Chapter Two • ESTIMATED TIME OF DEPARTURE
Chapter Three • PUSH AWAY THE BLANKET
Chapter Four • FIRST CORINTHIANS
Chapter Five • NEW JERSEY LEGAL
Chapter Six • NEW JERSEY, REDUX
Chapter Seven • NO ESCAPE FROM NEW JERSEY
Chapter Eight • DINER PIE
Chapter Nine • CAPITAL AFFAIR
Chapter Ten • WORKING MUSICIAN
Chapter Eleven • TRIGGER WARNING
Chapter Twelve • GUITAR STORE BUNNY RANCH
Chapter Thirteen • HERITAGE, NOT HATE
Chapter Fourteen • BLUEBIRD & PARNASSUS
Chapter Fifteen • ALABAMA FEBRUARY
Chapter Sixteen • VOODOO
Chapter Seventeen • THE CHILDREN OF YOUR PEOPLE
Chapter Eighteen • FLORIDA RIVIERA
Chapter Nineteen • PANAMA BEACHCOMBERS
Chapter Twenty • CONGREGATION OF ALLIGATORS
Chapter Twenty-One • LOST IN THE BOOK MINE
Chapter Twenty-Two • THE POWER OF RECOLLECTION
Chapter Twenty-Three • LOW-COUNTRY BLUES
Chapter Twenty-Four • DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL
Chapter Twenty-Five • MOVING THROUGH ROWLAND
Chapter Twenty-Six • GENETIC TRASH
Chapter Twenty-Seven • NAME-DROPPING DC TWO-STEP
Chapter Twenty-Eight • HOME
Chapter Twenty-Nine • END OF DISCUSSION
Epilogue • PIPE & DRAPE
Acknowledgments
Resources
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While this memoir chronicles an actual month-long United States road trip, I have adjusted some names and identifying details to protect the privacy of family and friends. Where appropriate, these instances are identified within the context of the narrative. Conversations and event sequences are expressed in service to the narrative and to the best of my recollection.
I tell them those who build
And master are the ones invariably Merry: Give and take quarter, Create good meals within the slaughter,
A place for repose and laughter In the consoling beds of being tender
Excerpt from “Now” by Liam Rector
“Just don’t make it one of those douche-y, ‘look-at-me’ confessionals,” Trav requested when this book moved from an idea to words on paper.
I nodded.
“And try not to make me sound like a jackass.”
I nodded again.
“And make it funny.”
“Got it,” I said. “A funny memoir about childhood sexual abuse where your character is the opposite of a jackass.” Thinking of the most suave and socially adept figures in film and literature, I suggested modeling Trav’s persona after Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine or Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
“Magnum, P.I., would be okay, too.”
This is how the conversation devolved into a review of which fictional good guy Trav would choose to lead a military-style extraction team: MacGyver, Thomas Magnum, Michael Knight, James Bond, or Cordell Walker.
After some debate, MacGyver won.
“Would your answer change if the A-Team was an option?”
“Obviously.”
As always, these absurd exchanges make me laugh, but Trav’s extensive knowledge of iconic television, literary, and film heroes is no accident. For thirty months from 1988 to 1990, he was unable to sleep because of the sex abuse he saw, heard, feared, and experienced as a student at the American Boychoir School. He sought brave, strong, and honorable male archetypes in fiction because none of those heroes materialized in real life.
Instead of summoning a talking car or a Walther PPK, Trav began drinking coffee at age eleven to remain alert and vigilant during the nighttime hours.
New Orleans is a crooked city, and those comforted by right angles quickly become disoriented. Given that New Orleans sinks, by some estimations, one-half inch each year, a walk down any side street is a study in hodgepodge and a test of one’s inner compass. Exteriors are plastered behind balconies that list and buckle. Cars dodge uneven cobblestone and brick potholes. Grave markers, too, settle into the ground, swallowed up by the damp earth.
“Northern Caribbean climate,” a tour guide explained, and I noted the situational irony that we had left Maine to escape the stormy weather, but instead of feeling warm Caribbean sun on our faces, we huddled in knitted hats and rubbed our hands together, wishing we had packed mittens.
It was
