The International Writers Magazine: Modern Living 83

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A Boy Possessed • Andrew Walker This is just my interpretation of the situation.

she absolutely had to escape his grip

For a lot of the consequential events that took place in the situation, I made myself an onlooker from an outside edge, rather than referee in the middle as I so often found myself. Before you hear or read the interpretation, you shouldn’t get too excited about the story. It was simply two teenagers with common naivety taking their underdeveloped emotions far too seriously.

As you may have assumed by now, one of our teenagers is male and the other female. Let us call them Mr M and Miss K. They are both the same age, give or take a few months, and were sixteen at the time. M and K had been seeing each other for about six months, and possession seemed to be a recurring theme within their relationship. M was very possessive over Miss K, and for some time it was quite rare that K’s friends ever got to spend time with her. At school they would meet up during breaks and for every lunch, and Mr M would get quite upset if K’s weekends were spent with anyone other than him.

So, staying with the theme, Mr M was possessed by the fear of losing his girl. After all, Miss K was, and is still, undeniably, an exceptionally beautiful girl. Shiny blue eyes, strawberry-blonde hair, near perfect skin, stylish dress sense and a body to match. She attracted the attention, often unaware, of men as old as twenty-five, and of boys too young to even understand the concept of female interaction. To many of you now, I am sure, Mr M’s anti-sociable behaviour seems somewhat more understandable, although still thoroughly unreasonable.

Miss K felt trapped by Mr M’s over protective tendencies, so she decided that she absolutely had to escape his grip, even though she cared about him. Well, that turned out to be the biggest dilemma of them all. Every time K made an attempt at ending their miserable relationship, Mr M would erupt in a blaze of human emotion, causing Miss K to feel obliged to stay with him. These eruptions ranged from shouting like a wife-beating lager-lout after his team has been relegated from the English third division, to crying like a child with a grazed knee and a fallen lollipop. Worse still was the fact that every time Miss K failed to walk away and stay away, Mr M became more possessed by his need to be possessive over Miss K. So every time it happened it worsened, and K found escape increasingly more inaccessible. So she was left with what she thought was her only remaining chance.

K tried to think of every possible way to change how Mr M felt about her. She started with small behaviour changes, simple rudeness towards Mr M and attempts at embarrassing Mr M in front of his peers. For example: getting stupidly drunk; spitting in public; belching competitions with myself, Mr A; swearing at Mr M and his friends… etc. While this did upset him, it was not enough, and Miss K was growing progressively less happy and less patient. It was time for a rather rash decision. She didn’t want to do it, but K decided she had to really hurt Mr M for him to get the hint. Miss K slept with her ex-boyfriend, Mr H. She made sure Mr M’s friends delivered the news to him with the help of a little bit of gossip manipulation at the house party where it took place.

The situation was messy. To cut a long story closer to the length of a maximum word count, a whole group of friends was pulled apart by the situation. As is the solution for a bunch of cheap-beer-drinking, Marlborough Red smoking, soap-opera watching sixteen/seventeen year olds from a depressing private-school. Both teenagers were left with a shoulder each to cry on. Mr M had Mr D’s, and Miss K had Mr A’s.

The situation was nothing special. Unfortunately, there are a million Mr Ms obsessed with a million Miss Ks, and a million Miss Xs are being possessive over a million Mr Ys. Just like Mr G is possessed by his feelings for his straight friend Mr S, and Mr S is possessed by a new found need to avoid Mr G. If I’ve learned that there is something to be learned from these kinds of clashes in humanity, it’s that possession amongst people is always temporary. My Thesaurus quite rightly links possession to the word ‘control’. Most people, I believe, hate the idea of being controlled by someone or something else. And so, like Miss K, they’ll fight viciously to evade the Mr Ms and Miss Xs of this world.

Well, that’s just my interpretation. Maybe Mr M should look for a Miss X, but to be honest, I really don’t care, as long as they keep away from me.
Stay in school kids...
© Andy Walker December 2004
Andy is a Creative Arts student at University of Portsmouth

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