Anatomy Of a Reunion | Translation

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Translated by MC Editorial

[Daniel]: This is Radio Ambulante from NPR. I’m Daniel Alarcón.

1990, Mexico City.  

Claudia Gaona was a student at a university in the north of the city when, in her fifth semester, her morning class was transferred to the afternoon. She was 20 years old. Feeling nervous, she sat at the back of the classroom and was talking to a friend when she saw a young man come in…

[Claudia Gaona]: Tall, thin, with the legs of a soccer player.

[Daniel]: Slightly wavy hair, dressed in the fashion of the time, with pleated trousers and a round-necked T-shirt.

[Claudia]: He walked with confidence to the front of the room, showing off, like an actor. A flirt, very charming, and he greeted all the women like this: “Oh, hello sweetheart, hello love.” And I thought, Who does this guy think he is?

[Daniel]: His name was Jorge Moreno. Claudia noticed immediately how popular he was. He greeted everyone and hugged some of the girls. He seemed happy. He also remembers it that way. He always liked those first days of school. This is Jorge: 

[Jorge Moreno]: At the beginning of each semester, you wanted to find out who the new pretty girls were, you know?

[Daniel]: When he saw her, Jorge recognized Claudia.

[Jorge]: I had seen her at a breakfast, where the morning and afternoon students ate together, and she seemed like a very pretty girl to me. But that was all. 

[Daniel]: After that first class, he and some of his classmates gathered outside the classroom to smoke. Claudia and her friend approached him and asked for a cigarette. Jorge, the only one in his group who didn’t smoke, got them one through a friend and they started talking. First, about university things.

[Claudia]: “Hey, let’s go make photocopies.” Or, “We’re going to do such-and-such,” or, “Lend me your class notes…”

[Daniel]: But they also realized that they had common interests and tastes, in particular, music and dancing. What you heard on the radio at that time were Caifanes, Timbiriche and romantic music in Spanish. Jorge sang songs by his favorite singer, Emmanuel.

[Jorge]: I don’t care, when you look at me I become a king. I made a promise to myself a few days ago… 

[Daniel]: In addition to getting along quite well, the physical attraction between the two was very strong.

[Jorge]: Physically, I really liked her face. She had that naïve, innocent look when you talked to her. But she was also very cheerful, but also very funny, but also very intelligent. I liked that. I liked, for example, how she dressed. She had a nice body; she wore short skirts. Sometimes she wore a miniskirt, other times she wore a long skirt.

[Claudia]: His athletic body, his height, and when he hugged me, I felt protected; when he is standing, I am as tall as his chest, so with just one of his hugs, I get lost. 

[Daniel]: Almost three months after they met, they kissed for the first time and soon after, they became a couple. They became inseparable. They studied together, Claudia accompanied him to his soccer games, they went to a lot of parties and were the sensation on the dance floor. 

[Jorge]: We loved parties. We danced to whatever they played. I really like dancing salsa, cumbia, disco, pop… 

[Daniel]: They had a great relationship and sex life. From the beginning, they laid down very clear rules:

[Claudia]: We did like the ten commandments. We didn’t write them down, but we did mention: “Let’s see what is okay and what is not okay.“

[Jorge]: “I don’t want us to fool ourselves; if you are no longer comfortable with me, it may be the sex, the way I treat you, the way we live, whatever it is. Before we do something, let’s talk about it, let’s find a solution because in the end we are going to be a couple for life.“

[Claudia]: “We are going to talk to each other sincerely; if we like something, or if something bothers us, are we going to say it? Yes. And if there is no solution and each one goes their own way, that’s okay too.” 

[Daniel]: Three years later, they got married, and after a few months, their first child was born. Life seemed to be smiling on them.

When they married, Jorge and Claudia moved into his parents’ house, a large space with a vacant lot that over time they had turned into a soccer field. It was next to a factory with high walls, over seven meters high.

