I know what he means: the taste of language that is only spoken and never written because the speaker most likely doesn't read or write. My father ha… - Rigoberto González

My four years of high school were spent locked up inside “el campo.” I became a voracious reader and television-watcher, keeping to myself at such alarming extremes that I became invisible. My invisibility provided the perfect protection against harm of any sort. I walked to and from school past the gangsters as silently as a breeze, so disassociated from their tattoos and lingo that even they couldn't find a place for me in their lines of vision.

Funerals in México are also about drowning sorrow with liquor. The coffee is spiked with tequila

I had flings with married men or men with girlfriends, with men who had children, sometimes as old as I was. They went to church on Sunday, drank beer, and eyed the teenage girls in gym shorts. They appreciated a good woman-on-woman porno. They showed me photographs of their fiancées and sent me wedding invitations.