Timothy was on a ROLL. He was nineteen and within the span of eleven days had landed his first real job, moved into his first apartment, and opened his first bank account. It was 1991 in Seattle, so there he was, smack dab at the very height of the very famous grunge scene. He worked at The Harsh Realm, a bar/theater/performance space. It was the coolest job that he or any of his friends could imagine. They couldn’t have imagined it. Most of his buddies from home didn’t even believe that he was telling the truth about his employment situation.
Timothy put up and broke down sets. He helped set up amps and mics and fix the lighting to create the right mood. On Fridays he bartended. And, he got to do all of this in a stinky flannel shirt. Timothy was smart enough not to say this out loud, but, well, he probably would have done the job for free. He loved being on his feet. He hated being still.
“You need to stop pacing,” his mother had told him after he walked up and down the stage while he jammed out on his hand-me-down electric guitar during his eighth-grade concert, “you make people nervous.”
But Timothy had found a job where constant movement was rewarded.
Behind the copper bar, pouring lemon drop shots and opening Zima bottles, Timothy got to experience another ‘first.’
This was the first time he had the opportunity to talk to slightly older women in low-slung jeans and painted-on eyebrows. This is where he met the first pretty girl who actually seemed interested in talking to him. She slid what was very obviously a fake ID across the bar and asked for “whatever everyone else was having.” Timothy managed to eek out the beginnings of a conversation. He told her that he was a musician.
“I’m about to get a Gibson.” Now, Timothy didn’t have the money for such a prestigious guitar. But, he knew what he made the past four nights serving drinks and the math added up to this instrument being in his hands in the very near future.
“When you get it,” the very underage brunette with a lip piercing and the name Betty Lou Higgins written on her horrible Texas driver’s license batted her long eyelashes, “I’d really love to hear you play.”
Well, that was it. The motivation that now powered Timothy’s every move was like a rocket ship attached to his tighty whities. He sped around the bar that night offering drinks and refills to anyone and everyone. He needed to make $200 as fast as humanly possible. The determination oozed out of every fiber of his flannel shirt.
Walking home at the end of the night to his sparsely furnished studio apartment, Timothy would grip tight to the wad of cash in his pocket, looking over his shoulder to make sure that no criminals were following or thinking about jumping him for his tip money. Luckily, it never happened. But Timothy was paying attention to all that could happen to his newfound wealth.
This is why he had decided to open up a bank account before he started looking for apartments. He wanted to be safe. Seattle may have been the incubator for one of the most fun and inspiring times in music history, but the city wasn’t immune to the national crime rate.
Timothy took two hours at the Bank Of Washington to fill out all of the necessary paperwork, show his ID, and order checks that he, ironically, had to pay for. Walking out of the financial institution, Timothy felt the most grown-up he had in his life. He would receive a bank card in the mail, sent to his own apartment, in the next week. He thought of Betty Lou, whom he now knew as Gina. He smiled to absolutely no one. He got into his Mercury Tracer and drove home 22 miles over the speed limit because he was Timothy, and life was freaking awesome.
Every night of the week, Timothy would speed his car over to The Harsh Realm to do anything that needed to be done to get one very stoned band or another onto the stage for a sound check. Then, he’d race over to the bar by the front door and cut as many lemons and limes as humanly possible before the place started filling up with music, and people, and smoke. At the end of the night, while cleaning out ashtrays, picking up forgotten flannel shirts, and airing out the bar before the contact high made him unable to count the register drawer, Timothy’s manager flagged him over.
Timothy felt his stomach clench just the slightest. Big P had run the The Harsh Realm for over a decade. He had a beard longer than Santa Claus and looked like he belonged in a biker gang which, yes, he did. Big P had to like Timothy for Timothy to keep what he believed was the greatest job in the universe which was going get him his Gibson guitar which was going to get him Gina and then he figured he could die happy. So he really, really wanted to remain in the good graces of Big P. (There were also rumors floating around downtown Seattle that Big P had been involved in an unsolved murder but that is a story for another time.) The relief (and joy) that flooded over Timothy when Big P silently handed over his paycheck, was almost palpable.