One day in 1997, Jorge was getting ready for a family party, when an employee of the factory asked him for help. He wanted Jorge to climb up and get a soccer ball that had ended up there after one of the games. Jorge hesitated. He had done it a few days earlier…

[Jorge]: And I had sworn that I would never go up there again because I had been very scared, very scared. The wind blew strong at a height of seven, eight meters or so.

[Daniel]: But still, he climbed up.

[Jorge]: With the ball in my hand, on the roof of the factory, the sheet broke, and I fell from a height of seven meters.

[Daniel]: It all happened very quickly, but he has a clear memory of that moment, the man from the factory screaming.

[Jorge]: Panchito began to scream like crazy, “An ambulance! Get an ambulance!”

[Daniel]: Jorge lost consciousness. Claudia was at home with her son when she heard the screams.

[Claudia]: I didn’t know who was screaming, but I knew he was the one who had fallen. I ran out like a madwoman, trying to try to get into the factory. I didn’t even remember that I left my son sitting in bed with a temperature. I ran in and found him on the floor in a pool of blood, just like in the Ghost movie, when he’s like that. And I held him and said, “Don’t die, hold on.” 

[Daniel]: She is not sure when she called the ambulance or how she got to the hospital. The next thing she remembers is being in the emergency room, with her stomach in knots and her heart racing. 

[Claudia]: Suddenly my hands started to… deform, like stiffen, like… my fingers were going every which way, and I got even more scared because I said, What is happening to me? 

[Daniel]: In her head, only one phrase kept on repeating itself:

[Claudia]: Don’t let him die. Don’t let him die. Don’t let him die. 

[Daniel]: Some time passed—it could have been one, two, three hours—until Claudia approached a couple of very young residents. She wanted to know whether they could give her an initial diagnosis.

[Claudia]: They were smiling a lot, laughing out loud. And they came and someone asked them whether they would give us the diagnosis of the patient. I remember “Well, let’s see, you tell her.” “No, you tell her.” “No, you.” And I said, “Well, whoever it is, just tell me.” And one of them stands up and says to my face, “Well, I’m going to tell you things as they are. Your husband has a T6-T7 spinal cord injury, he punctured his lung, he fractured his skull… He’s never going to walk again. When he realizes that he can’t walk, he’s going to want to commit suicide. And if Superman couldn’t do it with all his money, then you certainly can’t.”  

[Daniel]: In an instant, the life of a happy couple was completely transformed. Today’s story, which Claudia and Jorge are going to tell us, is about intimacy and what happens when the way two bodies relate to each other changes drastically.  

We’ll be back after a break. 

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Our production assistant, Selene Mazón, produced this story. Here is Selene: 

[Selene Mazón]: Hearing what the resident told her, Claudia was speechless for a second. And then, full of rage, but keeping her voice under control, she answered him: 

[Claudia]: “Well, you know what? You’re not God to tell me what’s going to happen and what’s not going to happen. You’d better tell me what you can do and what you can’t do.” 

[Selene]: Whether they answered or not, Claudia doesn’t remember. She only knows that she went back to the waiting room and cursed them in her mind.

Jorge was connected to a respirator, completely sedated. Claudia had asked her parents to look after her son during the day so she could be at the hospital with him. She arrived very early in the morning and left very late, anxious to receive news. She smoked a pack of cigarettes every day and prayed all the time. The daily medical reports only increased her anguish.

[Claudia]: Sometimes you would go for a visit in the morning and they would tell you, “No, he is very ill, go find a funeral service because he will not survive today,” and then you would go in the afternoon and they would say, “Well, he is getting better, but he can’t breathe on his own.” So, honestly, all I asked was that he wouldn’t die.

[Selene]: Ten days after the accident, Jorge opened his eyes. He didn’t understand anything. He barely remembered the fall and couldn’t feel parts of his body. He was not told his diagnosis, perhaps so as not to overwhelm him or perhaps because at times like that, the most important thing was to know that he had woken up. They only told him a few isolated things: that he had fallen, that he had undergone several surgeries, that he was receiving treatment, that he shouldn’t be discouraged…

[Jorge]: “You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine. As soon as we can, we’re going to send you to the Colonia Hospital for rehab.”

