Did Leonard have any gay experience?

[faithfully]

Did Leonard have any gay experience? Maybe some affair with a man/men?

Who knows?

[John Etherington]

Hi faithfully,

From a heterosexual perspective, I'll attempt some sort of response to this question. A lady I know told me that everyone who was part of the Sixties scene experimented with bisexuality, even if they were straight. I don't necessariliy believe her. In "Beautiful Losers" (as I recall) there is a fantasy scene where the central character and F are speeding in a car, and simultaneously masturbating each other. This may be simply a humourous fantasy on Leonard's part, and (like much of the novel) a breaking of taboos. Again from memory, in his book "Angels, Divas and Blacklisted Heroes", bisexual poet Jeremy Reed mentions that although Leonard is seemingly the epitome of heterosexuality, he allows a homosexual fantasy to creep into one of his songs (although I can't find the book at present, I believe it is the "You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen" verse from "Is This What You Wanted"). If you want to check the latter out, you can purchase it for one penny on http://www.amazon.co.uk plus postage and packing!

All good things, John E

[DrHGuy]

This is the only interview reference I remember seeing about the issue - "As a New Generation Discovers Leonard Cohen's Dark Humour Kris Kirk Ruffles the Great Man's Back Pages" By Kris Kirk Poetry Commotion, June 18, 1988. at http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/rs031909.html

You were the first man in popular music to evince a genuinely feminised or perhaps androgynous mentality. Have you ever had a gay relationship?

[The last column in this article suffered from overcopying and each line was blurred towards the end. The best was done to try to fill in these gaps. Words in brackets are the result of those efforts.]

"No, not personally. I mean, I think [everybody] appreciates the sense of attraction between [the] sexes and I suppose I've been open to my [feelings for] both men and women, so it's completely [natural for] me to have deep relationships with men. It [doesn't] take much of a leap of the imagination to [project] deepness into physical terms. But I've never [been] deeply sexually attracted to a man. There [have been] moments, but not deeply. I think my deepest [sexual] emotions were towards women."

[greenmonk]

From "Teachers" :

"Several girls embraced me, then I was embraced by men, Is my passion perfect?"

[AvidCohenFan]

This is from http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/sat69.htm
'Leonard decided to deliver his application for a Canada Council grant in person. He was broke, but he borrowed enough money to hire a huge black limousine with uniformed driver. With the glass partition firmly shut, he spent the trip in the back seat with a friend, getting stoned and having a hell of a good time singing and playing music. When they arrived in Ottawa they somehow managed to get their hands on a wheelchair, and took turns pushing each other in and around and about the Canada Council offices, serenading the secretaries and causing a big uproar. It was from this visit that he got money to go back to Hydra and write Beautiful Losers, in which there is a very funny scene concerning two men being driven to Ottawa in a large car.'