Bittersweet Infamy - #7 - JT LeRoy

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

Taylor tells Josie about the literary 'it' boy who never really existed. Plus: a journalist falls in love with her infamous subject.

Hello and welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy, the podcast about infamous people, places, and things. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. My friend Taylor is going to tell me a story. I don't know what it will be about, but the only rule? The subject matter must be infamous. So Josie, we're trying this new thing.

We've had a great idea just now. You drinking a medello, me drinking a parallel 49 craft loge. Oh wow, who's the jerk now? There you go. What the fuck does that mean anyway? We've come up with this brilliant new idea that we're going to, we'll see how long we can keep this up, but we'll do a little mini-infamous ongoing current event thing before. Minfamous.

Minfamous. You're absolutely right. Minfamous is the term that we agreed upon. There's audio evidence of it, so I can't back out. So Josie, you were telling me that you have not heard this story, the Farmer Bro and the Journalist. No, I have not. Okay, so this is-

I've actually been trying to stay away from a lot of news because it makes me cry, but yeah, okay. I'm ready for this. This one might make you cry too. So basically the gist of it is that, do you remember that dude, Martin Shkreli, who got done for like, I think it was, I don't remember the exact details, but it was price gouging on pharmaceuticals to ridiculously exorbitant degrees. He'd get some particular formula for like, I think it had something to do with HIV medication

or something, but I couldn't, and he also bought the only Wu-Tang Clan album that they released and he would only play it. He was working heel, you know what I mean? In professional wrestling terms, he was always working heel. So they just did a story in, fuck, we weren't planning on doing this, so I would know where it was. I think it was Elle, but I apologize if I'm mistaken. And it was about the woman, the journalist who had broken that story, the Martin Shkreli

story, and had followed, he had been her beat for a while. She fell in love with him. I was just about to say, I love a female journalist, they're so hard-hitting, they're even headed. The only thing this woman had hard was herself. Oh no. She ends up, she falls in love with him, her journal. How? How?

He played the Wu-Tang record. She does, she has a picture of her holding the Wu-Tang record. Oh shit. And so she ends up freezing her eggs for him, cause he's in jail, right? He's in big jail. Big jail, not milk jail. I remember at one point she's going to chase him and her journalism prof literally says to her, you're going to ruin your life over this.

And she's like, no, I think I got this, thanks Pops, you know, whatever. And then the end of the article, this is a fantastic article. It's called The Journalist and the Pharma Bro, please Google it and read it yourself if you haven't, which I feel like- Which is based off the title, it sounds like- The Journalist and the Murderer. Yeah, it's a Janet Malcolm illusion. If you had Deborah Campbell's creative non-fiction class, you know all about-

The Journal! It's a good book, pick it up. I love The Journalist and the Murderer because I'm someone who also has ethical misgivings about the creation of non-fiction to the point where, I mean, actually it comes up in my story this week where I like, I literally have to choose a lens to interpret something to and I pick compassionate because it's the only way I can feel good about telling other people's stories. Fair, good, good.

But yeah, so the Journalist and the Murderer is sort of about the blurring, if you haven't read it, it's about the blurring between subject and journalist and how that can go wrong and journalistic ethics and all of these other things. Great. But this person whose name I can't recall, she, the end of this story, and I hate to please spoil her out if you don't want to hear it, but the end of this story is he gets- Shkreli gets upset, she's blown up her whole life, she left her marriage, she... She was married?

She was married, she had like a little quiet Brooklyn life that she blew up for this guy. Oh no. And the end of the story is... All the terrariums just smashed. All of them, nobody's, you know, your kids are getting pulled out of a school that you waited three years to get them in, it's terrible. But the end of the story is he gets upset that she's doing this article and he, so in wrestling, when someone gets fired from WWE, it's called being future endeavored because

they always say, we wish them the best in their future endeavors, he fucking, he literally, his comment for the article was future endeavoring her. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors. And she, at the end of it, is still like, you know, maybe it'll work. Give it time. Yeah. Time heals all wounds. So that's, I highly, I highly recommend giving it a read.

It's a very good read. It's a very interesting kind of long form, create, like nonfiction. It's good. Yeah. Dude, that is fascinating. That is good stuff. Ugh, Minfamous. Love it.

Minfamous, Minfamous, but we have to move on from Minfamy to Flat-O'd Minfamy. So, Josie. Taylor. Ted Bundy was, I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding. My butthole calling. I'm not. I wouldn't do that to you.

I'm not ready. It's not a Ted Bundy kind of night. Okay. Um, is it ever? So, Josie, the only spectacle the art world loves to watch more than a rising star is a falling one. Such was the case with J.T. Leroy.

Do you know this one? No. Good. No. I. Dia. But I love art world bullshit. Oh, this is literary world bullshit.

This is- Taylor, make sure you pass though. This is literary world bullshit. Okay. Literally. Literally. Literary world. Okay, good.

Good. Uh, J.T. Leroy was the ultimate rags to riches story. He was- Ragged dick. What? Do you know that? It's like-

I was like, why the fuck would she say that? What does that mean? What does that mean? It's like a turn of the century American story where the term, uh, pull yourself up by your bootstraps came from. And the main character- No, we don't read that shit up here. No, we never read it.

I read about it in a history class, an American history class. But the character's name is Ragged Dick. I bet that went over great in history class. Right? Yeah. That was a good history class. I liked that one. But yeah, continue.

I have a story to tell you. Yes. Okay. Sorry. Um, a young gay hustler with HIV, born to a drag-addicted sex worker mother, J.T. called a suicide hotline one day and he connected with a psychologist who encouraged him- Good for him, by the way. Yeah.

Way to use your resources, know your limits, play within it, get help from me. There you go. Exactly. He connected with a psychologist who encouraged him to pursue writing as an outlet. I agree. His work was rough-hewn, yet tender, and he caught the interest of agents, publishers, and ultimately celebrities. He became a literary it boy of the late 90s and early 2000s.

His many admirers included Tom Waits, Winona Ryder, Courtney Love, Debbie Harry, Gus Van Sant, the list goes on forever. Winona Ryder. Madonna sent him books on Kabbalah. Oh. So this is rarefied air we're breathing. Is that? I mean, wait, I need to even pause you now.

Okay. Like, what, like, do you want a level of fame where Madonna is sending you Kabbalah books? No, too high. Too high. Okay. Too high. I've always said, um, you can look at fame, roughly, in terms of Destiny's Child. You've got Beyoncé famous, Kelly Rowland famous, and Michelle Williams famous.