Under the glow pouring from the graffitied street light, Timothy waited until he was safely in the driver’s seat of his Tracer to rip open his check. This was it. This was what he needed to buy the guitar and set his dreams in motion. That night, under his Sears comforter, with a combination of second-hand weed smoke in his lungs and a smile on his face, Timothy fell into a sleep peppered with wildly happy dreams.
The next morning, he was at the Bank Of Washington at 9:01 with his debit card and check in hand. But his mission wasn’t that simple. Depositing a check for the first time is a little confusing. Timothy felt nervous, holding up the man behind him wearing a suit as he tried to verify that he put all the correct numbers on the deposit slip. WHY WERE THERE SO MANY NUMBERS? He confirmed all the digits on his account, triple-checked them on the black and green screen, and then, feeling the man behind him staring even more holes into the back of his usual shirt, he bolted out of the ATM vestibule faster than a bat out of hell (which the legendary singer, Meatloaf, would not release for another six years.)
Hopping in the Tracer, Timothy raced over to the music shop. He knew exactly which model and color Gibson that he wanted but his plan was to try a whole bunch of them out. He knew that you could usually negotiate the price on the floor models and he was prepared to do exactly that.
The next three hours in the music shop were like a dream come true. It was a slow morning, probably because the real rockstars of Seattle were in bed, either having just gone to sleep as the sun was coming up or nursing hangovers until the bars opened. For whatever reason, Timothy basically had the place to himself. He played Stairway To Heaven on the Fender Prodigy, closing his eyes and imagining himself center stage at the Harsh Realm with Gina jumping up and down in the front row, screaming and smiling. Timothy tried out the Ibanez, The Jackson, A Gold ESP, saving The Gibson Les Paul for last. Once that perfectly engineered piece of music magic was in his hands, Timothy knew that this was the guitar he was taking home. It was what all the greats, all the real guitarists on the scene played. And Timothy was one step closer to being one of them.
“I’ll come back with the cash this week,” Timothy told the sales guy. His plan was to go to the bank and have a teller - an actual human help him withdraw the largest sum of money that he had ever held in his hand. No more of this ATM computerized stress in his life. The guy looked at Timothy with a knowing smile. He knew which guys were gonna come back and make a purchase. He also knew which guys were full of shit. Timothy definitely wasn’t full of shit. And the sales guy recognized him from The Harsh Realm. It was the closest that Timothy had ever felt to being a celebrity.
When the loud vibrational ring of his Casio phone woke him up the following morning, the caller on the other end of the line was the last person Timothy would have ever expected.
“This is Police Detective Meyers calling from the 77th precinct. With whom am I speaking?”
Timothy tried to physically shake the sleep from his head and rubbed his eyes.
“Huh?”
“Detective Meyers from The 77th Precinct. What is your name?”
“Timothy. Timothy Lawerence.” Timothy’s memory tried to dig up some reason, really any explanation at all for why the Seattle cops would be calling him at 8:00 on a Monday morning. He came up empty.
“Sir, we are going to need you to stop by your bank, check your balance, and then come over to the station on Riverside.”
“Um, ok.” Timothy scribbled down the address, threw on yesterday’s jeans and that month’s flannel, and sped over To The Bank Of Washington which was his intended first stop of the day, well before the anxiety-inducing phone call from the police.
And when it was his turn with the teller, Timothy was horrified to find out that his balance was close to zero. His body tensed and he felt like he might vomit. Gone. All of it. His money, the guitar that had literally been in his hands 18 hours earlier, his shot with Gina…. Timothy felt the young boy that still lived in his nineteen-year-old body want to break down and cry. But, he couldn’t. He had to get to the station.