[Selene]: And so it was. A few days later, he was transferred. To welcome him, a doctor visited him, accompanied by several young doctors. 

[Jorge]: And everyone was standing around me, examining me. And the doctor would say, “Look.” And he would brush my legs. I couldn’t feel anything. They were doing a lot of tests on me, hitting my knees with a hammer… I couldn’t feel anything.

[Selene]: After a few minutes, the doctor said to him: 

[Jorge]: “You will never walk again.” Just like that, very… very dry, very hard. “Here you will learn to be independent.” 

[Selene]: Jorge didn’t want to believe him. That night, the doctor in charge of preparing the medical report came to see him; she asked what he did, how he felt… Jorge took the opportunity to talk about what had happened in the morning. He wanted a second opinion.

[Jorge]: I told her, “Hey, I want to see the director of the hospital, because the one who told me I’m never going to walk again is crazy.” And she said, “He is the director.” I felt horrible.

[Selene]: The doctor explained the diagnosis: a complete T6-T7 spinal cord injury. In other words, the fall had severed his spinal cord, the part responsible for sending messages from the brain to the rest of the body, at chest height. From then on, he would not be able to move and would have no feeling from his nipples to his feet. He would only have some involuntary movements. She explained that, up to that point, there was no medical procedure that could help him walk again. 

[Jorge]: And then I started crying. She asked me what had hurt me the most in my life before the injury, and I told her it was my dad’s death, which had happened a few years earlier, when I was 21.

[Selene]: His father had never met Claudia or his grandson. After listening to him, the doctor asked whether he would have preferred to die and be an absentee father in his son’s life, or would he rather focus on his rehabilitation and move forward for his family. Jorge didn’t say anything.

It was a long night. The doctor accompanied him for a while, but he could hardly sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about what his life would be like in a wheelchair, about his son, about Claudia, about how he would support them from then on.

During the first few weeks in the rehabilitation hospital, Jorge focused on familiarizing himself with his new physicality. He felt like a child who had to learn many things. The first, very important, was to keep his torso balanced.

[Jorge]: My body tended to go all over the place. I wanted to move my arms, and suddenly the weight would get the better of me and I would fall without any control.

[Selene]: The absence of feeling from his chest down made it very difficult to sit upright. To stabilize his spine, a bar had been put on his back and he had to exercise. To do this, they asked him to raise his hands…

[Jorge]: Put them to one side and start getting more balance. There were other machines, like a pony, where you would get up with the strength of your arms and start gaining strength again.

[Selene]: He also had to learn very basic and essential tasks, from moving around in a wheelchair to controlling his sphincters. 

[Jorge]: It’s the same with children. At first, when you’re a child, you just happen to go anywhere and that’s why you have to wear diapers all the time. 

[Selene]: To prevent that, he had to learn to schedule his bowel movements through massages and routines. He also had a catheter placed in his bladder to drain the urine. From then on, he would have to change it periodically to avoid any kind of infection.

[Jorge]: As a person with disabilities, you lose a lot of decorum. Being seen naked by nurses, doctors, your wife. There were even times when my family had to help me, maybe my sister, maybe my mother, maybe my brother. Because at that particular moment there was no nurse to support me. And there was no other way. I had to put up with it, to have them clean me. 

[Selene]: Jorge decided that the best way to live through the changes in his life from then on would be to accept them, even sometimes taking them with humor:

[Jorge]: I have always been very conceited. I have always liked my face and my eyes. My eyes remind me a lot of my father’s eyes, the same color as his, honey-colored. And so I would jokingly say, “The good thing is that nothing happened to my face.”

[Selene]: He was visited constantly by friends and family, and felt lucky for that. Also, word got around the hospital that he had a soccer field, and people started renting it for their games. That extra income gave him some encouragement.

By that point, the doctors and nurses at the hospital knew Jorge and Claudia. Sometimes, when they went to see Jorge, they would stay and chat with him for a while, and that was when he started to hear about something that happened very often at the hospital:

[Jorge]: “Do you think the young guy in the room over there has been ditched now? What do you know—the person on the first floor has been ditched by his partner.” 

