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‘Christ, Joost, shut up for a minute.’

‘Also 2 π metres,’ he said triumphantly, and wrote something in the text balloon above the head of Freddie Mercury. Freddie already had a pipe in his mouth.

‘I want to fuck Marga Sap,’ said Freddie Mercury.

‘Hoffman, stop that stupid laughing,’ warned Giesma. He was chalking secret codes on the board.

I was wearing my black Levis and the Michigan State T-shirt my cousin had sent me. It was Thursday, and after maths I had to dash to the music school for my organ lesson, for which, as usual, I hadn’t practised.

Everything happens simultaneously; time is no more than an ordering, an illusion. Joost says that time doesn’t exist, André has a painting on the wall about movement that is stasis, while I’m trying to make time stand still. Our friend Peter had to knock on the door of the love cabins on his father’s brothel boat when time was up. There were men who only came when he knocked. One of his poems is called ‘Love is Time’.

I hummed ‘You’re The One That I Want’ softly in Marga’s ear. The nape of her neck went slightly red. I’ll just run my finger along Marga’s chain, play a little with her blond hair, blow on her neck for a moment—and who knows but she might fall in love with me.