When a man desires to do something reckless

There are those moments in a man’s life when he seems bent on self-destruction, and even goes out of his way to look for it. For that spell, which can last from a few hours to years, or even the rest of his short life, even a usually very calm person will seem possessed or bewitched, or whatever it is that happens to them.

Fortunately, I haven’t had serious cases of this mysterious affliction, but I have witnessed it alter a person in the course of a few days, like this friend of mine called Dan. Dan had dated only two girls in his life by the time we finished university. His current squeeze was a good woman, and they had been together since his first year, and were still going strong. There wasn’t any reason why they wouldn’t make things permanent because like Dan, Squeeze was a settled down girl.

We finished university, and all was good for Danny, until that day. He met a girl. I can’t even imagine how they got talking because he certainly didn’t start the conversation, and she on the other hand, I don’t know what she saw in him because he wasn’t her typical target- loaded, nice car, lots of cash to waste.

No, he wasn’t that, but suddenly, he became very agitated, and starting cooking up all kinds of things. I didn’t even notice till Squeeze told me that Dan was acting strange. I owed her a favour, so I went on a little investigation, and found our boy had found himself a new hobby. To me, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; a man sometimes needs to meander to find his right footing again. So, I calmed Squeeze down, told her Dan was just a little stressed, and I hoped he would get over Miss Cash in time before things got out of control. But he started getting careless and taking Squeeze for granted. I told him I knew about his extra curricular activities, but he didn’t even care.

He said Squeeze could to hell for all he cared... that certainly wasn’t Dan talking. Rapidly, things deteriorated. He became rude to Squeeze, like he wanted her to leave, and even stopped seeing her. I don’t know what he he was doing, but from the looks of it, neither did he know. All efforts to sit him down and talk were futile. Even when Miss Cash realised he wasn’t her kind of guy, or rather, his pockets weren’t deep enough, and she took a walk, Dan chased after her instead of coming back home.

Interestingly, he took it all seriously, and acted as if Miss Cash had broken his heart. Meanwhile, Squeeze was totally confused; somehow she still didn’t know about Miss Cash, which made Dan’s actions even more confusing to her. Some women are truly priceless; when Dan recovered his senses after about three months, she took him back without questions. Sometime later, Dan and I, had a man-to-man talk. I wanted to find out what exactly had gone wrong with him, what he had been thinking during that episode of madness.

And he admitted that he didn’t know, that he “seemed to have a consuming desire to do something reckless”.

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