Dad’s group called itself the Six Footers Club. Dan needed six more inches to qualify. These six inches caused lurid jokes I never tired of overhearing.

Men! So simple in beasty anxiousness about their size relative to other guys’ vitals’ sizes. “Is it large enough?” cannot be called the subtlest question in the world, but it sure remains a biggie.

•  •  •

Dan, the Six Footers’ mascot and pony beauty, again got teased about his runtiness and profile. A tree house was good for such eavesdropping. I knew that—between guy-drink two and guy-drink three—the smut would start. I waited.

Country-Club North Carolina: most days after 5 p.m. from 1949 to 1969 meant bottoms up, three good stiff ones downed in an hour and a half. (Not sissy white wine, either. The hard stuff.)

Men watched our driveway for the last of today’s foursome. He’d soon roar up after closing some deal or suturing shut the victims of Falls’s latest teen car wreck. Our house had a horseshoe of parking lot, plus hammocks and the open bar.

Mom, perfectly dressed, with a Master’s degree, hovered, warmly impersonal. Indoors, two black, uniformed maids did her heavy lifting. Dad’s friends lounged and goofed right under my treetop.

After jawing through money news, after gossiping about sewage-bond issues, after the mind-numbing hit parade of their last game’s best shots, “So Dan surprises us, choosing his three iron …,” they finally got dirty on me.

Stripped to shorts, my eyes half shut, breathing Dan’s dollar, nose to nose with George Washington, I’d been ready.

They mentioned certain looser secretaries—those days always named Donna—and who Donna’d “done” now, sometimes three in a hotel room at one time. Smut hushed when Mom reappeared wearing a Dior flared skirt, carrying the silver tray that—some summers—seemed jewelry fused direct to her hand’s red nails. As she swept indoors, trash restarted mid-syllable.

I never tire of hearing deep-voiced, long-legged guys bray through the six key words in human reproduction. Holy Man-tra!

What did a youngster hear, those corny days of sexed-up ’57? Often simple dick jokes of the kind that little boys my age enjoyed. “Hey, Dean,” remarked our youngest bank president, ever, “summer sure has bleached your hair. Or you been dipping into one of Jeanie’s Clairol bottles? So tell us, big-time Lawyer Man, is it true blonds have more come?”

Tree-high, I kept still.

“I’m not answerin’ that directly, sir. But you can state your question direct into my Bone-o-Phone, Phil. Put Mouth Against Tip of Receiver and Inhale Hard … right here.” Many yuks. Above them, half stiff in my seersucker shorts (shorts whose very fabric’s name gave me a minor-major boner), I listened in a trance of premonition, dread, desire.