Fu Manchu in Soho

First contact:

She approached from the south side of town, having gotten off at the wrong subway stop. She had the address clutched in her hand, the only person she knew would be her new friend Amy – who had invited her. Her stilettoes clickered on the sidewalk.

The party was at a storefront art gallery in Soho on a bombed-out grafittied block. People raged out onto the sidewalk. Painters, B-level rock stars, blue-haired girls in dog collars chained to their boyfriends, and writers, and multimedia gurus, and off-Broadway actors and performance artists . Oil paintings stacked up against the walls. If you wanted to look at the artist’s work, you had to dig through it. There wasn’t enough wall space to show his stuff – his paintings were huge, massive canvases. Deep colors, moody urban scenes, fire escapes, a yellow window in the midnight blue, a glimpse of a girl in a negligee. A small back room with a big industrial sink served as the drink area. Mayhem. Hard stuff, a keg, gallon jugs of wine, paper cups, paint-stained sink.

She knew no one. She could not find Amy, although she squinted closely at every glowing blonde-haired woman there. She joined the raging crowd. She stood and looked at the paintings, falling up into those deep dark midnight blues. No one looked at her twice. There was no need to be intimidated. It was a party.

Metallica pounded out of the huge mounted speakers, she could feel the beat in her DNA, it shook the walls. The space was so small there was no room to navigate. A girl with jet-black hair, plastic platform boots, and ripped fishnets did lines of coke off the windowsill, jammed up against the wall with her gorgeous Sinead- O’Connor-bald friend. She could pick out the art dealers without even having to be told that they were there. She could tell by how they looked at the paintings. Even at a coke-fueled renegade party in a ratty storefront, the art dealers were recognizable. Someone shouted, “TURN IT UP” and even though she could not believe the music could get any louder … it then did. Metallica. Pounding. Mindless. The jammed-in crowd was moving – as one. Jumping. Thrashing. No boundaries between people. Arms in the air, pumping – people lost in the moment. It could not be resisted. She knew no one. But there she was – thrashing around – lost – lost … lost … Music that loud and that insistent breaks you apart at the molecules. Exhilaration. And a feeling that life can never get back to normal. Thrashing in a bombed-out gallery with strangers. A feeling that life should always be like this.

Then she saw Amy, through the open door, out on the sidewalk. Her hair blonde and gleaming, leather pants, little black-rimmed glasses. They did not know each other that well yet. This was their first “date”. There was a feeling between them that this friendship could become important. Extricating herself from Metallica, she pushed her way through the throngs to come outside, out of the pound of the sound, the black gleaming concrete landscape stretching out, east, west, north. Amy stood on the sidewalk talking to a tall beefy guy who had a teeny thin Fu Manchu beard coming out of his beefy chin. He was smoking, and guffawing with laughter. Later she would think that his laugh was one of the best laughs she had ever heard. Amy saw her, and started screaming with excitement: “Oh my God!!! You came! I am so excited!!!” Then a big rowdy hug, jumping up and down together, laughing.

She noticed Fu Manchu watching them hug. He grinned at her, as she was being hugged by Amy. He stated, to no one in particular, “I love female bonding.” He seemed to mean it.

Amy pulled back and said, “Oh! Have you two met?”

“No.” she said.

Fu Manchu had not taken his eyes off of her. “Nope.” He held out his hand. They shook. He smiled at her, didn’t let go. Suddenly it was not a handshake. It was an odd meeting of the minds. She couldn’t look away. Like he was a cobra or something. And he was not breaking the moment.

“Want a drink?” he said.

She nodded.

He pushed himself into the party, the wall of thrashing people, on a mission.

It was a moment. Noticeable only to the two of them. She couldn’t even label it. If she had never met him again, she still would have remembered him. Something … something … something in the grin, the observational stance, “I love female bonding”, holding onto her hand, smiling at her … something … something … there was something about him … Had they met before? It seemed so.

He never did come back with her drink. He must have gotten distracted.

So that was it. For the moment. It would be a year and a half before they would meet again.