Steve Martin: “Stormy Sherk, later to become an enormously successful Christian author and proselytizer under her married name, Stormie Omartian, was beautiful, witty, bright, and filled with an engaging spirit that was not yet holy. We performed in the melodramas together [at a small theatre called the Bird Cage]; my role was either the comic or the leading man, depending on the day of the week. She wore calico dresses that complemented her strawberry-blond hair and vanilla skin. Soon we were in love and would roam around Knott’s in our period costumes and find a period place to sit, mostly by the period church next to the man-made lake, where we would stare endlessly into each other’s eyes. We developed a love duet for the Bird Cage in which she would sing “Gypsy Rover” while I accompanied her on the five-string banjo. When she sang the song, the lyric that affected me the most was – believe it or not- “La dee doo la dee doo dah day.” We would talk of a wedding in a lilac-covered dale, and I could fill any conversational gaps with ardent recitations of poetry by Keats and Shelley, which I picked up at Santa Ana Junior College. Finally, the inevitable happened. I was a late-blooming eighteen-year-old when I had my first sexual experience, involving the virginal Stormie, a condom (swiped from my parent’ drawer), and the front seat of my car, whose windows became befogged with desire..."

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