Beginning with the nomination of John Kennedy, the USA, at any rate, was entering its Camelot period. I hadn’t attended the big rally in Herald Square for Jack when he and Jackie campaigned in Manhattan. But I did go to Rockefeller Center on my lunch hour later that afternoon. The presidential candidate was alone and pressing the flesh among a crowd of supporters at the skating rink in front of 30 Rock. I had just a moment in his presence, but that moment brought me into the orbit of a most attractive man who seemed to find me attractive, too. What I had thought of as singling me out, I learned, was more likely the result of meds he took for back pain. Mr. Shawn’s then secretary, Pat Broun, who had briefly been employed at the White House, disabused me over lunch one day. She attributed that runaway testosterone—the smile, the intensity—which I’d found so compelling, to prescription drugs. Poor fellow. I would just as happily have gone on in ignorance. The New Yorker was a solid bastion of blue under Mr.
