It was that I was an imaginative kid living in a world made very narrow by poverty and working-class ideals, a bland, monotonous world hidebound by religion. It was because the austere world out there offered no stimulation at all that I was forced to withdraw deeper and deeper into my fantasies. Nothing in reality resembled that wonderful universe created by the stunning images of movies, comic strips and the books that Rosely read me only when no one else was home, which was rarely, and therefore I lost interest in the unspeakably dreary real world. That interest would remain lost until such time as reality broadened sufficiently to recapture my attention—until then my whole life focused on the meaningless scribbles I drew in imitation of the banned comic books. Nothing else mattered.