The House of Cohen

David Cohen always an odd duck, a bit the outsider, an obvious New York Jew living in the woods of Vermont by way of the lower east side. A scientist, a recluse, and, a guy living on a commune where he didn’t quite fit in. But there he was, long salt and pepper gray hair by age thirty, never into the free sex scene swirling about him, never integrated into the community, but always seeking to be a part of it. He’d run a locksmith shop in Brooklyn, perhaps his father was a locksmith before him, and he was gifted with ideas about alternative technology, life extension services, Whole Earth Catalog things. And, of course, he was paranoid.

Was very heavily into cryonics and survivalism. Carried around with him a two foot by two foot sheet of plastic folded into the smallest square he could make it into, containing a fishhook, a wound up spool of dental floss, a dime, and a gold coin so that he could survive anywhere by opening the plastic and capturing rainwater or dew in the desert, by using the fishhook in any body of water, by using the dime for a phone call (before the era of calling cards), and the coin to bribe the border guards if the Cossacks or the Nazis returned. As to cryonics, he believed that the technology whereby people could be deep frozen immediately before their death and then unthawed when the technology permitted revitalization and DNA or genetic rejuvenation of the body, was not far away, and he was prepared to be frozen, had paid some money for it, maintained a connection with the folks who allegedly had the ice chests. He liked me and I tolerated him better than most.

At some point we simply lost contact though I heard he was estranged from the commune he’d lived on, that he had married, that he had children, that he was building a separate house for himself and his family on the commune land, that he was hostile and isolated, that he was trying to force a partition of the property. But I heard it all second hand and no more for perhaps twenty years.

Then out of the blue the phone rang in my office and it was Dave. In the early eighties he had been arrested on his land for growing pot, served a year in jail in the early nineties, thinks it was all a hostile plot by his former commune mates, anti-Semites, the attorney general of Vermont, and the trial judge to prosecute him. And now having basically exhausted his appellate remedies and acquired nearly three million dollars is looking for me to advise him on what if any further steps are available to him.

I’m happy to hear from him, even cautiously eager to hear his story. More than willing to help if I can. He is now living in California. Works for a company named Biotime, which freezes blood and harvested body parts. Tells me to buy stock in the company now trading at twenty-nine dollars a share, which I do, and it promptly runs up to over seventy dollars a share. What wonders are we humans.