Around eleven that night, the hostess broke out the Johnny Mathis and the Frank Sinatra, and everybody quit talking about their kids and their jobs and their mortgages and their politics, and got down to some serious slow dancing out on the darkened patio in the warm prairie night of summer 1961.

It was like all those groping, grasping ninth-grade parties we’d always had in some kid’s basement, where the mom was gracious and the old man cast an evil eye on anybody who danced too close with his sweet blooming daughter.

The difference now was that we were adults, or rumored to be, or hoped devoutly to be. Andre Malraux once asked an old priest if he’d learned anything from sixty years of hearing confessions and the padre said, “Yes, there’s no such thing as an adult.” He was probably on to something there.

There were only three single women there that night, and only one single guy. Me.

I took turns dancing with all three of them and all three of them said pretty much the same thing when I slid into their embrace, “Gosh, McCain, you always make me feel so tall.”

And then a giggle.

There’s nothing worse than being insulted by people who don’t mean to insult you. At five-five a guy can be awfully sensitive about short jokes.

We danced.

Back in high school the only girl I wanted to dance with was the beautiful Pamela Forrest, the girl I’d loved since grade school. But since she went out with older boys, I didn’t get to dance with her very often.

As I saw it, my prospective dancing partners were divided into three groups. Girls who were shorter than I was and therefore good for my public image; girls who were fun to dance with no matter how short or tall they were; and girls who didn’t mind a little dry-humping in the darkness.