The Best Contender for "Most Embarassing Moment of My Life"

The summer of 2006, four people took on an epic adventure. They traveled from Norway, ME to San Francisco, CA in approx. two and a half days. Only one stop was made for sleep at a motel in Salt Lake City, UT, the end of Day 2. It was wild. It was trying. It was the best trip of my whole lifetime.

This is not that story.

This occurred months after. Almost a year after. Sure, the Coast 2 Coast Road Trip of America deserves it's own entry into the dusty tome of Travipedia, but now is not that time. I was recently reminded of this vague event in question and after much deliberation have concluded to include it among the Top Five Most Embarrassing Moments of my Life. There is no actual order or placement to these events, for there is no way to measure the amount of humility, shame and ridicule I felt at those times, measured against the competing moments, and their mettle. This one's a contender though. Here we go:

I made this journey with notable aliases Conman, Jam Man and Jam Man's mother, who for all intensive purposes is from here on out referred to as "MJ." STOP. Do not think about Spiderman. STOP. Do not think about marijuana. STOP. Do not think about initials. These are not her initials. I pick and choose the aliases of the people in my stories with great care and obfuscation, to protect their identities and innocence. They don't make sense to me, they won't make sense to you. Capeesh? (How do Italians spell that?)

So MJ, Conman, Jam Man and I finish this grandiose tour. I saw San Francisco and fell in love with her. A city has never been so beautiful. Where Portland is wet, misty and primarily cold four fifths of the year, San Francisco is drinking a chilled Mexican beer on a beach, with a nice breeze, the Golden Gate bridge off to the left for a picar-esque visage. Astonishing. Truly. But we come home, MJ and I, via aeroplane, back to good ol' hometown Norway, Maine.

Months pass, winter arrives. No one is fully okay with that. Hardy Mainerfolk who've been here all their lives will say they don't mind the winter, but deep down within, they are lying to themselves. That little lie is the only burning light with which they, and all of us, pass through these dark months together. There was some extra light towards the end of November. Conman and Jam Man were triumphantly returning home for Christmas break. We plotted and planned a huge return party and it was executed to the T. I believe somehow we made them happy to see Maine again.

Where did we party? The same place we partied all of highschool, into my first year of college, and now, theirs. It is the second floor of the barn adajecent to Jam Man's and MJ's house. But we called it The Man Zone. Why The Man Zone? 'Fore their lovely family moved here, it was used by previous occupants as the one escape a man can have. The top floor of a barn, where this mysterious yet archetypal Man would go to leave his woman and problems (for they traveled hand in hand) behind and gather with his other Man friends, with similar women and similar problems. And they would drink. They also constructed a urinal in the corner using half a plastic liter of Cola bottle and rudimentary piping (straight outdoors into the woods) and a single lane bowling alley. They hung inflatable beer cans and posters of scantily clad models around. They had a stereo. They had it all. Everything they needed to distract and entertain themselves.

So when Jam Man's family moved in, and we all discovered this place, with one tiny sign declaring it as "The Man Zone," with subtitle "Jam Hard, Drink Hard, or Go Home" we knew we had to precisely that.

It was the hang out. Jam Man's dad hooked up speakers all around, Christmas lights, and a couple televisions. One for an old school Nintendo, another for Sega, another for the '64, and so on. We used the bowling alley once or twice. There was a stack of mattresses we'd pull down at the end of the night for whoever was crashing there. The barn had a hatch you could use to jump down, or if need be, yack your brains out. It happened. Hell if I could count how many times I needed to. All walks of the high school social hierarchy passed through that place. It was beautiful. So when they came home from their first year of college, of course we partied there.

And one night, I was pretty lifted and the truth serum had been poured to excess, we got to talking. And I straight up told these guys, my best friends, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I mentioned that when we got home from the Big Trip, my mother had some questions for me. She had already discovered my tendency to use mild narcotics, so she asked about the use of such substances on the trip, in which I answered vaguely and cryptically, knowing she had a lecture about transporting drugs across state lines locked, loaded and ready to fire. She asked timid questions about how much I drove, seeking other angles to throw in the Lesson, but I would not admit to ever once commandeering a vehicle under the influence. Then she hit me with a sneaky surprise question: "Did MJ try to sleep with you?"

When I mentioned this, the whole room burst into laughter. It's a ridiculous preposition. MJ was at least two decades my elder, and fully married to my best friend's father. She's a lovely woman who has always been kind, but damn Mom. How do you even assume that as a possibility? This what I asked her, and this is what my friends asked me.

"I don't know, she just thought it would happen?" Was all I could think of.

"Did you think it would happen?" Conman chided, as a joke.

"Hell no, that's not right. I would not have let it happen. But don't get me wrong here, I thought about it. I always consider every possibility." This accrued far more laughter. I was telling too much truth. But in my defense, it was solid as truth. Never doubt to which ends my imagination will expand and cover the realm of ideas and possibilities. It will. Anywhere.

So Storytime-With-Travis is just about over, other folks making side comments or jokes about the whole scenario and residual laughter fading...when we hear something.

Steps.

And up walks MJ, grinning, from the bottom of the stairs, where she had been standing silently, and heard the entire exchange.

My face was so red I'm surprised I didn't start to bleed unnaturally from my ears or eyes or something. Everybody laughed so hard it was tough to contain, like they wanted to stop laughing, but there she was, and that kept it going. Then they'd look at me, and it'd start all over again. This poor woman has talked to my mother, and now has heard in full the question she posed to me, and even worse, my poorly worded response and "considering" spiel.

It was a rough scene. And I had hoped and prayed they had forgotten but I was just on the phone with Conman the other day, and he recounted it in full, and put me right back there. Rough.