I want, I want. So Beyoncé, Big A-list, Megastar, Michelle Williams, there's someone else with your name who's more famous than you. And then, and then Kelly Rowland fame to me is where it's at. That's the level of fame that I want. He wrote music and magazine articles and did fashion spreads. From hard scrabble living on the streets to the pages of glossy magazines, J. T. Leroy had arrived.

There was only one problem. J. T. Leroy never existed. I knew it. I knew it. No, you didn't. You were saying, good on him. Call that CSI hotline. That's true.

Okay. In 2005, an expose in New York magazine revealed that J. T. Leroy was the creation of San Francisco writer Laura Albert. When J. T. made public appearances, he was portrayed by Albert Sibling and Law Savannah Noop. J. T. Leroy was a hoax. I feel so duped, even though I've only known about it for two minutes. Yeah, no, but you know what?

We get very attached to narratives, which I think you'll find this story is going to explore. Okay. So while I was preparing the story, I watched two films, each more or less from the perspective of the two key figures that I just told you about. The first is called Author, the J. T. Leroy story, and it was a documentary made with the participation of Laura Albert, who wrote as J. T. Okay.

And then the second is called J. T. Leroy. It's a fictional film co-written by Savannah Noop, who was... The Sibling and Law. Yes, who was, then they, there is pronouns, who was the physical body of J. T. based on their nonfiction memoir, Girl Boy Girl. So if this helps you paint a mental image of the people that we're talking about, in that movie, Laura Albert was played by Laura Dern, Laura's. And Savannah Noop was played by Kristen Stewart.

Oh, okay, okay. So that's roughly who these characters kind of vibe as. Yeah. So Laura Albert was born in 1965. Oh, okay, okay. Her mother was neglectful and dated a revolving door of bad dudes who sexually abused her. Yeah. Eventually, she ended up living in a group home, and one of her ways of coping with this

is she would call child crisis hotlines using fake names and telling fake stories. Whoa, yeah, yeah. So these would always be male characters, like young boys, telling stories of physical and sexual abuse, and it was kind of her way of getting like attention, consolation, feeling understood without doing it under her own name kind of thing. Right, right. Well, and I guess kind of the disassociation might be strangely helpful too. Yeah, for sure.

It's like somebody else's story. I think, I mean, you've kind of hit the nail on the head early because I feel like there's like a strong streak of dissociation that kind of snakes through the story. Yeah. So eventually, young Laura gets really, really into the punk scene. But she's super self-conscious about herself and specifically her body, quote, there's nothing worse than being a fat punk. What's more punk than being fat though?

Think about it. Good job. And the reason, it seems like an offhanded remark to mention, but I use this as a proxy for like over the course of the documentary. I'll just call them the documentary and the film. You know what I mean? Because there's a fictional one that I watched and there's a documentary one that I watched. But over the course of the documentary, which is predominantly about her, she will describe

herself as or self-identify as big, fat, etc., like a dozen plus times. Okay, yeah. Since all this went down, I think kind of in the middle of all this, she ends up having I think gastric band surgery. So she's quite thin now, but will often refer back unbidden to a time when she was heavier than she is now. Okay, yeah. Her identity is kind of, it sounds like cemented when her body was different from what it is

now. And she also makes comments like connecting her body to like the sexual abuse and stuff like that. So like it's quite apparent. So she creates an avatar in the form of her sister, who she basically treats as this like punk Barbie doll, where she cuts her hair very short, very androgynous, dresses her up and sends her out to like punk concerts, events that have overlap with that circle, parties, you know, whatever, and basically tells her who to talk to and what to say.

So she basically has this person that she's using as this sort of, like you say it's dissociative. She's got someone out acting out the life that she wants for herself, but a proxy, a proxy. Yeah. Um, there's another story where later on, um, she's trying to get the attention of this hot punk guy. So she pretends to be British. And yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, sidebar. There was this girl at my high school who I guess had to change schools because she came in with an Australian accent and she was a really Australian man. I feel like there was a very small turn in my life where that didn't happen to me. Like if the gate had opened the other way, I would have done that. Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty sure. You went to Bishop's school or whatever and you were literally just like, okay, day one, I can be from nearby or I can be from, uh, Canberra and you, you just made a different choice. Yeah, I did. That's tough. Um, so anyway, she ends up dating this guy for like two months before it gets revealed that she's not actually English.

Um, so early on, I tell you all this to kind of establish her that early on, she's, uh, desperate to be somebody else. Um, she wants to look different, to have different circumstances. She wants attention. She wants to feel special. She wants to be noticed, but for whatever reason, she feels unworthy of like doing it as herself in her own body. Where does this all take place or where did, where did she grow up?

So I think she was born and raised in Brooklyn at some point, she ends up in San Francisco. Okay. Most of this story, she will be in San Francisco, but at this point she might have been in Brooklyn, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay.

So eventually Laura gets together with a musician. I think, I think that now we're in San Francisco at some point, we moved to San Francisco. Okay. Um, don't we all? Don't us. Hey, listen. Um, eventually Laura gets together with a musician named Jeffrey Noop, um, and they move in together, living in sin, as they used to say, um, and Laura's, Laura's working

a phone sex line to bring in some money. Okay. Work from home. Good. Work from home. She was, she was pandemic ready before it even happened. Yeah. Um, but she hasn't kicked her old habit of calling up child crisis lines, even though

she is not a child in crisis. Whoa. She's still, she's, I think probably in her like late twenties at this point, and she's still doing that. And one fateful day in the mid nineties, she gets put on the line for her first of many conversations with a doctor named Terrence Owens. And she takes on the persona of an HIV positive, gay teen sex worker born on Halloween day named Terminator.

Ooh, Halloween day, not night, but day. Spooky. I mean, it might be Halloween night, and maybe that was a touch of restraint not going for Halloween night. I was born in a hollow pumpkin on Halloween day. It was a full moon. That's how you make it real though. You change that tiny, yeah, you don't indulge too much.

The doula was a black cat, you know, like, I suckled candy. So this phone call, this is just an interesting sidebar, at least I think it's interesting. This phone call was tape recorded and it was used as a primary source in the documentary. As is nearly every phone conversation I'm about to relate to you. For whatever strange reason, Laura Albert compulsively recorded and saved every single phone conversation from her conversations as JT to voicemail messages from celebrities to jerk off sessions with her phone sex clients. Whoa, everything.

