The night of my husband's Christmas staff party was the same night he asked if I would consider being in an "open relationship".

Now Rob was the straightest, middle-aged white man you could ever hope to meet. He had a framed Scarface poster above his gaming computer, and his keyboard had red backlighting. He just wanted to sleep with the waitresses. He was the head chef and, for whatever reason, girls love a chef. That’s how he met me. I was the young, dumb waitress. I just got there early in his career. Ten years ago, almost to the month.

It was my first day at the steakhouse and my first ever waitressing job, though I lied about that on my resume. I didn’t want to get stuck behind the host desk, I wanted to serve right away because my cousin told me that’s where the money was. So I put on a push-up bra, curled my eyelashes, and went in there and lied through my teeth. I was hired on the spot! But on my very first shift, when he called for hands, I didn’t know what he meant— didn’t know I was supposed to go to the kitchen, and when I got to the kitchen I didn’t know how to hold a tray. All shift he called me Gumby because I picked it up and held it over my head.

I took a glass of water to the bathroom and drank it on the toilet and cried about ten tears before washing my face and going back. Later, while polishing cutlery, he’d pull me aside and show me how to do it properly. How to hold the tray. He touched my elbow and the skin on his hands was rough. He smelled like worn through deodorant and cigarettes, and spoke with his face tilted down, but eyes looking up. His black eyes were like two bowls of star soup. He asked about my work experience. I lied again, but the second time you tell a lie it’s never as convincing, so we both smiled. At that point in my life, I’d never really stood that close to a man with a beard who wasn’t my father.

After I came clean he let me off the hook. He kept an eye out for me, like a dad. Told me I was too innocent for restaurants, but poured me a post-shift pint anyway. Waitressing really opened my world. Before that I was just a nice girl, I brushed her hair before bed and went to church with my parents sometimes. I played the keyboard, made jewelry for my friends. Went bowling with my cousins. I’d never been on a date, not ‘cause I wasn’t allowed, I’d just never been asked! My mom told me that if I wasn’t going to college then I needed to get a job, to contribute. Nothing crazy, three hundred dollars a month was what she was asking, just to help out around the house. But I wanted to make more than that. I wanted to buy myself things: clothes, makeup. I wanted to be able to go out and buy pastries on the weekend, try a cappuccino, maybe even take a trip. I’d never been anywhere, we just went camping each summer.

Nothing could have prepared me for how much money I’d make. Within four months I had enough for first and last month’s rent, and furniture. It was the first time in my life I felt capable. I’d also secretly discovered I was attractive, but kept that revelation to myself. It felt illegal to know it about myself, like restricted information that became dangerous in the wrong hands (mine). My mother was so proud she started treating me different, like a friend, not a kid. She made jokes about men. Funny jokes. It made me feel good to be able to buy her things. One day I came home with a big bottle of her favourite perfume, one that had been sitting empty on her dresser for over a year that I would still sometimes catch her rubbing the oily nozzle on her wrist. She cried when I gave it to her, because no one had ever done that sort of thing. Not even my dad.