Phase two: Keep your job

Don’t shtup on company time (duh)

To put myself through college, I’d sport a penguin suit and sweep up popcorn after bratty kids at Dezerland, Manhattan’s premier catering hall in the Meatpacking District. Do you know how humiliating it was to wear a tuxedo and serve 13-year-olds? Plus, they paid us shit. Anyway, it was a unique place, very avant-garde. The hall had a faux drive-in movie theater where the guests would be ushered after cocktail hour to watch a slide show of the rich bar mitzvah boy growing up. Here he is skiing in the Swiss Alps at age four, here he is riding a camel in Israel at age six, here he is at sleepaway camp at age ten. You get the picture.

Dezerland threw a holiday party for the staff one Saturday night. It was the one nice thing they did for us. I had a few too many and ended up losing my virginity in the “drive-in” theater to Sean, one of the other waiters. Not the brightest idea in the world: Sean had a record—a police record, that is. And I think he had some kids, too. I woke up that next morning all freaked out. I was so drunk I didn’t remember whether I’d been safe or not.

The next day I was working another bar mitzvah. My best buddy was bartending and called me over to the bar in the party room, waving frantically. “You would not believe what the 13-year-olds just gave me,” she said, her face filled with horror.

“What’s that?” I asked, not phased.

“They found a used condom in the drive-in and brought it to me.”

“Oh my God!” I said. I was taken aback, horrified, but quickly settled into a feeling of deep relief.

That could have gone so much worse. At least the kids found the evidence, not a parent. And at least they gave it to my friend, not my boss. Most importantly? Given my foggy memories, at least it was confirmed that I had used protection.

—As told to Allison Steinberg by a cater waiter