As a normal person, I have a system for everything I do. I decorate my house according to the Gigo principle, taken from the world of computer programming. Gigo stands for "garbage in, garbage out" – accordingly, the bulk of my furniture has come in off the streets, salvaged from skips. Skips are a misanthropist’s IKEA: you follow a fixed route to select furniture you usually need to put together yourself, only without having to meet other people.

In the city I call home, I can skip to my heart’s content on multiple occasions each week. Last night, whilst cycling along a quiet canal following an overly indulgent pub crawl, I came upon a pile of discarded property that was truly impressive: two chairs upholstered in red plush, a shit-coloured sofa, a mirror you could see yourself in and a table with a tiara and a Spanish guitar on top. I was touched: this collection had obviously been assembled by someone who knew their interiors!

I got off my bike, seated myself on the table, took the guitar and played part of a song called Hippies by Burma Shave, a band from The Hague, followed by a riff from American outfit Grand Funk Railroad’s Inside Looking Out. How long had it been since these tracks had sounded in public? Too long! Too bad there was no one to hear them.

Or was there? Down the road, a door opened. A somewhat elderly man of a grubby persuasion got out of his house, walked over to the skip without so much as glancing at me, took the silver-coloured tiara and went back inside.

I imagined how, hovering in the hallway, he would strip naked, then stand in front of his bathroom mirror with his old, wrinkly privates wedged between his legs, showing only a taper of curly grey pubes. I imagined how he would don the tiara, look in the mirror and address his reflection: "Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me. I’d fuck me hard."

Once more, the door opened. Once more, the insanity plea waiting to happen came outside, and once more, he approached the pile of refuse. Was he going to involve me in the elaboration of his degenerate fantasies? I quickly put the guitar back on the table, leapt onto my bike and hurried home without a backward glance. Some people just aren’t normal.

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Robert van Eijden (1971) is a freelance writer and guitarist for the band Smurrie.