Talking Not Stalking

People who never knew Leonard Cohen have repeated the rumor that I "stalked" him so often it has taken on a life of its own. Lately two women on Twitter started a new smear campaign around this false claim, with nothing to support it but more hot air and envy. It's sad to see women who, had they ever got as close to him as I did, would likely have concluded he was a predatory creep and run the other way. Back in 1977 when I met him in Montreal (he phoned me one night in November out of the blue, or more accurately I guess, out of the dark) many women found him repulsive and dangerous. I was warned to stay away from him and several times had refused to engage when we crossed paths in the street. The fact that I'm 6 feet tall has always been a protection. Leonard was 5'8" - but he could project dominance and a friend who met him at a party said he was sexually aggressive with her to the point that she had to leave to get away. In 1977 he was 43 which seemed pretty old to me at 26. He was not particularly attractive but he could be charming with that hypnotic gaze that he fastened on you. He had a way of turning awkwardness into a silly dance that dissolved boundaries. Once he had us stand side by side facing a mirror- we made a ridiculous-looking couple - then he turned on the TV and there was gawky Karen Black in a scene beside a short, ugly man and it was so like a parody of the two of us that I burst out laughing. Getting to know Leonard was a rite of passage for young women in Montreal, as someone famously quipped. When he phoned me the first night I did not expect the encounter to go well, but felt compelled to get it over with since I had already blown several chances to meet him. But he surprised me with his sincerity and I did fall in love. The sense that his mask had dropped to reveal the real Leonard Cohen, was very compelling and lasted a few years. In private he made room for me, when many fan girls never got through the door. Why? Back then I had no idea. I now think it was because he had known me as a 5 year old child when we both were regulars at the Allan Memorial, in Subproject 68. I've had plenty of confirmation from people who saw us there. But 20 years later when we met as adults, I had no memory of my career as a child subject, likely in training to become a prostitute/courier/spy - and already being trafficked at age 8 to politicians and the music scene. They wiped all that out with ECT and let me grow up "normally" after my father withdrew me from the program at around age 11. Unfortunately nothing that began in MKULTRA would ever be normal, and Leonard (a successful case of Manchurian Candidate programming) knew the truth, which was classified and couldn't be talked about. So he and I bonded around that unspeakable secret of being ex-Cameron guinea pigs. It was a genuine friendship, at first, born out of shared trauma. And then it changed into something more complicated, even sinister. I became a witness to hidden crimes. Nothing stands still. Two years down the line, I travelled to Europe for the first time. Before I took off I ran into him by chance and he suggested I go to Hydra and wait for him there. It was the summer of 1979, the summer he broke down the door to the Hollywood cult. Dianne Lawrence was part of that scene - she drew the cover image for his album Recent Songs. She was also commissioned to paint portraits of musicians at the House of Blues - she was an up and coming LA artist that year, and there's a photo of her with her arm around Leonard - both are smiling and she kind of dwarfs him. Frankly I found her cover portrait of Leonard hideous, and I wondered why he chose it. Now I think he had no choice. He had traded his soul to get those songs produced, and when he finally arrived on Hydra in late summer, and I ran into him in the port, he looked like the face on the album cover, slicked back hair and vacant stare. I was repulsed and could barely stand to be in his presence. In fact I felt ill and didn't go out for three days. In bed with a fever, I dreamed of a pedophile. Dianne Lawrence is one of the people who claim I "stalked" Leonard -- she's an ex drug addict who bragged to Michael Posner that she had sex with him. She claims it was "spiritual" - yeah, right. Whatever happened to Leonard in Los Angeles that spring did not change him for the better but it propelled his career out of the doldrums where it was enmired when I first met him. August 1979 was a crazy month on Hydra. The Lion's Gate portal on 8/8 was a massive event that I witnessed at Leonard's house with several other guests including the "wife" of an Indian guru, Baba Ji whose saintly, bearded face appears in the crowd on the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album. Looking back, I see this is when everything shifted-- **** 1979 was likely the year Leonard cut a deal with "the people who control my career" -- as he was calling them in the mid-1980s. I did not know these people and advised him to ignore them but obviously I knew nothing about the recording industry, Hollywood, the Jewish Mafia, the Illuminati or whoever he was referring to. He shook his head with a depressed shrug that telegraphed "Don't ask." Nowadays, we can imagine it all much better than forty years ago. We know all about the Satanic party scene, the snuff movies, the child pornography, the underground tunnels off Sunset Boulevard and all the rest that must have been dragging Leonard down into a hell he couldn't talk about. This was also when he overtly embraced Zionism and became a puppet of Ronald Reagan and the Lubavitcher sect. I don't know how far back those connections went -- probably he had had them all along but after 1980 he stopped hiding his "conservative" views which I preferred to call "fascist". This was the start of the friction between us. It was also the start of him telling me we were going to get married. His old friend the poet Irving Layton once called Leonard a "self-hating narcissist." I would add that he was a woman-hater who pretended to love women because he feared being alone. But at first, because I was naive, I took him at his word. He encouraged me to convert to Judaism so I met with a rabbi who sold me a book, "How to Be a Jew." Reading it from cover to cover didnt persuade me that I needed to become Jewish since I was already a Christian, and besides I knew of a German