Yeah, like literally. She's an archivist. Archivist, and apparently some of the people who I'm about to tell you about, which I think are like both celebrities and kind of more or less private figures, were really upset when this documentary came out because they didn't even know that they were being recorded. Well, yeah, that would be illegal, yeah. I think it depends where you live if that's illegal.

Oh, really? Yeah, I think it's like a state by state thing. I don't know, I think candidate might be a federal thing, but I don't know. So here's how Laura recounts that conversation going. About his name, quote, it was Terminator, which I never would have chosen because it was a stupid fucking name, but that was his name. She was, she's a method actress, that's all. She then says, Dr. Owens and I found out that Terminator's real name was Jeremy.

She also says that Terminator was special because, quote, a lot of other boys who had been through me, they didn't live. Yeah, yeah, give me more. So that's what kind of story this is, by the way. Yeah. So she always refers to JT as this separate entity that existed independently of her and happened to channel himself through her. So it turns out that our friend Terminator is a literary buff and a bit of a writer himself,

which works out great because Dr. Owens lives next door to an editor named Eric Wolinsky. So he has these ends to this literary world that Terminator idolizes, which really goes to show that it's about who you know. So Terminator faxes over some writing, which according to him, he's able to do because one of his johns gifted him a fax machine, and he travels with it, chained to his leg, and uses the phone jacks in truck stop bathrooms to send faxes. Other phone jacks and, okay, I mean, that's what I'm hung up on, I don't know why. You've never needed to send a fax from a truck stop bathroom before, hey?

No, not yet. Aren't you lucky? What can I say? What can I say? So like I said earlier, I wrestled a bit in how to treat this story. At first when I approached it, I kind of thought it was a scam. Now I think it goes a little bit deeper. But in the end, the conclusion that I reached was to treat it as compassionately as I knew

how. I've allowed myself exactly two moments to editorialize without feeling bad about it. Oh good, okay. This is the first one. That thing I just said about the fax machine, like him kind of traveling with the fax machine tethered to his leg, is the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life. Okay, yeah. I don't, and I don't say that in like a shaming way.

I don't say that to indict anyone who got deceived by it because I think that we can get deceived very easily by charismatic people telling us a story that we want to hear. You know? Yes, yeah. But I will say that the fax machine is very sloppy work. Like that's... It just, yeah, suspended your belief, not good, yeah. If I had to single out to me the weak link in this scam, it would be that.

So eventually Terminator needs somewhere to live permanently, like just to make his stories more plausible. Right. Because the fax was an issue, right? It wasn't. The doctor was like, a fax machine? I'm the only person who seems to have really run into resistance on this point. It feels like maybe they kind of, someone must have thrown up a red flag, listen.

Someone somewhere was like, this is, I don't know about that. All those celebrities are so out of touch that they're like, yeah, a fax machine, oh she doesn't have a cell phone because he's too poor, so he has a fax machine, yeah. No, literally probably exactly that, like fuck. So he ends up crashing with some other orphans of the street. An English woman named Speedy and her boyfriend Aster with whom she was in a punk band called Thistle. Good, good, yeah, the English punk band Thistle, I like that.

Who do we know who pretends to be British to get out of her jams? The Queen. Wait, no. I refuse to laugh at that. I'll laugh for you. Good, good, as it should be. Who pretends to be British? The person from the story that I'm telling right now.

Oh. She pretended to be British, to do her boyfriend. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay, yes. I'm sorry, I thought you were out of, okay. No, it's all good, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. I feel you, I see you, I receive that. So Laura Albert portrayed Terminator's best friend Speedy and her real life boyfriend Jeffrey Noop played Speedy's boyfriend Aster.

So this is my second point of editorialization. They play a clip in the documentary, they play a clip of Thistle's music. It's so terrible, man. It's so, okay, so it's very like, I don't remember it exactly, but it's along the lines of like, America, America, democracy is dead. Like it's like that. It was like just the start of the Star Spangled Banner, and then it just. It's not, it wasn't the Star Spangled Banner, it was, what's the one that goes like, um,

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Do you know that one? Uh, yeah. Do, do, do. They did, they did some sort of like, um, like, 90s punk, like, imagine like really dumb down Michael Moore, like. Okay, yes, yes, okay, I get it, I get it, I get it, okay, so that was, that's Thistle.

So, Terminator's work, which, um, he has, uh, taken his leg fax, he's faxed it to Dr. Terrence Owens. Terrence Owens shows it to, uh, Eric Olinsky, who's his neighbor. The editor. It does the rounds. And he's also getting in touch with like, various writers like Sharon Olds, Dennis Cooper. Like it's. Yeah, so there's all this shit going on.

It's who you know. It's who you know. It's, it's who you fax. It's commitment to the project, and it's who you fax. Um, so he gets a short story published in an anthology called Close to the Bone, and his contribution is singled out for glowing praise in the New York Times. Eventually, Laura says JT was offered a book deal for a memoir, and she claims that he walked away from it because she wanted to write fiction.

Oh, okay, yeah. But personally me, I assume that, like, memoir is under more scrutiny than fiction, you know what I mean? If she was on the hook to like, write a memoir, it would, it would be like, kind of picked at more than a work of fiction. Do you know what I mean? Right, yeah. So it's not her drive to write fiction, because if she were writing a memoir of this character

that she's developed, it would be fiction. Yeah. But the speculate, the, yeah. I see what you're saying. But she's, but she's also, like, yes or no, because like, she also does seem like a woman with a very particular relationship with the idea of fiction, right? Like. Right, and what is fiction?

Like I said, she's, I was like, oh, Dr. Owens and I found out that his name is Jeremy. You know what I mean? Yeah, very well put, very well put. It's not something she made up, it's something they found out together. So there's, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to place what exactly her relationship is with fiction. Right, yeah, yeah. So then Laura got pregnant and had a baby.

Oh, okay. Quote, but Jeremy is still there and my body just betrayed him in the ultimate fucking way. I am completely female. There is no hope in hell that I am going to give Jeremy the body he really, really wants. Oh. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, first of all, just, I just want to take a break back.

You're a bit, obviously I get what all that means. Just to reinforce, your ability to have a baby is not the, the characteristic only marker of female or male. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

But, but in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, Laura slash Jeremy writes a novel in like, it's Jeremy writing the novel, but obviously Laura, who is our physical vessel for Jeremy has written a novel. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a novel hand, hand, or typed out by Laura, written by JT. There you go.

Like the Bible. You know how the Bible, one writer many scribes. Exactly. Exactly. So, a squishy line of fact and fiction, fuzzy math. There you go. Fuzzy math. Fuzzy math.

