Holiday Inn Humiliation

Naked at the Holiday Inn

Somewhere around the millennium, give or take a couple of years.

So let's start at almost the end. Grace and I were still together, but we had broken up. That is our relationship was over, but I hadn't moved out yet. Tomorrow I would be gone, but tonight, me, Grace, her sister Kathie and two other couples were going to have dinner, drink some wine and watch a movie. Well, I say couples, there had been some kind of mix up, both Jill and Sandy thought it was a "girls night out," so they'd left the husbands at home.

The reason for the breakup according to Grace was my inertia. I was always happy to have things just the way they were, whether things were good or not so good. I was the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water. I think she blamed me for making her the kind of a person that would have an affair. I think she blamed me for making her the one who had to press "stop" on our relationship when I should have been outraged and betrayed enough to make the call. And that might be the reason that she announced to the group that night that we were going to watch a very special movie, an epic comedy.

So we all sat back as she placed the dvd into the player. This was obviously not a movie. It had the look of a security tape. My heart sank, I knew right away what was coming. Sure enough, we were all looking at a hotel hallway. Nothing for a few seconds, then a room door opens and a guy peers out. He is wearing a towel around his waist. He tentatively slips out of his room, pulls the little bar that keeps the door from locking behind him and proceeds down the hall.

Kathie, gasps and says "oh my gosh Will, is that you!?"

And indeed, it was.

Two weeks before...

I travel a lot for work. That didn't help my relationship with Grace and made it ridiculously easy for her to cheat on me.

Tonight I am sitting in a pseudo bar at a Holiday Inn in Fayetteville North Carolina. I say pseudo, because it's the area where they serve the free breakfast in the morning. At night it serves as a bar for those of us who can't be bothered to go to the Disco/bar attached to the Hotel. This is a big convention friendly hotel. This area is separated by a low wall with random potted plants sitting on top. I suppose it is meant to give us separation from the front desk that is only fifteen or so yards away.

I am sitting here by myself, nursing beer number two. I'm not much of a drinker, but like a lot of people, I drink when I'm bored. There are people sitting at 4 or 5 other tables, looking about as pathetic as I do. One exception is a table with two couples. Both guys look like marines and undoubtedly are. The two women with them are gorgeous and I can't imagine them sitting with any guys who don't look like these guys.

I don't realize that I'm staring until one of the girls sends a huffy sigh in my direction which leads her man to give me a hard stare. This is when I decide it's time to go. I get up and push my chair back a little too suddenly and it makes a squeaking sound that causes lots of heads to turn including all four at the Mt. Olympus table. As I walk by, one of the guys feigns a jab at me that makes me jump just enough to crack them all up.

I've already forgotten all about them as I ride the elevator up to my room. Once inside I strip down to my underwear and crawl into bed. Then I decide I'm hungry. And thirsty. As I said, I'm not much of a drinker, Dr.Pepper is more my jam, so I decide to go get a soda and something to eat, hopefully Fritos. Now obviously I can't walk down the hall in my undies and I'm too lazy to get dressed again, so my brilliant solution is a towel. And maybe it was the one and a half beers doing the thinking here, but not even consciously really, I decided that if I was going to wrap myself in a towel, I couldn't also wear underwear, because that would just be silly.

So off they came. Then I rooted around for enough change and proceeded to the door.

Now it was a bit after eleven pm, so I was pretty confident that I wasn't going to run into anyone.

I didn't have my key, but then I wouldn't need it as I was going to use that door thingy to keep the door from shutting all the way.

I opened the door, looked up and down the hallway pulled the door thingy into place and proceeded down the hall.

And it was my lucky day, the machine had Fritos. As I was plugging my coins into the slot I heard voices and turned to see a couple of young guys walk past, eyebrows raised as they walked past.

"Hmm," maybe it wasn't as late as I thought.

I wasn't as lucky with my drink selection. Dr. Pepper was sold out, so counter to everything I believe in, ultimately I pressed the Pepsi button. This slight delay, may well have changed the course of my whole night.

Grabbing my (ugh) Pepsi and Fritos, I left the little snack alcove and headed back to my room. At the end of the hall, the elevator doors were just closing on the same two guys. One nudged the other as they both stared my way. As the doors closed, one of them called out, "have a good night."

I got to my door and noticed right away that it was closed. Setting down my (ugh) Pepsi and Fritos, I tried the door handle to no avail.

