I never thought of myself as devastatingly handsome. Apparently I was wrong.

I’ve always been shy, modest, un-selfassuming. I would pass by mirrors without bothering to look.

I had lots of hair on my head and grew a goatee to save the time of shaving, and saved the money for shaving cream.

Shirley said I was a hunk. I didn’t know what that meant, but I assumed it was something good.

I did pose for a picture, just out of high school. I was standing in front of Shirley’s parents’ garage, hands in pockets, wearing a dark turtle neck, projecting attitude. I was looking intense. I was looking like I thought people looked in those days being “cool.” I called it my “James Dean pose.”

There were, from time to time, various girls who poised themselves to be in apparent proximity. I was unaware of this. As I have said, I was unaware of many things.

I had seen movies of Rock Groups with audiences gone wild. When the Beatles came to America, the videographer put the girls down front for close up, and they went wild crazy, screaming, reaching out to grab, crying from excitement, sometimes passing out.

I only evoked that reaction once, as far as I remember.

I was in The Sterling Consort, a renaissance performing group Shirley started, costumed singers, dancers, musicians. We performed all over Southern California.

The Consort needed more men, and I was conscripted. I could deny Shirley nothing, and, shy as I was, because there was a need, I filled it and became a star. I rose to the occasion.

We did the usual period dances, pavane, jigs, la Volta. That’s where you lift your partner, giving her a boost with your knee. They paired me with a taller girl who couldn’t divorce herself from the earth’s gravity and I never got her very far up.

We sang the usual madrigals and rounds, like “Hey, ho, anybody home?” or “Summer is icumin in” or “Now is the month of Maying” with all those endless “Fa la la.”

I was the baritone soloist with such favorites as “I care not for these ladies,” with its Elizabethan court arch fake tragic, or the darker “Can she excuse my wrongs?” or the ever popular Tobacco song, “Tobacco is like love,” which came out shortly after tobacco was discovered in the New World and brought to Europe which immediately started smoking.

We performed everywhere. At the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum to celebrate his daughter’s birthday where the great actor John Houseman generously praised us.

We performed in the auditorium of the Pasadena Public Library, and I, the reluctant star ham, presided over the proceedings while lolling like a renaissance nobleman at the side of the stage, and a University Professor of Philosophy and Religion came up to me and complimented the way I played the part, as if the past had come alive, so I knew I elicited audience response.

However, I was unprepared for the reception I provoked when we were invited to a party at the home of Wilhelm Matthies.

All early music people, renaissance, Elizabethan, Tudor, form a network of common interest, seem to know each other. Matthies was harpsichord. He built them and sold them and played them and advocated the early music they embodied and represented.

He was hosting a party and we were invited to attend in costume. He had heard of us.

His house was suburban modest, with a comfortable patio shaded by a large tree, and an adjacent reconverted and extended garage studio apartment for his son who was a graphic artist.

There were throngs of people inside and out, many from Germany, and the language was in the air.

Our Consort went through part of our repertoire, danced in the courtyard, and drew guests from audience to participation. We were the life of the party.

Inside the house there was a piano. People gathered round. Music was layed out. There was singing. Much of the music was in German, and they asked me to sing it.

Fortunately there were things I knew or could fake. There were German folk songs, and Schubert. I was singing a favorite, and Wilhelm Matthies joined in. He was old, but could sing with surprising satisfaction. His son, vigilant, tried to protect his father from embarrassment and said, “Dad, let the professional singer sing it.”

I of course didn’t think of myself as professional, and didn’t mind his joining in. I was always as I’ve said repeatedly, shy, unassuming, etc.

One of the German women placed the sheet music of a folk song on the music stand before me and said, “Sing this for me.”

It was “Aennchen von Tharau,” a love song with those passionate lines, “du meine Seele, mein Fleisch und mein Blut.” “You are my soul, my flesh, my blood.”

She said, “That’s me. I’m Anne.” She had arranged it so it seemed I was singing directly to her, and her hands reached clutchingly toward me.

I escaped out the back door.

I was rather resplendent in my costume, a colorful short upper tunic, red leather shoes I had found in a thrift shop that looked noble medievalish or renaissancy, the toes curling up and back. I wore the tights which highlighted my legs all the way up and apparently focused attention and riveted the eye. Shirley always liked my legs, and I liked hers. It was not a competition, we were both winners.

The artist son invited me into his studio to see his etchings.

I, without the backing of art criticism, found them particularly good, the boldness of line establishing itself, the strength of presentation. I said something like, “They remind me of Matisse.”

The son was enraptured by my response, urged me to see his other work as he reached his arm to guide me into the inner recesses of his studio.

I heard my name being called, and exited into the courtyard where a gaggle of German women were gathered and waiting. They reached for me with clasping hands and I immediately thought of the grasping audience of young screaming girls reaching for the Beatles.

I fled from the German women and climbed the tree to escape.

They were clawing at the trunk, shredding the bark, and I climbed higher, just out of reach.

Shirley came out, looking for me, and the German women turned to her and said in unison, “Do not vorry, ve haff you husband.”