Being eccentric forces people to like you, and therefore trust you. Many never learn such an important skill as eccentricity and are doomed to eat alone and live with their mothers. The others however become the friends that are 'interesting' and 'fun' and 'quirky'. This is the secret of every nerd, dork, band geek and chess club member once they get out of High School and people actually care they exist. First, they get good jobs; hard jobs that only people of their intellect could get. Take me for example - I was a med student who graduated at the top of my class and became a county coroner. Heavy competition for such a cushy job but I had the brains, and I wasn't sqeamish about things like intestines spewn over the road. What endeared me to my associates; the cops, crime labrats, layers and my boss was not my skill with liver temperatures, but my hobby.

I did not take pictures of bridges and families and birds flying in the sky; but pictures of dead people. Most are afraid to admit their fascination of the grotesque, but everyone loves a good murder mystery or ghost story, and the gorier the details the better. Why do you think a paper with a picture of a murder splashed on the front page sells so many copies? People don't want to just hear, they want to see.

My pictures were not washed out with a flouresecent flash - that's the CSI's job. I came in, told everyone the guy with his head missing is in fact, dead from decapitation, and then once all the legality was over with I took a real picture.

I used sepia and black and white, blured the edges and made the images fade in some spots and made them sharper in others. I made colors brighter; and I made the dead a vivid memory.

I have a picture of a girl who was raped, then cut open from neck to navel. It happened in the fall, under a maple tree. She was laying in a pile of pumpkin colored leaves with the leaves around her body stained red. When I was finished deepening the colors in the picture she didn't look dead at all. More like a fallen tree nymph in a red dress sleeping away a cool fall afternoon.

Another time, I took a picture of a man who'd been pinned to the wall by two meat skewers to the kidneys. The killer had wrapped his hands around the skewers so that he looked like he was doubled up laughing; his eyes creasing with joy, and not pain. That picture was in sepia - appropriate I thought for all the shit on the floor when his bowels let loose.

One of my personal favorites was in black and white - an old couple in their sitting room, taking tea. They died from poison, rigormortis constricing their knobbly and fragile fingers around fine bone china tea cups. The afternoon light came through delicate lace curtains and highlighted the grey hair and porcelain nicknacks. It also hit the gold rings on their fingers just right - the only clue to murder glass shards on the table, and blood spots on the toast.

Many people over the years have asked me why I take pictures of such morbid subjects. I replied that I do not find my pictures morbid. People should be remembered how they were, not as a victim; and in death everyone is laid bare, and in bareness is a terrible beauty.

People nod and smile with a look caught between distaste and reflection; but they are satisfied, and turn to the weather or the news.

I was liked and admired during my career. Sometimes I have friends who come over for poker - cop friends and detective friends haunted by old cases left unsolved. It's a type of closure for them, never catching the murderer but refusing to forget the quarry.

I have all my trophies, my pictures laid out in my basement to view with pleasure and pride. I took excellent photographs, and arranged my subjects always just so. There are seventy-nine photgraphs arranged on my far wall; a testement to beauty, skill, and brains.

Like i've said all along, being eccentric makes people trust you.

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