the people i know, the stories i could tell...of dickie and taylor and bekkah, of anna, of my grandad's best friend who walked all the way from the boot of italy to paris in 1944, carrying a 100 mm cannon. of me, and paris, the man with the rotten leg, the man with the rotten mind, the cheat, the lush, the girls who cut and don't know what else to do, the girls who drink and drive and get beaten by their boyfriends, and the boys who drive cars shiny japanese ones, and get girls pregnant in the back seats, boys who are 19 and have a daughter and no future, and men who have lived and let die, who have seen the himalayas, who have spent their time sleeping in the communal mens hut of the natives of papua new guinea, like my grandad, who was a sailor and had four wives, and sang "the streets of laredo" and "the ballad of frankie and johnny" and "st. james infirmary," who wrote books on a smith corona, like me. my gramma who lost her mind, my dad, who had to be a man at fifteen cause his dad died, my dad who built a house, who made something of himself, and my mom, who grew up in the jungles of mexico, my sister who is going to be famous, a dancer, and me, the historian, writing this all down...my cousin who's seventy ran rum from chicago to kentucky in a black chrysler with his best bud and his best bud's girlfriend in 1941...and joe, old joe quiros who was on a B-52 and was told to bomb russia and end the world, joe quiros, a mexican kid whos dad couldn't read (like my gramma). the people i know, the stories i could tell...