"I call them on a night I don't have a partner in the straight world, and they call me when they don't have a partner in the gay world," says Mary Ann King, a saucy blonde with a smoker's voice, who met the wild Squares at a dance in Lebanon, Missouri. King says that, in her nearly fifteen years of promenading and sashaying, she's never had as much fun as she does with the Sho-Me folks, who have a Chicago trip, a beginner's class and ten-year anniversary dance in the works. "We have the time of our life," she says.
Dancer Bruce Hayes says that's because the "all-positions dance club" puts fun above perfection, camaraderie above the status quo.
"For straight dancers, the man dances in the lead position and the woman follows," he explains. "In our club, we don't see any reason why four women can't do a 'square-through' together."
Callers, who yell out dance commands, love the Squares for their lack of inhibition. If Sho-Me dancers don't know a call, they don't stand around staring at their Tony Lamas. They just remember their motto -- DBD, dance by definition -- and make up something.
"There's one call, 'touch a quarter,'" King says. "Only with the Show-Me Squares will you not get your arm broken off if you reach down and slap somebody on the butt."
