For a 12-year-old with a hyperactive imagination who liked to dream of dreary gothic castles, suburban Florida felt a little stifling.

I emerged into the sticky-hot evening to find Ricky smoking on the hood of his battered car. Something about his mud-encrusted boots and the way he let smoke curl from his lips and how the sinking sun lit his green hair reminded me of a punk, redneck James Dean. He was all of those things, a bizarre cross-pollination of subcultures possible only in South Florida.

I think they worried that my grandfather would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I'd never recover.

I grew up in Florida, which is the land of flea markets and swap meets. My grandmother loved to go these places, and she'd take me along.

I knew there was something peculiar about you," she said. "And I mean that as the highest compliment."

I'd always known I was strange. I never dreamed I was peculiar.

I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism.