3. “One summer in college (early 2000s), I stayed in the beach town where I was going to school and got a job on the wharf at a shop that sold tacky sterling silver jewelry and fish bait. About a month in, one of the ‘regular’ customers asked if I might be available to do some side work on his boat. He seemed nice enough and I needed cash, so I said sure. His only instruction was to dress nice. I was surprised to meet him at his yacht — he did not seem like the type to own a yacht — where he had set a table for six people. I thought he wanted me to be a server or something, but no: I was his date, and the event was the celebration of his divorce three years ago and his coming out as a gay man.”
“The whole event was a little awkward. The four other people were nice, but you could tell they looked at me strangely as a 20-year-old with a man in his late 50s. After everyone left, he apologized and told me he couldn’t bring himself to actually ask me out. I felt bad for him having been closeted for so many years, so I didn’t put too much blame on him. He gave me an envelope with $2,000 in cash and I left. When I got to the shop the next afternoon, I found out he’d dropped off another envelope with an additional $1,500 in cash. I never saw him again, but that money paid for a big chunk of the costs for school that financial aid didn’t cover the following year.”
—Anonymous