Yeah, true enough. Yeah. So, she sends out what she calls the accidental book. It happened by accident. Oh, I've done that. Yeah. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and you think you're going to the bathroom and you write a book, okay?

Then fax it. Yeah. Or then you fax it really. And based on this accidental book, Old Terminator gets another book deal. And she decides to publish under the pseudonym Jeremiah Terminator Leroy, or JT Leroy. And the last name Leroy comes from one of her phone sex clients. Oh, how is it spelled? L-E-R-J?

Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Wait, R-O-Y? R-O-I. R-O-Y. R-O-Y, okay. There's also, and I wonder about the ethics of this.

There's audio of her having a phone sex session in this movie with the guy who the Leroy name came from. Oh. Because she recorded everything. Everything. Everything. Fuck. So the novel, which is, the novel's called Sarah.

With an H at the end? Yes. Okay. And it's a thinly fictionalized version of JT's, like, also fictional life story. Yeah. Okay. And it's part of that, like, that weirdly prolific genre of, like, magical sex work narratives.

You know what I mean? Yes. I wrote a play about that. No. Literally that. And there's plenty of, like, Amber Dawn is the first one that comes to the top of my head, but like, Kai Cheng Tom, lots of people have these kind of magical sex work narratives. Right.

And this tells the story of a young boy who turns tricks at truck stops, who dresses as a girl named Cherry Vanilla, and aspires to be the patron saint of Lott Lizards quotes, which are in this story, they're truck stop sex workers, and he's doing all this in order to live up to his late mother, Sarah. Ah, Sarah the H. Sarah the H. And that's, like, JT's mother as well. Right. Yeah.

So. This is good. Layers. So we're going to have a little reading. The book is in Taylor's hands. The book is in my hands. And you also have how much money in there, dude? I think this might literally be $420 in this book.

Which is not, I'm not the kind of person to leave giant stacks of money around at, listen. My story with this book is, I think I bought it on discount at a bookstore, a local bookstore that was going out of business. R.I.P. R.I.P. And I read this knowing that JT, like this was after all this had been revealed, so I knew that JT the Roy was like, I kind of knew vaguely the story, although not in nearly this much detail.

Yeah. So my recollection of it is kind of that it's, it is what it is. I think that it's more interesting for its novelty in the context of this story than it kind of is as its own narrative or whatever. But I did once almost miss a flight to Barcelona because I was reading this, so maybe it's more captivating than I remembered. Oh, okay. I missed the final call.

Oh, gosh. I got on the plane. It's okay. Okay, good. So this is from a scene where all the sex workers are praying to the head of the jackalope. So we're in, I think, West Virginia or Virginia proper thereabouts. But that's where JT grew up. Okay.

So we're kind of in the nascent American South kind of Appalachian, you know, region. Gotcha. Okay, good. But they're all praying to the jackalope to like heighten their sexual powers so they can be the best, you know, quote unquote, lot lizard at these truck stops. And the other thing that I would like to make clear about this is I'm going to do this reading in what I call the JT voice. Whoa.

And this is the voice. This is more or less the voice that Laura Albert would use when she was talking on to the phone as people as JT. Okay. And for our listeners, know that Taylor has now strapped a fax machine to his leg. Everyone closes their eyes tight and makes their prayer. I reach up under my blouse and grab my raccoon penis bone and clutch it tight. I chant to myself, please, O divine jackalope.

I want to be a real lizard. I want to earn a huge bone. I open my eyes and stir up into its dead murky eyes. Make me a better lizard than Sarah. I say with a force that invigorates and frightens me at the same time. Gong sounds again gently and Pinkerton clears his throat and the lizards start to progress toward the bar to toast their newfound libidinous powers. Some old timers put Jake Legg blues by Daddy Stove pipe in Mississippi Sarah on the juke

books to make fun of some of the lizards that are temporarily paralyzed by the force of the jackalope and now are walking like they drank bad moonshine. So how did you feel about that? What I just read to you, like ignoring the fact that I like very obviously like read it in a quite a hokey voice or whatever, how did you feel about the quality of that literature? I like the term lot lizard a lot. I think that's nice. I feel it's like it's a little dehumanizing for me like when you know that it's being

written by someone who you know like obviously she's a sex worker in terms of she does phone sex and stuff but she's not specifically from that world so it feels like a little dehumanizing to me knowing that part of it. Yeah, yeah. But on its own I get where you're coming from. Yeah. I feel I don't know that line is so blurry to me still. Yeah.

I feel like it will remain so that that's a weird, it feels like a weird place for me to stand. Yeah. But I would read more. I would miss the last call. Okay. Barcelona. Interesting.

Yeah. It feels a little, the music thing felt a little forced and the moonshine was like really? I deliberately picked because I was just looking through the book for a random thing and I maybe picked that passage a little heavy handedly. It's, I don't know, I thought that it was like interesting enough on its own merits but I think that like throughout the story you're gonna hear people like refer to it as this like very captivating authentic raw stuff and I think I don't feel it that way but I also never read that book knowing that it was written by J.T. LaRoy.

I knew that it was, I knew of it as part of a literary scam and that's the context in which I read it, you know? Right. Yeah. And yeah, I think that determines a lot which is kind of scary to think about. It is scary to think about because it like, it makes you call into question like how much are the ways that we read things kind of modulated by our perceptions of the people who created them or whatever.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Sarah is a critically lauded success story as much due to the backstory of J.T. LaRoy as the writing itself. Yeah. Yeah. The Stranger Gushed, the Strangers, a publication, The Rags to Riches the Literary Success Story

of the Year. Okay. Reviews compare J.T.'s voice to Capote, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, like really high praise. Yeah. And then J.T. kind of caught the eye of the literati. He made acquaintances with Bruce Benderson, Mary Carr, Mary Gateskill. He's conversing with all of them via telephone or via Speedy, who is also Laura Albert, but she's British.

Right. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Eventually it becomes apparent that nobody has seen J.T. LaRoy in person and people are starting to ask questions. Uh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh Enter Savannah Noop.

Noop. Okay. So we have a quick gloss on these two as people, just to kind of put you in the right mind frame. Laura Albert is this big, performative, extroverted wound. She will tell you unbidden about all of her shit, but like in a very excitable, reverent, like frankly a little delusional kind of way. Yeah.

Yeah. That always makes you kind of wonder like, I don't know how much of this is true, but I'm gonna listen because it's here and it's good. I don't know how much of this is true, but it's like captivating in some way in the telling. Yeah. Yeah, like literally. I found her likable, not as a personality, but I liked listening to her speak.

