looking for your dick and I was wanting to take it into my mouth without separating my back from your body, and then your mouth explored my lips and ended up with my vagina. I remember holding you between my legs, and I remember you pushing my body into desire spread over a mattress without sheets. I remember my wetness all over your body, feeling that you were the one who was seeping out my flow. I remember not understanding your line of coke on the bedside table and that I didn’t care. I went to sleep only to wake up, looking for your body, which had already found mine and we were fucking again, moaning for me, moaning in your ear, wanting more, but not like wanting more as usual because there’s desire that goes further, and like never before, wanting more because, alone, I couldn’t unpack this pleasure and these wild cravings of being that had got inside me. For a moment I thought that some of the life that had been stolen from me in the last few years was clawing at the bed. I remember rediscovering animal instincts in your bed, recognising myself, wanting to tell you and not knowing how. I was sure you knew that I was using you and you were letting yourself be used as if because of an unpaid debt. I remember the wet bed and hot bodies before leaving to go to work.

A few days later it all started and standing for election was once more an option. I remember how I clung to these memories to hold back the few glimmers of doubt that appeared as I watched the gates closing. On the other side was my freedom, our bodies, life.

Gala Pin was a Barcelona City councilor from 2015 to 2019.