[Selene]: For some couples, disability became too overwhelming. And although he was convinced of the solidity of his relationship with Claudia, he could not help but doubt. So one day he gathered his courage and said to her:

[Jorge]: “I love you, I want you, you are an intelligent woman, very strong, with many virtues, a beautiful woman. If I had died, I am convinced that you would have found a very good partner. And if at any time you want to… well, there’s nothing I can do, I will understand.”

[Selene]: Claudia remembers everything in slow motion, like a silent movie. But she had a clear answer: 

[Claudia]: “I’m with you for who you are, for how you treat me, for how we get along, not for whether you walk or not. I didn’t marry you for your legs,” I told him, “I’m with you through thick and thin, and we’re going to get through it no matter what; you’re alive.”

[Daniel]: We’ll be back after a break.

[Daniel]: We’re back. Selene Mazón picks up the story.

[Selene]: Three months after the accident, in early May 1997, Jorge left the hospital with instructions to continue doing his rehabilitation exercises.

The next few months were spent adapting the house. Ramps were built in the yard and hallways. They installed a chain from the ceiling in his room, similar to a swing, so that Jorge could hold on, pull himself up, and sit up by himself. They bought exercise bars and mats.

Claudia learned to bathe him, identify whether his body had sores or bruises, change his daily dressings, change his catheter… But despite her initial optimism, she began to feel an enormous weight. Jorge’s life and health were practically in her hands. She was afraid of making a mistake, of not knowing what to do.  

[Claudia]: I was scared, then. I said, What should I do? There were times when I said, I would like to run and run and run and forget about things for a minute.

[Selene]: Her way of dealing with all this was to focus on the day to day, on the progress she saw in Jorge.

For his part, he tried to maintain a positive attitude. He put effort into his exercises and into doing certain tasks on his own, such as bathing or moving from bed to chair, to avoid putting too much strain on Claudia. But it wasn’t easy, of course. His wheelchair, known as a clinic, was large, heavy, with small wheels and armrests on the sides. He got frustrated with some practical things, like not being able to reach something in the cupboard or when he couldn’t fit through a tight spot. Maybe what affected him most was not being able to play soccer with his son as he did before. 

[Jorge]: When I started playing soccer with my son again, I felt that pain, because maybe my son expected me to kick the ball back to him, and I couldn’t.

[Selene]: He was also uncomfortable going to parties. 

[Claudia]: He didn’t want to go to parties, because he said that he never used to sit down at parties. He was up and dancing all the time. Then his own brothers would ask Jorge for permission to dance with me, and I felt kind of uncomfortable. I mean, I get along really well with them and everything, there’s all the trust in the world, but I felt bad. I said, “No, just don’t ask me to dance, don’t ask me to dance, I mean, it’s all right.”

[Jorge]: We stopped going to some parties for that very reason, because it’s boring to go to a party and just watch people and eat while everyone else is having fun. 

[Selene]: Once they had adapted a little better to their new routine—medical appointments, catheter changes, hygiene, scheduling bowel movements—Jorge began to find a way to do or modify some of the activities he enjoyed before the accident, such as going to the movies, playing soccer with his son, no longer kicking the ball, but instead being a goalkeeper in bed or refereeing in a game. And among those things, there was one that timidly came up again. First, maybe with a hug…

[Jorge]: Maybe you hug her and put your hand on her chest like you did before.

[Selene]: Then, maybe a different sort of kiss…

[Jorge]: Maybe you start giving those passionate kisses again, not just the “Thank God you’re okay” kind of kiss.

[Selene]: A different physical contact, beyond just caring.

[Selene]: When I suggested that we have an open conversation about their sex life, Jorge and Claudia agreed, mainly because they know that there are a lot of questions, misconceptions and myths surrounding people with disabilities.