Yes. Okay. Even when the stuff she was saying was like untrue, narcissistic, manipulative, contradictory, like Savannah Noop is a very stoic, very enigmatic character. Okay. She talks like very cerebrally about relationality and filters. Honestly, I found them a bit difficult to listen to and I would just like, there were so many times where I would try to listen to one of their interviews and I would just

end up turning it off because I'd be like, even if it's about this very interesting subject, you're like taking the long way to not saying anything. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And trying to earn brownie points along the way. Yeah.

Yeah. As different as the two of them are, there's some way that they're both trying to make the story more palatable in the telling. Yeah. Okay. And Laura Albert's way of doing that is to be like, is to literally just put every inch of herself out there in whatever way she thinks would be most palatable to you. And then Savannah Noop's way of doing it is to make the whole story very abstract and

clinical, almost as if someone else did it. But really, it's a very emotional, messy, strange story and it feels like this is sort of their way of not confronting that or something like that. Yeah. So kind of withholding for the benefit of mystery, almost. Yeah. Yeah. Or to like a few responsibility or something.

I couldn't quite pin it down. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, Savannah was the teenage sibling of Jeffrey, who is Laura's boyfriend. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's right.

Yes. And they were kind of this like cool, androgynous, punky kind of character. And Laura sees Savannah and she has a fucking idea. It's like she's seen JT like born in front of her. You know what I mean? Incarnate. Incarnate. Yeah.

Literally JT incarnate. Yeah. There's a lot of biblical reference in this story. Jeremiah. Boom. Boom. I wish I knew anything about the Bible so I could comment on whether that's apt or not. It was just like bullfrog.

Jeremiah the bullfrog. Yeah. Got it. He was a good friend of mine as JT was a good friend of Winona Ryder. Winona. Get caught up. So it starts with let me take some pictures of you as JT and we'll send him to a magazine. And then.

Yeah. JT. We really need someone to do an interview as JT. This is only going to air on German television and we'll pay you $50. Sure. Sure. Fine. Yeah.

And eventually it builds and builds until any time JT needs to make an appearance for like a reading, an art event, a film premiere, a photo shoot, whatever. A gala. Whatever. Yeah. Exactly. Some gala where he needs to be tucked under a publisher's arm or whatever. Yeah.

Savannah would always portray JT. And JT wore these like comically large sunglasses and these like, I could only call them like Halloween store wigs. They're like blonde. They look fake, right? Right. Okay. Yeah.

And always a fax machine strapped to his let. No, I'm kidding. It's like, wow, that is a through line. But like the whole presentation has to have been like a little bit tongue in cheek I feel like because like you look at pictures of Savannah Nubaz JT Leroy and JT looks like the world's worst bank robber. You know what I mean? Like it just looks like a fake disguise.

Yeah. Yeah. And from there JT kind of just like implicates himself into this world of big name writers and rock stars and Speedy, his mysterious British handler, always by his side. And sometimes he'll like whisper into her ear and she'll literally speak for him like, oh, JT says this and that. You know what I mean? JT says that he loves you, Ty, right?

They've got a little Australian, but you understand. I got confused with your, the classmate. But like, have you, have you, oh, God, I forgot already that I told you about her. I hope she's not listening. She's not. She's not. No, you're right. Thank you.

Fuck you, you're right. Or other times she'd be like, Laura would feed, Laura as Speedy would feed Savannah as JT info about the people that he was talking to. So she'd be like, go talk to Tom Waits. Here's what you need to know about the conversations that like we've had via the phone or whatever. Or the emails. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Cause she's making all the connections via phone. Yeah. Okay. So she'd be like back, remember when she would send her sister out into the punk world and she would be like, here's who you need to talk to. Here's what you need to say. Here's what you need to find out, come and report back to me. Yeah.

Vicariously live that scene so I can live it. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was exactly like that. So Laura, um, I, and I use this expression under advisement and please forgive me for it. And it's, I don't mean it literally, but Laura is a massive star fucker. She'll like breathlessly tell you about like the time that she was at this YouTube concert

and Savannah as JT is getting the talk from Bono privately and, and she as Speedy is getting the talk from Bono's manager, the manager talk. Oh. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So. And you won't believe what he said.

I can't tell you. I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to. She tell you. She is. Don't make me say. Yeah. Don't twist my arm.

Um. I know exactly what's happening because I'm making this all up. Yeah. Um, two of JT's most significant celebrity relationships were with the filmmaker, Azia Argento. Uh. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. And, uh, Smashing Pumpkins frontman, Billy Corgan. Your man. Dude. Love the Smashing Pumpkins. I love the Smashing Pumpkins. I do actually. You know what Billy Corgan is doing now?

Is he writing memoirs? No. He, uh, runs a wrestling federation. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. You didn't know. You didn't know that Billy Corgan is in the wrestling game now.

That's what he does. You will. I've never seen you and Billy Corgan in the same room at the same time. So I'm just saying. Do you know when he does it? At night. Tonight. Tonight.

Got me. I love it. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Good. You had that one in the can. I didn't.

I didn't. I came up with that on the spot. I had that in this can. Cheers. Yeah. Okay. So the relationship with Asia Argento started when Speedy and JT, Savannah and Laura, went to Europe to sell the rights for JT's collection of stories, which was entitled The Heart is

Deceitful Above All Things. Savannah and Asia formed an instant spark of attraction that seems to have quickly turned sexual. Asia Argento, she was married to Anthony Bourdain, or she was involved with Anthony Bourdain. Oh, is that so? I don't know. I was asking you. Maybe.

Maybe. Asia Argento is, all I know about Asia Argento is that I know that she's the daughter of Dario Argento, the Italian filmmaker who did Suspiria, and then she recently, she was involved in the Me Too movement, the Me Too movement, but then she herself got accused of something by a younger person who I think worked with her on the set of the movie for The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. Laura quickly started to feel left out. Quote, I feel really lonely because my Barbie dolls have come to life and there's definitely

that feeling that they'd like to kill me off. For her part, Asia, who maintains that she was a victim of the deception and is very outspoken about feeling betrayed, says, quote, Speedy was just a pain in the ass. I was like, who is this fucking boring, petulant bitch? I just included that because I laughed at the quote. That's good, yeah. Asia did end up securing the rights, and her film The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things is released in 2004, starring Asia as JT Leroy's mother, Sarah.

Sarah with an H. Sarah with an H, but she thinks JT Leroy is real, and she's starring as his tragic sex worker mother with whom he has this very fraught. It's weird. And then they're kind of having a relationship. And then they're kind of having a relationship. That's weird, right? There's layers.

