Ka-Ching!

$600,000

8 $600,000 In 1986, my roommate talked me into getting my first ATM card. We both had checking accounts at Citibank, which became known as Shitibank because it wouldn’t divest its South African assets. I stood in a long line with other New Yorkers—but when it was my turn, the sun shone on the screen so I couldn’t quite see it. I squinted, took off my sunglasses, then put them back on. My PIN didn’t work—maybe I was doing something wrong? I tried my code again, along with several variations, until the machine swallowed my card. For one of her gallery shows, Sophie Calle photographed people through the security cameras at Paris ATMs. The baffled, the frustrated, the blasé, the elated dad with his toddler on his shoulders. I was inspired to do a spin-off project about PIN numbers—not simple birthday codes, but the codes of obsessions: bingo2, leather88, Whitman13. Of course, my project stayed preconceptual. Who would tell me their passwords? Even if I convinced them that I was an honest person, that more than one time in the early days of ATMs, I’d walked up to a machine that read Can I help you with anything else? because a customer had left too soon. A few times I pressed yes, but only to check a stranger’s checking account balance—I never attempted to withdraw even twenty dollars. At some point, my roommate started being late with her rent, which terrified me, as my name was the only name on the lease. She started borrowing my sweaters and stuffing them, smelling like smoke, back in my drawer. She’d come into my room in the middle of the night, crying about the abortion—she still owed me for that, too. She’d lost her job as a receptionist because two lines rang at once, and she just shut off the ringer. When she was three months behind, I told her she’d have to leave. She said I’d go far in this world because I was a conscienceless bitch, even though I’d changed from Shitibank to Chemical. When she moved out, she took everything we’d bought together—ice cube trays, the shower curtain, a throw rug, a teakettle. When I mopped her empty room, I found a red mesh bag filled with candy coins covered in gold foil—the chocolate was cheap, a bit waxy, but the foil was sturdy—and when I was careful enough, I could pull off one of the serrated paper sides without ripping it and hold what looked like a gold bottle cap in my palm. duhamelKtext.indd 8 12/1/08 11:15:16 AM ...