My name is Joshua. I’m a drug addict, and I’m about to do something very stupid.

I was probably the most polite bank robber the poor young teller had ever encountered, if she had ever encountered one at all. I can’t remember what her nameplate called her. She had caramel colored skin and dark eyes. Dark hair. Young.  

I greeted her with a smile, slid the note across the counter for her to read, and rattled off in an amiable tone a bunch of crap that I’ve heard in televison shows and heist movies — “no dye packs, no bills off the bottom, no silent alarms. Give me all of your hundreds, fifties, twenties,  and tens”, and so on.

The whole event took only about 45 seconds, start to finish, but the feeling was as if time had slowed to a crawl, nearly ceasing altogether. Tunnel vision. I remember not being nervous. I remember not really feeling, well, anything at all. When she slid me the stuffed yellow envelope full of bills, I smiled, I bid her a “Have a great day” and briskly walked toward the front entrance/exit.

The maroon Toyota, belonging to my coworker, a loaner, idling about 50 yards away in front of the supermarket on the main thoroughfare seemed like it was miles away, but I got to the driver’s side door quickly and glanced back in the direction of the scene of the crime.

My crime.

The vestibule that housed the ATM was now packed with people, trying to make out the description of the poorly disguised, desperately dope-sick, completely lost at sea character climbing into the Camry, and then burning rubber into traffic. I’m sure probably trying to get a look at the license plate number. The gravity of what had just taken place was not yet registering in my half-frantic, half-lucid and exhilarated mind. I just had to get to my place. I was going to make it. I had done it.

Josh - 1. Bank of America - 0. Final score?

Heh.

I sped off and drove the quarter-mile to my dumpy studio apartment, keyed open the front door, and poured out the spoils of currency on my bed as I heard the sounds of far-off police sirens growing louder, screaming past my street on their way to the bank. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt such exhilaration in my life as I watched all of the big bills raining down onto my bedspread.

A surge of adrenaline, like 10,000 volts of electricity coursing through my entire body and I, fairly certain that I had just pulled off the crime of the century, ignoring the whispery voice murmuring, reminding me that I had just committed a daytime felony unarmed fucking bank robbery in my own damn hometown, born and raised, a community in which I knew at least six or seven men and women on the police force, and a sneaking suspicion that the surveillance technology of 21st century banks was probably up to snuff in its quality of captured imaging and surveillance. Not to speak of the teller and the other eyewitnesses.

The terror threat I had called in to the PD before entering the bank, reporting “men with guns” in the high school parking lot. “They’re approaching the school,” I told the faceless voice on the other end of the line. Diversion. Get them moving in the opposite direction of my target.

What seemed a no-brainer tactic had been a self-blocked 9-1-1 call from my own personal cellular phone. You bet your biddy I hit *67 before making that report. No time for that now. I had to be back at the office in about 42 minutes, and I had to see a man about some OxyContin pills before that—and, time permitting maybe a quick stop at the nearby deli to fill my belly.

I got back to work within the hour after counting the spoils of my caper and stocking up on a hefty supply of 80mg Oxys and 10mg Valium tablets — several thousand dollars worth, quite the bounty, and with money left to burn for the days to come — a haul that would transmute into the classic cliche: that of “the worst day of my life eventually becoming the best of ‘em”, and the realization that I had blazed a trail that spelled out the word, “H-E-L-P”, in massive red letters, in addition to a laundry list of actual evidence that would be sorted by detectives in less than a week.

Crime of the century, my ass. America’s biggest loser, more like.

The day they came to my office to cuff me and stuff me, the money was already long spent, and within a couple of hours, I’d be experiencing the onset of acute drug withdrawal once again. What goes around comes back to town. My hometown. I was a university office worker and drug enthusiast-cum-bank-robber now on the Massachusetts Most Wanted List online directory, TV news reports that I was unfortunate enough to not get to watch, though my friends and family hadn’t on that late April evening, in the year of our Lord, 2009.

What happens when an unleashed impulse of the maximum degree, without any restraint whatsoever, collides with the natural consequences of its own actions? Nothing in this life is free. My tab had come due, and I was going to have to pay the price, the hard way.

So it goes sometimes when one’s pride perpetuates a barrier to get honest with a loved one, his mother, say, to let her know,

“I’m using again”. “I need help.”

That would have been option ‘A’.

But I was $700 in the red in my checking account. The rent coming due in just a couple of days. All the other bills, too. Cable. My credit with my dealers was long-since maxed out, and I owed some of them back taxes. To boot, I’m about to be really, really sick. Like, horror movie sick.

I’m scared, and I’m ashamed, so instead of revealing myself and the familiar mess I had gotten myself back into, I decided to go with option ‘B’.

When a person needs money and they don’t have any, where’s the best place to get it? I’m no purse snatcher. I’m not in the business of violence or harming some poor sap making an ATM withdrawal during the nighttime hours when there’s no one around.

They keep the money behind the glass at the bank.

Option ‘B’ it was. Some people have to learn the hard way. I suppose I’m that some kind of person.