It's a lot of layers. There's so many layers in this story. It's like a trifle. Oh. So, yeah. It's okay. I have my last piece of Christmas trifle in the fridge, and I'm really thinking about eating it, and that's why I reached for trifles in my metaphor life.

That's good. I like that. As for Billy Corgan, JT was set to interview him for, I think it was like a music magazine, but I'm not sure, and Laura Albert meets up with him backstage at a concert for his band, Zwan, which is Swan with a Z. Good. Yeah. Very, I used to be in a band in the 90s, and now I'm in a band in like 2001, you know what

I mean? Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole timeline in that title. Yeah. So, she meets up with him, and she's doing like her speedy act, so she's being like, JT was too shy and he ran away. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I'm doing, literally, this chick does so many voices, and I just, I'm trying to capture them all for you. That's beautiful. Speedy and Billy start talking. Okay. And to quote Laura Albert, we're connecting in ways that language doesn't even capture. All right. Laura starts to get this feeling, Laura's got a man, by the way.

Right, and a baby or a child. Oh yeah. Yes, yes. So, Laura starts to get this feeling in her gut that she can be herself around him. Oh, no, you can't. And she tells him. And he says, according to Laura, he says, I understand. And from there, Billy Corgan is in on the whole thing.

Billy, tonight, tonight, tonight. So yes, to hear Laura tell it, and again, I cannot emphasize enough that Laura is a pathological liar. But to hear Laura tell it, they had this kind of emotional affair that crescendoed when, at some point, they have some sort of encounter at the Chateau Marmont, and it may or may not be this. But at some point, Billy's like threatening to break off things, and Laura paddocks, and JT comes out of her.

Oh. And I'm like, oh god, I don't even remember, I'm gonna try. Like please don't, Billy, you don't know how bad it would hurt. So my notes from when I'm watching this documentary consist of the following. What, what, what, JT and my body spoke to Billy, five exclamation points, and then I wrote, ah, with five exclamation points. Ooh, yeah. Yeah.

This story, when I came into this, I thought I was literally just digging up some dirt around like a time test of the old literary hoax where someone just pretended to be someone else to get their foot in the door. I had no idea what I was getting into. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't able to find any interviews with Billy Corgan confirming Laura's version of their relationship. Okay.

Well, I bet Billy Corgan swiped everything that he could. Billy Corgan is like, listen, I've got a book, a women's match, a tag match, my cage didn't arrive, we're supposed to be doing something in the cage. I can't deal with this right now. I've got three walls of a cage and you want me to talk about JT Leroy. Oh my gosh. Is Laura still recording everything at this point? Yes, absolutely.

There's so much, there's so much tape of her talking to Billy Corgan. On the phone? Is there any tape where she's like button microphone kind of deal? Nobody knows that she's tape recording her end of shit on the phone. So it's, effectively it's like a button microphone, you know what I mean? It's just a sneaky, but it's all via the phone. There's even tape of her like after the fact because any time Asya is doing, Asya Argento is connecting with JT in person, it's Savannah Noop, but then when they're having like phone

sex or email sex or whatever, it's Laura Albert. Asya and Laura don't particularly like each other and Laura feels like Asya is the Barbie doll come to life who wants to kill her off and you just heard what Asya thought of Laura, she thought she was a boring bitch. But they'll also be like, Asya will be calling JT to be like I miss you this and that and Laura will have to like go into JT. Whoa. Oh my god, my dating life is so simple.

I love it. No, it's great. So if it sounds like Laura and Savannah were flawlessly carrying this off, they weren't. Oh. Oh. Weird. Hootie, right? Rumors abounded that JT Leroy wasn't who he said he was, wasn't the gender he said he

was, was a paid actor, was the secret identity of some other writer. People thought that it was Dennis Cooper's secret. You remember how Garth Brooks was Chris Haynes for a while? Yeah, I remember that. Dark times. They think it's not something. Okay. But I guess taken to the nth degree because it's not just the work, right?

It's not a pin name. It's like. It's a whole persona. It's a whole character. Yeah. That's having like phone sex with people and stuff. Yeah. Oh Christ.

For sure. But like again, this is like Laura Albert in her past life was a phone sex operator. You know what I mean? I love that. So who is better equipped for the job? It's true. It's true. I know.

When you first said that, that detail didn't really sink in, but now it's like as you tell me more of the story, it's like sinking in deeper and deeper and deeper. I really like this story because it works on so many like levels like that. Yeah. Layers. Trifles. Trifles. Trifles worth of layers.

So all these people would whisper and it was quite a common conversation to have at that time, especially if you were in like literary artistic celebrity circles, this kind of celebrity circle where fucking Shirley Manson is hanging out to be like, who is JT Leroy really? Yeah. Everyone had their theories. Everyone had bumper stickers on their cars. Who is JT Leroy? But no one conclusively laid out the case or hunted down the leads until Steven Beachy

wrote an article for New York Magazine in 2005. Who is JT Leroy, the true identity of a great literary hustler? In it, he interviewed both personal friends and skeptics of JT Leroy and he came to the following conclusions. For the first umpteen months of his existence, nobody ever met JT Leroy. For a person who presented himself in person as this stammering, pathologically shy, almost mute introvert, JT had an abnormal facility with networking. Right.

Okay. Okay. Like how many famous people have I told you that he's like on phone terms with, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Speed dial. Yeah.

People often remarked upon the difference between his engaging phone conversations and his awkward, vague personal presence. Right. Which is usually the other way around. Most people aren't very good on the phone. Exactly. And you remember how I told you that I found Laura Albert very charismatic, even when I knew what she was saying to me was either bullshit or I was like, that's wild that you

would even think that or whatever. Yeah. I found her very captivating, whereas Savannah, like I say, I found very dry and vague. They were very different personalities. Yeah. Yeah. His HIV positive diagnosis, which was once central to his narrative. That's right.

I almost forgot that. Okay. Yeah. It disappeared. They just stopped because I think. Okay. I see what you're saying. They stopped bringing it up.

It stopped being part of the narrative? Yeah. Exactly. And don't forget, too, that obviously I think that faking an HIV diagnosis is a pretty grave thing whenever you are. But don't forget also that all of this is happening from like 94 to the early 2000s. So we're just out of the thick of the AIDS crisis. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. And so at the time, when he was first getting to know people, Terran Soans on the suicide hotline, Eric Walensky, Sharon Olds, Dennis Cooper, whoever his like first contacts were, this was a big part of the story and it was a big part of like what drew people to this character. Right? And it just vanished.