**On the tape you see the two guys point at my door as they punch the button for the elevator.

Then, one guy jogs over, pushes back the door thingy and closes my door. The guys high five as they enter the elevator. It is at that point that I reappear in the hallway.**

**Uh Oh says Kathie, looks like Will's in trouble!

At this point, I still have no idea exactly how much trouble. I look over at the elevator and immediately decide that I do not want to ride the elevator down six floors wearing just a towel and cast about for the stairs. It's an unsettling feeling as I enter the stairwell. The air is a bit cooler, giving me goosebumps and the feel of my bare feet slapping down on the concrete steps does nothing to inspire confidence. At about the third floor, the towel gives way and falls to the floor. I quickly pick it up and wrap it around my waist even tighter. My lack of confidence goes from almost none to none. When I get to the 1st floor I see that my only option is to exit to the outside. For a myriad of reasons, I know that this is a bad idea and turn and walk back up to the second floor. I push open the second floor door and find myself back on a carpeted hallway, but instead of guest rooms, these are conference rooms. I shudder, thinking how much worse this would be at 11:30 in the morning instead of 11:30 at night!

I walk around looking for internal stairs that will take me down to the first floor. My heart sinks when I find them. They are a long set of stairs with a "rest area" about halfway down before continuing to the lobby. From here I can see that it is probably 25 yards to the front desk once I hit the marble floor. I can also see the area where not too long ago I was bored (!) and drinking a beer. Again, I make a mental note that it isn't as late as I thought it was, because everyone who was sitting there when I left, is still sitting there. And while I am having this thought, another one slowly enters my brain, "if I can see them, they can see—"

"What the hell" someone calls out loudly. I quickly take a step back as if to hide, realize I have nowhere else to go and then as if propelled by a subconscious force I find myself halfway down the stairs. I stare straight at the front desk, employing the logic that if I only focus on one thing, maybe nothing else will focus on me. Fat chance!

The sound of my bare feet hitting the marble floor sounds to me like machine gun fire.

When I finally get to the front desk, no one is there. I frantically look around, which is a mistake because I make eye contact with many of the people in the pseudo bar area. Most of them are craning their necks to get a better look. A few look positively thrilled.

One of the marines from before calls out "can we buy you a beer while you wait?" His comment receives a a few appreciative smiles.

Finally, a woman appears from a back office to help me. She has that look of someone trying to suppress a smile, but at the same time not at all bothered by the fact that she is failing. She does not seem at all surprised to see me. "Hello, I'm Veronica, how can I help you?"

"Hi," I say, "I um got locked out my room."

"Oh dear," she replies, "how embarrassing." With that she just stares at me, so I try to prod her along.

"Room 617."

"Oh right," she says, banging on the keyboard in front of her. "Mr. Johnson?"

Before I can answer, she says, "I'll just need to see some form of ID."

And again, before I can answer, I hear a male voice behind me chuckle and say, "maybe you can show her a birthmark or something."

I turn and find myself face to chest with the same damn marine.

"My friends and I feel bad about your predicament and wanted to buy you a beer."

I look over and see the two women I was ogling before, returning the favor and each giving me a little wave.

"Maybe another time," I say, turning back to see if any progress is being made on getting a new key card.

"So you can vouch for Mr. William Johnson then?"

The Marine looks at me with a "balls in your court kind of look," until I sigh and say "thanks, a beer would be great."

He then does one of those side embraces pulling me to him, saying "of course I know this guy, Willie and I go way back."

With that she starts to work on my key. While we're waiting, one of the girls calls out, "Hey Steve, I spilled some of my beer, see if they have a towel or something." Steve gives me a sly smile as we both hear appreciative laughter from the other tables. I'm pretty sure that this will not end well.

Once I have my key card in hand, I make a half hearted attempt to put Steve off. "Oh c'mon" he says, "at least come over and meet everybody." With this, I am back in the sideways embrace and being escorted to Steve's table at the pseudo bar. As we approach, the other Marine stands up and says "Hi I'm Mike," like this is the most normal situation in the world. Playing along, I extend my hand and say "Will." Mike takes my hand and gives me a hard quick shake, no doubt hoping to dislodge my towel. He does not succeed, but I do instinctively grab at the towel, which makes everyone smile.

Mike continues, "and this is Stephanie and this is Yolanda." They both hold out their hands in that limp wristed way, like I'm supposed to kiss them or something. I just awkwardly shake them.

"Won't you join us Will," Stephanie says. She is blond and is the one I was lusting after earlier.

