it, these two guys asked if they could sit down with them; they said yes, reluctantly. Joy still tells this story and describes Cohen, then, as slouched, sunken and skinny in a black turtle neck, suffering bad acne, and not very attractive. They exchanged pleasantries and small talk until Joy finally recognized him. She got on the phone immediately. "I'm in the Bistro with Leonard Cohen and told him you wrote poetry; he says come down for a drink." I got nervous and lost my nerve and paced the apartment for a long time before deciding to head down the hill. When I came in view of the Bistro, Cohen was already on the sidewalk outside, leaving. We passed each other but did not speak. But I also knew that this might be our only chance to meet, so I followed him for a couple of blocks to the Ritz Carlton Hotel. As he was going into the foyer, I called to his back: "Leonard, I was supposed to meet you. I'm Barry." He looked, smiled and we entered a long and awkward pause until he said, "Well?" In my nervousness I blurted out: "I hate poetry." He laughed and said: "That's the spirit!" We decided to meet again in two weeks at the Bistro. He was with his wife and her child, Axel and Graham (who I remember was manic and agitated that day because of a bad tooth he couldn't afford to get fixed). The meeting was not what I had anticipated. Cohen and I barely spoke. Small talk went nowhere as did any attempt at serious talk. "What's the cause of the quarrel between Layton and Dudek", I asked. Reply: "Oh I don't really know." After a few of these dead-end attempts, I started yakking to Graham, who in between moans and the daubs of oil of cloves he was rubbing on his infected gums, guzzled the beer I ended up paying for. Soon my 10 dollars was gone, and I met Joy, and walked home drunk and disappointed in the anti- climax of my only meeting with the famous writer partly responsible for luring me to Montreal. A GUY MUCH LESS FAMOUS A guy much less famous showed up at my apartment door one day and introduced himself as Ray Fraser, poet and editor. He'd accepted a couple of my poems for his magazine Intercourse, and since he was just down the street, decided to look me up. I invited him in. He pulled out a bottle of cheap wine from his bag and went into a long gossipy conversation about poetry and the Canadian writing scene. His magazine was a Gestetnered job with crude hand drawn covers. The cover I most distinctly remember was of a drunk sprawled on a table with an empty wine bottle beside him.(I took this image to be somewhat autobiographical. Ray liked to drink wine and live the bohemian writer's life.) His wife worked as a nurse and Ray, to supplement the income, wrote part-time for Midnight - a disgusting tabloid full of violence and gore. Ray wanted me to write an article, and at the offer of $25, I gave it a try, but after a couple of paragraphs felt sick. The stories required everything from incest to cannibalism, and had to be written as sober realistic journalism. I couldn't do it, but did have many laughs at the stories Ray wrote. His characters would often take the names of Canadian poets. One headline read: Al Purdy Attends Own Funeral. He said, if you think that's funny look for your name on the next page. I can't remember the exact story, but I had also become a tabloid character amidst the tabloid gore in Ray's imagination. I lost touch with him but followed his career as a writer, sometimes finding his novels in the remainder bins. The one book I do have - an odd little collector's item - is Poems from the Miramichi. This was his first book, self-published, with Miramachi spelled incorrectly - a detail that captures something about Ray Fraser - a kind of small human error that begs a grin and quick forgiveness ( or at least gives a good lesson on the need for more careful editing).