In an essay reprinted over at Longreads, Alexander Chee looks back on finishing his MFA, moving back to New York, and the interiority of class that cater-waitering allowed him to peek into:
In 1997, I began working as a waiter for William F. and Pat Buckley. I was the picture of a New York cater-waiter: 5′ 10″, 165 pounds, twenty-nine years old, clean-cut. I took the job because I looked good in a tuxedo and couldn’t stand the idea of office work unless it was writing a novel. It was the easiest solution to my money problems when I returned to New York after getting my MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and I’d already been doing it for two years when I was called to work for the Buckleys. Cater-waitering paid $25 an hour plus tips and involved working everything from the enormous galas in the Winter Garden to People magazine lunches to openings at the Guggenheim. The tuxedo and the starched white shirt—and the fact that each assignment was at a different, often exclusive, place—all made me feel a little like James Bond. Sometimes my fellow waiters and I called it the Gay Peace Corps for how we could come into places, clean them up, make them fabulous, throw a party, and leave. And I liked that when I went home, I didn’t think about the work at all.