woman who had recently moved to Montreal to live close to Leonard, after going through the process of getting a new Jewish identity and adding "Rebecca" and "Sarah" to her legal names. I went out on a date with a newly arrived Chilean immigrant writer who told me I was the third woman he'd met who thought Leonard Cohen planned to marry her. So the next time Leonard brought up the subject of marriage I snarkily shot back, "Better put your money where your mouth is, Leonard." His amused smile changed to mild annoyance. From that time on, early 1982, I lived with the cognitive dissonance of thinking we were still friends while knowing he constantly lied to women like me. In 1983, at his suggestion, I travelled to New Mexico and California to meet his Zen Master, Sasaki Roshi. My goal was to sort out the relationship once and for all. First the Roshi enthused: "You will marry Rennard Cohen!" but soon revised it to "Rennard Cohen crazy-- you not need!" I was fine with that. Then the Roshi told me Leonard had agreed to support me financially in my training to become a Zen nun. As I pondered this unwanted offer, I got a call from a friend in Montreal, offering me his $75/month, very cosy apartment which he was vacating. He didn't say, because he didnt know, it was right next door to Leonard Cohen's house and neither did I find out until I viewed it for the first time a month later. By then it was too late to back out, and I moved in. This was probably when the "stalking" rumour began to boil and bubble, but I had nothing to do with this odd accident. It was just the Universe playing a silly joke on us. Early in 1984, a few months after I moved next door, his daughter Lorca, 8, paid me a visit. I met her by accident one January morning standing forlornly on a snowbank outside his house at 7 am. When I asked what was wrong, she said she had "Insomnia". I was on my way to buy milk from the bakery and ten minutes later she was still there so I invited her in for hot cocoa. The next day she visited my apartment with her piggy bank and a proposal: she wanted to write a book about her father, and since I was a writer, would I help her? She could pay me, and do the illustrations. I thanked her and said she should ask her dad first. After that, I didn't see her again for five years until we both attended an art opening. She was there with Leonard, and was now quite grown up. We spoke for half a minute and then from across the crowded room he sent someone over to drag her back to "safety". That's when I began to suspect something was weird. During the five years since she had visited, rumors had circulated that no one would repeat to me, but I could sense they were seriously damning. A couple of friends cut me off cold, saying they were sorry but they couldn't talk about it. Other acquaintances grew distant. One woman crossed the street to avoid meeting me. Meanwhile I had started writing for local media, publishing my fiction, and had a column in the Gazette -- perhaps Leonard found this attention threatening? He never let on, was always friendly when we met, even invited me out a few times just like in the old days. Remember I said: Cognitive dissonance. In 1993 his friend Irving Layton, whom I had interviewed on his 80th birthday, phoned to say he had been hearing bad things about me for years, from Leonard, who had warned him I was "violent and psychotic". News to me. Having met me in person, Irving said, "I can see you're nothing like that." He suggested we get together sometime to "talk about Leonard." I didn’t take him up on that invitation, which sounded to me like a fishing expedition. Instead I got up the courage to phone Leonard in Los Angeles. I asked him point blank if he had been lying to people behind my back all these years. He skipped the question and answered with one of his own. "Are you the person who has been phoning me several times a day and hanging up?" So that's how I found out, and somehow continued living with the knowledge that my next door neighbour was a pathological liar. Recently I read in saxophonist John Jordan's memoir that in 1994 he met Leonard and me at the Mexican restaurant a block or two from Parc du Portugal, and had an unforgettable conversation about music with his hero. I remember that meeting -- I was protective of Leonard who seemed uncomfortable with the boisterous punk/ska band at the next table. So obviously I had forgiven him even after I caught him spreading ugly gossip about me that damaged my life and reputation. He was that "charming." The man next door. In 1995 an old girlfriend of Leonard's stopped me in the street near my home and told me Lorca, who was now 19, had been going around telling everybody that her father had molested her in childhood. She confronted me as if I might be an accomplice. Did I think this story could be true? I thought yes it could, but I was in shock and didnt know what else to say. I thanked her and went to bed for two days, reviewing all that had happened, which suddenly made awful sense. Over the next year I flew to Los Angeles and stayed at the Zen Center downtown. I made no attempt to contact Leonard during the six months I was there. Instead I rode a bicycle to the beach every few days and wrote a novel, Dead White Males. I shared a house with Dianne Lawrence, who spoke with me more than once about Leonard. She was quite disparaging and said "that guy would stick it in anything." She asked me what I planned to do about Leonard. I said truthfully: "Absolutely nothing." She was not in good shape mentally or financially. When I left LA I gave her my bicycle since she was broke and had no way of getting around, but I think Leonard bought her a second hand car soon afterwards, in return for her saying I "stalked him". Over time it had become obvious she was reporting to him about me. He got me banned from the Zens, and told the head monk that I had been calling him "every day from Culver City"-- although I have never been to Culver City and never phoned him at all. Dianne's memory of me is a decade off. She says I begged her for his phone number but I didn't need to. Over 20 years I phoned him once, at his Montreal number in 2004, to wish him happy birthday. I got the answering service and left a nice message. Thanks for the (false) memories. Hooray for Hollywood. And the Beat goes on. Stalking is a crime. If you think you're being stalked, phone the police.