[Jorge]: A person with disabilities is like that, they don’t have sex, they are asexual, they don’t get any enjoyment, they don’t live

[Selene]: It’s this idea that people with disabilities are asexual; they “turn off” their sexual desire or they simply don’t have it. I read a study asking a question that made me curious: How much does a person’s sexual experience change after getting a discapacity?

[Selene]: For Claudia and Jorge, it was not an easy or quick process. It took them some time to adapt to the changes and resume their sex life after the accident. Not for lack of interest, but because, at first, the daily grind forced them to focus on more practical tasks. But also because it was not easy for Jorge to be completely unembarrassed.

[Jorge]: Nobody likes having to have their diaper changed. It’s uncomfortable because just picture it—you partner changes your diaper in the morning, or they change your diaper and then we’re going to have sex. 

[Selene]: I asked Claudia whether this was something that bothered her.

[Claudia]: Well, I didn’t feel that it affected me much. When you have a baby, he might vomit, he might poop, he might pee, he might do it at the wrong time. You have to change him anyway, and that might change your plans. I mean, it’s just the same. I had already gone through that with my son. You love the person and you’re not going to stop loving him because of that. “Hey, but he pooped on his clothes…” Well, sure, just as if I spill my beer right now and now I’m dirty and I have to wash up. The same thing happens if he gets dirty. No, I didn’t think of it as, “Oh my God, what a cross I’m carrying.” It wasn’t like that.

[Selene]: Jorge’s body was new territory. It was a process of small steps. First acknowledging and exploring it and, over time, regaining the desire. 

[Claudia]: Just like when we started the relationship, you get to know it little by little, you see, “Oh, I like this, I don’t like this, this is possible, this is not possible. Now it’s possible. At this moment it’s not possible.”

[Selene]: Following the accident, Claudia and Jorge strengthened the communication they had established when they first began their relationship. Those ten commandments that Claudia talked about at the beginning of this episode. This forced them to go further, to be vulnerable, to explore, to talk about it.

[Claudia]: Maybe at times you just let things happen and that’s all, but you don’t say anything. So, as you do it, there is this need we have, to learn day by day and adapt to the conditions we both face.

[Selene]: For example, positioning yourself in a certain way to prevent Jorge’s catheter from getting pulled or stuck and causing him pain. But also other things at a physiological level. Because of his injury, Jorge has no feeling in his genital area. Nor does his arousal translate into erections or ejaculations. That’s why it caught his attention that as soon as he and Claudia began to explore each other more, some parts of his body that were dormant began to awaken little by little. 

[Jorge]: And you discover other erogenous zones of the body. The ones where you discover pleasure. It happens naturally. Suddenly, one day she starts kissing you and you say, “That felt so nice. Let’s see, keep doing that, keep doing that.” I really like it when she nibbles my forearm right here; it tickles me and I like it. I don’t remember feeling the same excitement that I get now when she suddenly kisses me. 

[Selene]: This seems important because it speaks to how little we know about our own body. How often we grew up associating pleasure with certain parts of it, as if the rest didn’t exist. This also happened to Claudia. That’s why I asked them to make me a list of those other ways they have discovered that give them pleasure…

[Jorge]: A very nice hug, sometimes a few kisses on the neck.

[Claudia]: Biting the ear… 

[Jorge]: Kisses on the chest. 

[Claudia]: Nibbling on the arms, eh… Biting here on the lower part of the neck, on the back, the shoulder.

[Selene]: Playing, experimenting, imagining. And that’s why they sometimes do role-playing games.

[Jorge]: Or simply to break up the monotony. “Hey, today you’re the nurse,” and as part of that show… I mean, it’s not just like, “Nurse, I dressed sexy and now I came and now I didn’t.”

[Claudia]: With a script and the whole thing. And don’t call me Claudia. My name isn’t Claudia. I have a different name. I mean, not that. 

[Jorge]: Just imagine that we could even make a soap opera.

[Claudia]: There are times when it happens to us, it goes on and on, and we continue role-playing and then, “Wait,” I mean…”

[Jorge]: “Let’s see where we were.” Yeah.