Driving across town in record time, Timothy tried to choke down the tightness in his chest. Pulling up to the foreboding brick building made our young hero feel like he’d just committed the world’s most atrocious crime even though he didn’t so much as have a speeding ticket (which, in all honestly, he should have racked up quite a few of those.) He gave his name and ID to the clerk sitting behind a wall of bulletproof glass. He tried to imagine what had happened. He had been careful, so so SO very careful. Who had robbed him? Was it a stranger? Someone whose drink he’d messed up? Had he pissed off Big P and now there was a hit out on him through the network of Northwest biker gangs?
As he was led into a furiously chaotic office, his thoughts spiraled. Timothy felt himself sweating through his shirt and prayed as hard as he could that the officers could not smell the very obvious aroma of a certain kind of smoke that permeated his flannel.
Oh God, oh God, Oh God, what was about to happen? He’d just spoken to his mother a few days earlier, elaborating on how great everything in his life was. She’d asked about coming to visit him, to see his job and his new place. Now how would it go? Would there be prison bars between them? Before Timothy could work himself up into a completely uncontrollable frenzy, a short man in uniform with a huge mustache covering his top lip, sat down behind his desk, holding a folder containing some papers. He pulled something out and handed a small, plastic card to Timothy.
“This yours?” In bright red letters over a shiny white background, he read, ‘Bank Of Washington,’ and underneath their constitutional-font logo was Timothy’s full name spelled out in capital letters, punched into the card. He ran his finger over the lines of his name.
How on earth did they get this?” He wondered, unintentionally out loud.
The Officer cleared his throat, “A good samaritan, for the sake of argument, let’s call him ‘Bob,’ was at the Bank Of Washington ATM on Broadway yesterday,”
Timothy kept his face blank. There was another person involved? The Officer looked so serious. Timothy felt his blood turn cold. He still, for the life of him, could not make heads or tails of what was going on.
“There was a suspicious man in front of him. Couldn’t stand still. Moving back and forth and mumbling numbers out loud. The man apparently kept looking over his shoulder, then raced out of the bank, got into his car, and drove down Broadway at easily 20 miles per hour over the speed limit.”
“Oh?” This information barely made a dent in Timothy’s confusion.
“Yep. Then, ‘Bob,’ went to withdraw his own funds and realized that the suspect had left not only the card, but all of this cash,” and with that, the Officer handed over a white envelope. A quick peak inside confirmed Timothy’s hopes - it looked like the full amount of his checking account.
“Bob, being an upstanding citizen, brought both the card and the cash to us.”
“WOW,” was all that Timothy could say.
“He described the man as being about 5’7, dark curly hair, gold-rimmed glasses, green and grey flannel shirt. Smelled bad. The perp even left the receipt. So, the short story is, this city isn’t safe. Keep your belongings close to you. There are some bad people out there.” The mustached man stood up and reached out his hand to Timothy’s,
“Good luck, son.”
Timothy followed the man out of his office, walked down the hallway clutching his life savings and his bank card, and in a total daze, got into his Taser. There, with the doors locked, he counted out the cash and looked at the Bank Of Washington receipt, confirming what he had suspected the second that the officer had described the perp’s “gold-rimmed glasses.”
There was no perp. It was Timothy. He hadn’t known how to use the ATM or deposit a check and had somehow withdrawn the entirety of his bank account. He’d checked the numbers over and over because it was his first time using this kind of technology. And he’d gotten distracted and hurried because he thought the man behind him was angry and impatient. And, he’d sped away because, well, that is just how Timothy drove. He was technically the victim of this crime. But, well, he was also the perpetrator. Oh boy.
He couldn’t laugh, he couldn’t celebrate, and he certainly couldn’t tell the officer at the 77th precinct the truth. So, he took his envelope full of cash and sped over to the music store, where he bought himself the sickest guitar he’d ever owned. He didn’t tell any of his friends the crazy story about the ATM. He didn’t even tell his mom. The only person he told was Gina, on their one year dating anniversary. Sometimes we’re all idiots. And sometimes things just work out.
Sweet Dreams.
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