Memories of Dianne
She was tall and came from Toronto. Her mother was Latvian and her dad was a black American soldier. We were the same age and got on quite well. Soon after I arrived we drove to Malibu Beach one day where she brought up Leonard Cohen and we talked about him. I think this was a fact-finding mission for the Zen Center. She told me Leonard was a pervert, in her opinion. She seemed to know him only slightly, or have known him in the distant past when she designed his 1979 album cover, back in the days when she was the mural-painter at the House of Blues.
I said I was in LA to speak to him, if possible -- I wasnt optimistic because back in Montreal his daughter Lorca had overdosed two years earlier after telling a bunch of his friends he had molested her in childhood. I lived next door and the toxic fallout from her near-death was making my life very unpleasant. I felt he should own up to causing the gossip that swirled around Lorca's accusations of incest, and Leonard's deep fear of women and "feminists" finding out.
At the Zen Center reception where I met Dianne, Lorca had also showed up as a guest. Surprised to see me, she looked the picture of wholesomeness in a frilly peach blouse and tailored skirt. All tattoos removed, she smiled shyly and the conversation went something like "How are you, Lorca?" "I'm okay." "You're okay?" "I'm okay." "I'm okay and you?" "I'm okay, You're okay." Better than last time.
In her teens Lorca had been a walking advertisement for childhood sexual abuse -- dressing in black since age 6, showing many signs of dissociative brilliance, which people took for artistic genius inherited from her father.
At the Zen Center where most guests wore their black monks' robes to formal events, like this garden party, Diane stood out in bright lipstick, tilted sunglasses and eighties' hip costumes dating back to her heyday. A fish out of water in that spiritual crowd, she was in deep financial straits. The head monk whom she knew let her into a room in the house across the street where she attempted to revive her painting career.
Arlington Heights was a mainly black neighborhood, built by black entertainers. Hattie McDaniel had lived down the street in one of many beautiful craftsman-style homes from the 1930s. Marvin Gaye's huge yellow mansion stood abandoned a few blocks away.
At some point that summer Dianne had no car -- maybe it broke down -- so as roommates with common interests we often walked around the neighborhood of East Arlington talking to locals like 70 year old Mary McGee, whom we talked to over the fence one day at her bungalow off the Santa Monica freeway. Being Canadian, Dianne and I had no fear of walking, but most of the Zens at the Center believed it was dangerous to walk to the corner to mail a letter.
"Nine times out of ten you won't get shot..." a monk once advised me.
Being half black, Dianne had no fears. She also rescued dogs-- most recently a black and brown Rottweiler that she named "Buddy" who sometimes accompanied us on our walks. One evening we walked to the mall and Dianne went in to buy groceries while I stayed on the sidewalk with Buddy. A little boy, about 9 year old, came along and did a double take when he saw the dog. "Beethoven?" said the boy. Buddy perked up and wagged his tail. "It's Beethoven!" They were both overjoyed. "He's my brother's dog! He knows me." Buddy barked and pulled on his leash.
When Dianne came out she took the boy's phone number and talked to his mother who explained that her older son was in prison for drugs and Beethoven had run away and her younger son had been looking for him for months. Dianne returned him to his home. It was heartwarming. But Dianne has told me she doesn't remember those events - in her mind they never happened. We never roamed the neighborhood together, shared a kitchen and gossip. The only thing she claims to remember is me "stalking Leonard Cohen" - a memory she either hallucinated, or has been rewarded for by Zionist shill and "Cohen biographer" the incredibly devious and evil Michael Posner who loves when Gazans die.
Dianne she told Posner she knew me in the late 80s, the era she seems to be stuck in. It was 1996.
Dianne had once been friends with Gilder Radner of Saturday Night Live, who had died. They bith came to LA as aspiring actresses and comedians. Radner was famous. Dianne recalled nude sessions in hot tubs with Robert de Niro and Jack Nicholson.
She was talented and still sang jazz occasionally, e.g. in a club on Rodeo Drive one night where I went to see her with our other roommate whose name I forget. The same man who took me to a computer fair in Pasadena where I found the Stones' Voodoo Lounge CD-Rom in a bin with my image and name in the credits.
Most of that summer, when not cycling to the beach and back, I was in my tiny upstairs room writing a novel, Dead White Males, which got published in 2001. Meanwhile Dianne stayed in her big room downstairs, with her TV on, painting flowers.
In August a friend, Pat Rodriguez, came from Montreal and I accompanied her to Hearst Castle where she attended the premiere of a film in which she played the mother of the young William Randolph Hearst.
One day in early September I was cycling up Washington Boulevard and saw another friend from Montreal, Allan Moyle, chatting with his neighbour, an elderly black woman. I hadn't seen Allan since the early 80s. He invited me to an opening that night at the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Design where we ran into Wim Wenders.
Allan drove me back to the Zen Center where I introduced him to Dianne Lawrence- they knew people in common including Leonard.
Allan was closing in on 50, in the throes of divorcing from his young girlfriend, and I saw him a few more times. He picked me up with a friend one time and we went out to eat and driving back he and the friend began screaming - his newfound method for releasing anxiety, they called it. It was a silly joke, but therapeutic. We all started letting out high pitched screams in the car, and laughing.
Back at the Zen Center we sat on the porch and Dianne came out, all dressed up for a date, looking very "Eighties" - and as she walked by I let out a scream, before saying "Hi Dianne --"
She took it as an insult or a comment on her wardrobe -- she had obviously spent some time getting ready for this special days -- we explained it was a joke. "Just kidding, Dianne, it's not about you, we're from Montreal and sometimes we just like to scream... "
She never spoke to me again. Instead she wrote letters to the head monk and Leonard Cohen, accusing me of insanely screaming, and demanded that I be evicted.
Well, I didnt get evicted- I left two months later. By then the Zen Center was in a crisis. I found out Leonard had told everyone I was there to "destroy" him, and was phoning him every day from Culver City -- none of which was true. I had spent the 5 months riding my bicycle and writing a novel.
After I left to go home to Montreal Leonard lost a big chunk of his popular support. He had been pouring $$ into the Zen Center and gathering monks Who viewed him as a probable successor to their 90-year-old Roshi. Maybe he had sabotaged himself by putting the whole community on high alert over a "vindictive ex-girlfriend" and "crazy stalker" who didnt ever stalk him, and a dangerous threat that never materialized. I know I tiptoed around for the last month I was there, picking up the unspoken vibe. But nothing ever happened. I had Leonard's phone number but didnt phone him once. That must have been nerve-wracking-- if he really believed I was out to expose him, he needed that phone call that never came.
Before Christmas, the Roshi sent out a postcard to his students. On the front was a photo of him seated, flanked by his wife and Leonard in monks robes. The caption read
"Dear student of Sasaki Roshi, Happy New Year. I am 90 years old and I have no successor. Please help me."
Leonard left for India in 2000 and began studying with Ramesh Balkesar, a Vedic scholar and Bombay guru who had been convicted of financial fraud and sexual misconduct.
The Roshi died in 2012 without a successor. Sadly, in his final year (he lived to 105) he was accused by female students of molesting them in private. After losing all his money to his former agent, Leonard Cohen returned and remained with the Roshi, loyal to the end.
Dianne Lawrence went on to found The Neighborhood News, a community paper based in East Arlington. She and I exchanged text messages a few years ago. She doesn't remember anything about that summer, except for the "scream" -- but I kept a journal. Everything i just described is written in that journal. Late in 1996, I sublet my apartment next to Leonard, moved away and never returned to LA.
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