W hen I was cutting my teeth as a server in a beach-side hotel restaurant, an older gentleman in a wheelchair asked, quietly, if he could pay me to come upstairs with him. When I recoiled, he quickly backpedaled, embarrassed, and stumbled to explain that he didn’t want sex; he just wanted someone to hold him. He had a long beard, and his hair was unkempt. He was so ashamed he could barely look me in the eye.

Though politely turning him down was ostensibly the safe and logical thing to do, I think about him to this day, and am saddened there wasn’t some other form of kindness my 21-year-old brain could have conceived to extend to him, that might have eased his loneliness.

Human beings need contact. Bartenders surmise the reason they are generally extended more respect

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