basemap - drawing circles/shapes in meters - help

I see the example "plot_tissot.py" for basemaps which seems like it might do what I would like, but unfortunately, it uses shapefiles to create a polygon.
  Can someone give me advice or an example of just drawing a simple circle poly with units of "actual" meters, that I can then display/project on a map of my choice?

So, to say another way, I want to draw a circle of radius "X meters" around a point and then display that circle properly on a US Map.
Regards,
Kurt