That ATM in American Psycho has nothing on the one that ate my hand. In fact, the command on the screen might as well have read, “Feed me a stray hand” rather than “Feed me a stray cat.” Only my hand isn’t (or wasn’t) stray, you understand? It was mine. I guess it still technically is. Even though there’s so little left of it now. Which isn’t to say that it’s totally gone—so I guess I should be grateful, right? “Contented” that the ATM didn’t end up doing more damage. Not that it would much matter either way. Because, in case you didn’t know, once you lose any significant part of your hand, it’s all but impossible to avoid getting a prosthetic. It’s not “mandatory” to get one, per se, but you’re basically left even more vulnerable if you try to make a big thing about not wanting to have at least some kind of “device” (whether that means rigging your simulacrum of a hand with cables or what have you) to help you with gripping and shit.

I learned this all the hard way. Because when I first lost my hand, I was, for months, in so much disbelief about how it had happened. Therefore, I simply couldn’t believe that it had happened at all. It seemed so utterly incongruous, unfathomable. I mean, really. Who does this happen to in real life? It’s the sort of zany, ridiculous comportment one would expect of an inanimate object in a movie like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (and, again, as mentioned, American Psycho)—not in one’s real-life, day-to-day dealings. Yet there I was, just trying to insert some cash into the machine when it chomped my fucking fingers off like it hadn’t eaten in years. And I was even being quite quick about shoving the money into the slot so that it wouldn’t “get” me. What’s more, even despite my abundance of caution in this regard, I had believed that, no matter what, surely it wasn’t as if some kind of “sensor” wasn’t in place to detect a “foreign object” like a hand in its midst. Right? Wasn’t that how these types of things operated?

As I found out, that was not the case at all. And though I could see the “door” to the ATM machine starting to rapidly clamp down, I couldn’t move fast enough to avoid it. The thing pressed and pressed on my fingers, insisting that, in the process of sucking those up, it would suck up my money as well (now just an added bonus rather than the “main attraction,” as it were). Tragically enough, the amount I was putting in wasn’t even that significant (not in this overpriced climate anyway) to make any of this “worthwhile.” It was a hundred dollar bill (cue the Jay-Z song of the same name—or maybe not…since he’s in the Epstein files and all). One that I had freshly earned from taking a job cleaning someone’s house. The one hundred was at last paid in cash after two weeks of going there three days a week to (mainly) vacuum, do dishes, wash/fold laundry and sort/take out trash.

It was supposed to be a “side hustle,” but like most of the things that are shoved into that category, it took up way too much of my time to be truly considered “on the side.” Yet it was hard for me to turn away any form of work in my current (and ongoing) financial situation, willing to take whatever was offered…especially if it was offered in cash. If I knew then what I know now, however, I wouldn’t have been elated at all about being compensated in that format. Because cash can hardly be called “king” when it’s responsible for maiming a very integral part of your body. Then again, maybe that’s exactly why it still can be, since kings (and their modern-day equivalents: politicians) commit such harmful, exploitative acts to members of the hoi polloi like me all the time.

These were some of the thoughts that initially crossed my mind when the jaws, so to speak, sunk their “teeth” into my hand. And rather than the “door” immediately “flying upward” in response to feeling my fingers there, to my surprise, it just kept clamping and clamping until I could hear my bones being crushed and cracked into oblivion by the force of the machine. And, speaking of that word, “machine,” why do so many people say “ATM machine” if the acronym is meant to account for that term with the “M”?—as in, “automated teller machine.” Well, I certainly rue the day that I ever tried to tango with a so-called teller that was anything other than flesh and blood. I had been told throughout my childhood by my father that there was always a price to pay for “convenience” and that, in the end, you were more likely to find yourself far more inconvenienced than you otherwise would have been if you had just done something the hard way in the first place. I was seeing that now, fully understanding it in a manner that I never would have conceived of…and retroactively wishing I had just waited until the bank was actually open so that I could have gone inside and interacted with a real person for this transaction instead.

I think, at some point during the ATM’s “biting,” I blacked out. Because, one minute, there was no one around me, and the next, I was being tended to by an EMT (and a rather hot one, I might add—though maybe my delirium was clouding my judgment). I still have no idea who called an ambulance, though I wish I did so that I might make them deal with the balance for all the medical bills I’ll have to spend the rest of my life paying off. And yes, I’m sure I don’t need to explain that it’s even more difficult than usual to find work when you’re down a hand.

While you’re probably wondering if I tried to sue the bank for ultimately bringing this cruel fate upon me, apparently there exists a clause in whatever fucking contract I signed in order to get the “privilege” of banking there that accounts (no finance-oriented pun intended) for something like this. I sure as shit didn’t notice such “verbiage” at the time, but oh, those bastards had covered all their bases in this sordid little agreement.

You might find it somewhat ironic, but, in the aftermath of this ordeal, I renounced using a bank altogether and existed only on a cash basis. Because, even though cash might have been what (mostly) got me into this mess in the first place, it was really trying to insert said cash into a bank. Never fucking again. Along with using an idiom like, “It cost me an arm and a leg” or “He has his hand in a lot of different pies” (or is it pots?). Me? I just had my hand in an ATM. And rather than pulling out fistfuls of cash, I gave it a literal fistful. So I hope it’s fucking sated for all my trouble.