[Claudia]: The thing is that…

[Jorge]: It’s just that, I swear, all of a sudden…

[Claudia]: We make the story so long and we bring in other characters and other things, like, well, what you told me…

[Selene]: They joke about having practically recreated soap operas like “María Mercedes,” a 90s classic with actress-singer Thalía.

[Jorge]: But it is part of what has enriched our relationship. Sometimes it even makes you laugh. Here you are, well into your whole plot pretending to be the neighbor who went to fix your bed because it creaked, so I arrived and she confessed that all of a sudden she was… I came here to fix the bed. Now I am fixing the light bulb, the light bulb.

[Claudia]: Yes, that’s it, that’s it. 

[Selene]: They had to try new things, or at least reinterpret them for their new context. And that includes experiencing orgasms in different ways.

[Jorge]: If you want to compare it to what an orgasm was like before, you can’t, but compared to how you feel now, yes, there are moments when it feels very good, good with the caresses, and there are times when, sure, you do get to feel so much that you know you can’t hold back any longer. I don’t know whether that’s a paraorgasm, an orgasm.

[Claudia]: I have felt them. But even if I don’t reach them, I don’t need them. I mean, it’s not a big deal. There will be a time when it happens. 

[Selene]: In the end, that is not the most important thing. It is the process, the support, the exploration. Because, in addition, it is not only Jorge’s body that has changed; Claudia’s has too… 

[Claudia]: We are not the same in body, mind, strength, desire, or anything else as we were 30 years ago. So all the other relationships are maturing, they are changing. I’ll tell you, I used to be able to hold any position, but if I do that now, I get a cramp, so forget about that one, we don’t do anything anymore, so things change. And I tell you, it’s not necessarily because he has a discapacity, but because people’s bodies and everything changes over time.

[Jorge]: Those of us who live with a disability must understand that sexuality does not die when you have a disability, and it should not. Everything in a relationship is a part, yes, but all the other parts must be nourished so that this part of sexuality is also good, of good quality.

[Claudia]: Many people said to me, “I couldn’t stand it; I couldn’t do it.” And to this day, I swear they tell me, “I admire you.” Why would you admire me? I’m with the person I love. Why would I admire you if you’re with someone you love? I mean, I’m not doing him a favor, I’m here because I want to be with him and he wants to be with me and because I love him. I mean, no, I’m not doing charity work. 

[Archive soundbite: party February 2024]

[Selene]: One day in February 2024, I was invited to a meeting at their home to celebrate Valentine’s Day with some friends and acquaintances. The meeting was on the soccer field.

There were two singers in the tent, who were playing music and livening up the party. Jorge and Claudia seemed happy. They greeted and chatted with everyone.

Jorge moved quickly from one side to the other. He told me that, a few years ago, he had switched his clinical wheelchair, the big heavy one from the first years after the accident, for one known as an “active” one. It has no armrests, and the backrest goes only up to the middle of the back. He told me that it changed his life. Now he has greater autonomy to move, and he has more speed

It took a while for Jorge to feel like dancing again.

And although there was no exact date, the process happened naturally.

At the party, they started to play “La cita,” a classic salsa by Galy Galiano. Jorge extends his hand out to Claudia and the two of them go onto the dance floor. Jorge moves his chair with ease, Claudia knows when to give or let go of Jorge’s hand. They spin and turn, some turns very smooth, others more complicated.

They look radiant, handsome… They are the life and soul of their own party, just as they were 30 years ago. Many things change… But not everything…

[Daniel]: Selene Mazón is a production assistant for Radio Ambulante and lives in Mexico City. This story was edited by Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas, and me. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. Sound design is by Andrés Azpiri, with original music by Ana Tuirán.

Special thanks to Roxana Pacheco and Carla DellaRosa for their support on this story.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Lisette Arévalo, Pablo Argüelles, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Rémy Lozano, Juan David Naranjo, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, Barbara Sawhill, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa, and Desireé Yépez.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO. 

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed on the Hindenburg PRO program.

If you enjoyed this episode and want us to continue doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us continue narrating the region.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thanks for listening.