Yolanda, with jet black hair, says, "we really need to get Tricia in on this and pulls out her phone.

In on what, I couldn't help but think.

"Phones," at this time were at best flip phones. Picture taking was not a thing per se and while texting was going strong, many people still called first, texted second. Yolanda, however was a trailblazer and was texting away like a champ.

Meanwhile, Steph, as she liked to be called, asked Steve if he was able to get a towel to clean up the spill at their table. "Sadly no," he responded, "they seem to be completely out of towels."

"Oh no," Steph said, "whatever will we do!?"

Yolanda, Yo for short, grinned up at me and called out "does anyone have a towel?"

One girl at another table nearby responded, "you guys are being jerks, leave him alone."

This girl was very pretty in a very different way than Steph and Yo. Where they were muscular and large breasted, this girl was thin and elegant. Her two friends were very plain and a bit overweight. You immediately picked up on a leader/followers kinda vibe.

Her suggestion that they leave me alone was summarily ignored.

"Oh wait," said Steve, (and I bet you saw this coming), "here's one we can use," and with that he whipped off my towel and tossed it to Steph.

And that was that. There I stood, completely naked, in a public setting, completely naked with plenty of people around and me, and I was completely naked. Well no, not completely naked, part of one of my shoulders was covered by Steve's massive hand that had me in a "don't even think about trying to run kind of grip."

And it was kinda like in the movies. My ears were ringing, so I wasn't really hearing any sounds and my vision was hyper focused taking in everything in slow motion. Steph and Yo's wide eyes and big grins, Mike's shit eating grin, Veronica at the front desk standing on her tip toes to get a better look, the woman who called Steve a jerk looking shocked as did her two friends.

Before I could take in the the reactions of the other tables, everything went live again as people gasped, laughed and one or two even applauded.

I covered what I could and started to ask for my towel back from Steph, who oddly enough was not using it to mop up any spills. I say started, because my mouth was so dry, I found it hard to talk.

Steve gave me a good slap on my butt and said, "What's that? Speak up son."

This made me jump a bit which caused Steph and Yo to laugh a little louder.

This also caused Jessica, the woman who had called them jerks to stride over and demand that they return my towel.

"What's that?" Steve said, "you want me to spank him again?" And then he did.

"I said, give him his towel back!"

"Okay," said Steve, whacking me again even harder. It was all I could do not to pull my hands away from my groin and rub my stinging butt.

"Darlin'," Steph said leaning towards Jessica, when he gets like this, you have to get down to his level and say the opposite."

Jessica sighed and looked Steve in the eye and after a moments hesitation said in a very low voice, "spank him."

"What," said Steve, cupping his hand to his ear.

"I said spank him."

Steve took two steps over to Steph and grabbed the towel off of her lap. He started to hand it to me, but then pulled it back and said to Jessica, "no, I'm going to need to hear you say it with a lot more enthusiasm and maybe throw in a 'please' while you are at it.

Thinking like I was, that we were so close, Jessica yelled out, "SPANK HIM PLEASE!"

You heard the lady," said Steve, and with that he gave me two big WHACKS!

This time instinct took over and my hands flew back to first protect my ass and then to try and rub away the sting, really exposing myself for the first time. Panic and air conditioning conspired to paint a very unflattering picture.

"Huh, said Steph to Jessica, "I guess I steered you wrong."

With that, Jessica literally huffed and returned to her table, where if I'm not mistaken, her two friends covered their mouths with their hands so that Jessica could not see that they were laughing. I'm not sure if they were laughing at her or me or both.

At this point, Steve handed me the towel and I gratefully covered up. I assumed that my ordeal was over and I think it might have been, but that's when Yo chimed in.

"He guys," she said, "I've been texting Tricia a play by play and she wants in. She says she got in a fight with Rick tonight and she is over at Razzles drinking by herself. She thinks our buddy here might be just the thing to cheer her up!"

Steph pulled on Steve's arm and said in a baby voice , "ooh can we keep him daddy, can we?"

Steve reinstalled his iron grip and said "what do you think buddy, want to go to Razzles?"

I told Steve that I thought that I would pass. He tightened his grip and shouted out to everyone that I was dying to go! "C'mon," he said to the group, "the more the merrier." And just like that most of the people pushed back their chairs and stood up. One older couple remained seated and Jessica stood up and strode past us to the elevators jabbing fiercely at the "up" button. Her two cronies sullenly followed.