Remember when Michael Corleone met Apollonia?

At Blanche’s in the East Village, me and my young adult crew were playing pool drinking Rolling Rocks and listening to “Enjoy Yourself-It’s Later Than You Think” on the jukebox for the fiftieth time.

A particularly rowdy Brit came in yelling about how lousy Americans played pool and how we sucked at so many things. My friends were from all over the world, we were just residents of that neighborhood, and didn’t appreciate idiots invading our space with insults. Instead of taking him to the side walk and beating his #@$, the guys decided to beat him at pool.

Of course the guy turned out to be a hustler when money came into play. He was winning and rubbing it pitylessly into our faces; he was even rude to we women-folk. Since no one was beating him at pool, the logical alternative was to just beat his @#!. I began to look around the bar to see if there was someone who he hadn’t played that would be brave enough to take him on.

One stranger sitting at the bar had a kind of young Christopher Walken quality, had been staring at me all night. I approached him and simply said: “Look handsome, you’ve been jocking me all night…. and I just need to know one thing. Can you play pool?” He responded: “I play alright” I replied, “You’ve got to do better than alright.” If you beat this @#!hole at a game and save face for our people, I will give you the biggest juiciest kiss that the guys in here could only wish for.. Do you think you’re up for the challenge?

Long story short, he beat that lowlife like a step-child and the bar went up in an uproar. I jumped into my hero’s arms and when we kissed, I was hit by “the thunderbolt”. When he let me go I couldn’t speak, I could barely stand, I looked at him and it was like Adam and Eve seeing each other in the nude for the first time. It was overwhelming.

He had that effect on me for years during our off- and-on relationship. We were not particularly compatible but we had a paralyzing effect on one another. Once, after I hadn’t seen him in years, he came to visit me in Paris and we spent the evening in Rue St. Jacques studio embraced, staring out at the majestic columns of the cathedral on St. Genvieve. I dated guys who looked like him to try and get that same effect, but only that wild-eyed boy from Jersey who saved we Americans could give me that “Rush.” H.M. was and will always be my “Thunderbolt”.