Our hostess' memorabilia included several of the little dancecards that girls of that time used at parties to dance with boys. All the songs that the band was planning to play were listed, each with a blank line next to it that the dancers needed to fill in to share a song. Many of the songs were scratched out, which our hostess explained meant that the girl was reserving those songs for her favorite boy of the evening.

Even before noon there was considerable trade.

The most established attendees were by far the long-standing Republic of Molossia, whose President Kevin Baugh is one of the go-to interviewees for features on micronations, and the Grand Duchy of Westarctica, a territory claimed on an unclaimed piece of land on Antarctica whose Grand Duke Travis McHenry is fundraising for an expedition to the actual Westarctican territory.

I had inbreathed their mystery and outbreathed it again as my own.