As a child, I did not have many social experiences. To be more precise, I had no social experience at all. One day a friend of my brother had the idea, who knows why, of proposing that we spend the afternoon together. At my house. I was bewildered. A whole afternoon. He had to like me, be nice, pretend to be a bit like him. At that time I was studying some black magic: and so I proposed that we spend the afternoon studying the grimoire. It was the only afternoon of my life wasted trying to please someone, with predictably disastrous results. For one thing at least, black magic served me well: to make those who came too close disappear.