Oh, wow. His stories, although vivid and rich, they lacked identifying details to show a lived knowledge of West Virginia where and when they took place. He also seemed to have no non-celebrity acquaintances from before 1994. No childhood friends who were coming out of being like, JT grew up in a two-story house. Yeah, I remember Terminator and I think that like also as part of JT's story, JT ends up in San Francisco at some point, obviously. I don't know if he fucking throws his bindle over his shoulder and rides the rails or whatever

the fuck Laura Albert would have you believe, and ends up as a sex worker in San Francisco, but nobody can kind of remember seeing him around the time that he was, you know what I mean? Right, yeah. And then most damningly, there was no record of anyone similar to JT having been born in, I think it was West Virginia, having been born in West Virginia on Halloween Day, 1980, which was his supposed birthday. Oh, see that's why you pick a random date.

That's true. You don't pick Halloween Day. They can research any date, but I'd get where you're coming from. Well, I'm just saying, you say like I was born in late November, it's like, I don't know. Yeah, you don't give a day. Why does JT, Laura, I need to be given up? That's to me, you're right, that was greedy, that was greedy.

Your character doesn't need to be born on how he doesn't need two different colored eyes, just fucking tone it down. You'll get away with it, man. Stephen Beachy, who is writing this article for New York Magazine, quickly figures out that if JT Leroy is a hoax, it must involve speedy and aster, of thistle fame, and Beachy digs up a bunch of evidence that proves the link between JT Leroy and Laura Albert, the most compelling of which had to do with the checks that were sent to JT Leroy as payment by publishers, right?

Oh, that was one of my questions, like, how is this payment coming through, whose name gets on the check, yeah, okay. JT Leroy's name was still on the checks, but the P.O. box that it went to, I think, was attached to Laura Albert's mother, or something like that, was the name that had signed for it or something. Stephen Beachy makes this very compelling case, the story makes a splash, and it's met with this mix of, like, revulsion and defensiveness, because, like... Yeah, oh yeah, of course.

On the one hand, Laura, as JT, obviously denies the charges, and starts contacting the other members of the JT inner circle to get them on site. Right, squad, if you will, yes. Hashtag squad goals, yes. Yeah. And some of them abandoned him, obviously. Like Dennis Cooper, I think, is quoted in that article, and it seems to be, as the article unfolds, being like, yes, this seems to be a scam, and I'm quite upset about it.

Right, yeah, yeah, you've presented me all the information, and my reaction is shitty. It's really easy to be cynical about this story, because of how fervently the literary world, and the art world, and the celebrity world, latches on to this character of JT LaRoy, and takes him on as this, like, pet to seem very trendy and progressive. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I think it's quite easy to take that tack, but it's also true that, like, I'm sure many of the people who sincerely believed in JT LaRoy were just, like, kind, decent people

who saw something of artistic merit in this young person from bad circumstances, and just wanted to give them a leg up, and then, of course... A story that wasn't being shared. Yeah, exactly. I'd be like, well, that's important. Somebody who's HIV positive... It's 1994, and this person has HIV, and you know what I mean? Yeah, like, we should hear this story should be heard.

For sure. And I want to support that. Yeah, no, I... I feel quite bad for anyone who has kind of pulled into it in that way, but then there are other people as well who, like, perhaps because of their conviction in their belief in this entity of JT that they've met, whether it's in person or on the phone or whatever, will be like, I've known JT for ten years. This is a hit piece.

This is at very best, it's a misunderstanding, and at worst, Steven B.G. is jealous of JT because he's a failed writer. You know what I mean? Whatever. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, super defensive. Yeah, of course. I'm just like, no, he's my friend, bye.

Have you ever been deceived by someone in this kind of way? It doesn't have to be this exact way, but like, have you ever been catfished? Have you ever been... Oh. Not that I know of, so I guess not yet, is the answer. Fair enough. It's waiting to happen. Yeah, I feel like maybe, you know, like middle school, there were friends who like lied about

certain things because they were insecure about whatever, whatever, but it's never been to the degree of like, I would never call it catfishing, I would just call it like, a strange little insecurity thing. Yeah. It's like, why did you tell me that, you know, you had five brothers, like that's weird, you know, or something like that? Why did you tell me that you had an Australian accent? Yeah, exactly.

Got you, okay. Yeah. Fair enough. Wait, have you? Yes. Shit. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, very hurtful, very strange, um, it was like an online friend. I have a variety of online friendships, um, and one of them was somebody who made it seem like another, another friend was sending me these really horrible, hateful, like anonymous things, but it was actually the person. Oh. Yeah. Oh. Oh.

Yeah. And it. Oh, I'm sorry. Yucky. Yucky stuff. Yeah. Yucky is a good, is a good word for it. If you're a person with any sense of pride, which I am a Moverga, um, if you're, but if

you're a person with any, it's very embarrassing, like you feel stupid. You feel like. Yeah. You feel stupid. You've been had. You've been duped. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sorry. Yeah. It's okay. The New York Times picks up the story and they find a smoking gun, uh, they find a picture of Savannah noob out of disguise. So they know now know exactly who portrays the face of JT LaRoy and it's the sibling of Laura Albert's partner, right? So they see Savannah's photo and it's labeled with their name and it's.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. It's like scrub off the shitty wig and the stupid sunglasses, remove the fax machine and it's the same person. Right.

Yeah. There's no denying it. Wow. Wow. Pressure intensifies as friends, publicists and interviewers, Deleuge, the Albert Noob LaRoy household with requests for comment and eventually one of the people behind the hoax buckles and talks to reporters and you get one guess. Oh, it's the, it's the boyfriend.

It's the brother. It's the fucking boyfriend. It's the brother. Of course. Yeah. Who's been literally sitting there while just this nuts web of lies builds up around him. His sibling is in it.

His girlfriend is in it. The mother of his child. Yeah. She's having some sort of emotional affair with Billy Corgan apparently. Right. Yeah. Yeah. His sibling is running off with Aasia Argento and finally fuck it.

If someone's going to sell their story in this, it's going to be me. If someone's going to make some money on this, it's me. Yeah. I think he tries to end up selling his story for a movie, but I don't think anyone, obviously no one takes it up or it defaults or whatever because there's no movie. Yeah. He said, quote, yet. He said, quote, the jig is up.

I do want to apologize to people who were hurt. It got to a level I didn't expect. He added that he and so there's about, I think the New York magazine article, the Steven Beachy article drops November 2005 and then I think January 2006 or so this New York Times article drops. So in those three months or whatever it is, I think he added that he and Laura had split and they were currently battling for custody of their child. He ended by saying, quote, he did not believe Albert would ever admit to her role in the

JT Luroy scheme. For her, it's very personal, he said. It's not a hoax. It's part of her. It's real. Yeah. No, totally. It's real for her.

But I can't tell how much of that is a defense mechanism of this like traumatized person who also desperately thirsts for like, it seems like she's convinced herself that she thinks it's real. But I don't know if she actually, you know what I mean, it's so hard to parse. The reactions that people had are varied and fascinating. A lot of people, especially those with long-standing heartfelt relationships with JT were disgusted and justifiably felt used. Others like Courtney Love celebrated the hoax as an innovative and fascinating social experiment.

She assured Laura that America loves redemption and she said she would take Laura on Oprah to cry and then they got a book deal. And then this is the highlight of this whole story. The documentary author includes a recording of Courtney consoling Laura and then interrupting herself to say, quote, I have a really small line of coke and I don't want to put you on hold. Do you mind if I do it? Do you mind?

Sweetie, do you mind? She audibly rips a line and goes back to what she was saying. That's a true friend. It's fucking genius. But there's a significant contingent of folks who think of this whole thing as a victimless crime, like a piece of performance art, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like the person who sets up the fake social media accounts and is like, I'm on a trip

to the Caribbean, but really they've like just stayed in their apartment outside of Minneapolis for six months. Something a little bit bigger than that, I feel like, because I think that it really gives voice to a lot of the cynicism that people have about the world of art and the world of celebrity and the world that like, it's an arbitrary world full of idiots and like, if you game it well enough, you can kind of make people feel however you want it. Like, you know what I mean?

Because if you're at all cynical about the literary world, and obviously we've both of us had experience in that realm, right? This sort of confirms your worst hunches about that world in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Like if you think that this is just a world that uses and exploits people for their stories or to fill diversity quotas or to, you know what I mean? Like, this does seem to bear that out. Yeah.

Some people just think that it's like an extreme case of someone using a pen name. Right, okay, yeah. And then surprisingly, one take that was, I was really surprised at how underrepresented it was in the contemporary reactions that I read from the time was the idea of appropriation. Yeah. And I think it shows how much the discourse around that has changed because my initial reaction was like, oh, everyone must have been choked that this person adopted this persona of this like, very marginalized, queer, HIV positive teenager working on the streets

in the sex trade or whatever. There's very little of that. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that is something that the art world and the literary world is kind of contending with even like super recently. Yeah. Like who wrote American Dirt? I can't remember her name.

But that came out earlier this year, like before the pandemic, like a misuse, oh, Janine Cummins. Right. That's it. And the misuse of her real identity to promote a fictionalized novel. Right. Right. But I think the other, and I don't know, this kind of relates to JT is the way that the literary

world used that as well. Like for Cummings, the book release had a lot to do with like, we need to speak about the border. We need to have the border and the conversation. We need to have centerpieces that are cinder blocks with barbed wire around them. That's so crass, yes. It's so crass, so crass. But I think it's just, yeah, there was all these, there was such a push behind the book

to be like, this is the story to tell. Because this needs to be in the zeitgeist. We need to be talking about this. Oh, look, here's the story. She's Latinx. But we also need to be first to market on talking about it. Like it's not, you know what I mean? It's not entirely this altruistic fucking, we really need to be talking about coyotes

or whatever it is. It's also like the identification of a voice that is marginalized in a trendy way, in a palatable way. And in the case of JT Leroy, it ends up being like in a very calculated way. This is a character, like whether or not Laura Albert feels this way. To me, this is a character that's like very precisely designed to prey upon the sympathies. There's a reason that JT lived and the other boys that came through her, as she says, didn't. You know what I mean?

Yeah. On the one hand, yes, there are conversations that indicate that maybe this is something that she sincerely believes. But on the other, this made her money. This made her success, this made her fame. This got conversations with Bono and Courtney Love and Tom Waits, and that didn't happen by accident. Part of my response to the story too is it sounds like Laura Albert has some type of

identity disorder, like a dissociative personality disorder that just got taken to the nth degree without anybody really being able to check it or to put checks on it. Yeah. And in that way, the story feels, I guess it feels less premeditated and less predatory on Laura Albert's part. I got that. Yeah. I mean, the language that she uses of JT coming into her body, that sounds to me like that

in a way. But she insists, for whatever it's worth, she describes it as this embodiment. The muse. Something sure. Yeah. And I think your point too, that it's like, it's one thing to feel another personality in you and to share that personality, it's another thing to profit off of other people. She calls it the accidental book, and that language feels too opportune for me.

Also as a writer, I'm like, fuck you. That's my other layer in response. It's just like... You're offended. I'm offended. I'm a little jealous. I'm offended. Most people don't seem to have seen it as appropriation, at least at the time.

They either thought of it as this fabulously clever woman manipulating the literary taste makers like puppets on a string. Just Banksy-ing everybody. Banksy. Yeah. Exactly. Like a Banksy thing. You know, when Banksy hit that button and shredded that picture, and it became worth

more money. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's what they see it as. They put a banana to the wall, let's move up. Exactly. Just this great art world con to just expose how vapid and insincere the whole thing is. Or else they see a disturbed person acting out this bizarre con that she got too deep

into and started believing. Laura herself said, quote, I don't know what the label is. I don't know what the classification is, but I can tell you one thing I know. It's not a hoax. To me, the story is about trying to find the line between fiction and reality or fiction and nonfiction, if you want to take it there. Because I think Laura Abbott is like, she is dancing that line in, you know, and I think this is where I land because I think Laura Abbott dances this line.

Whatever her intent, she is there tap dancing on it, whether it's malicious and predatory or it's a fully believed, rationalized understanding of the situation. Either way, it is her trying to reckon both of them, which I think is a really fascinating, liminal space. I think it's funny because we started by talking about the farmer bro and the journalist. And that was another one of those stories about where does the line exist, where does the limit exist between you and the story? Yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? At what point are you just the story? Right, yeah. Here is everything that I think that the story is kind of about and jump in on anything you find interesting. Yeah. Obviously, there is strong currents of sexual violence, both in Laura Albert's story and in the stories that JT tells.

Yeah. I think gender plays a critical role in the story, but to me it feels like I feel almost transphobic classing it as a trans narrative because I feel like so much of the trans narrative is about authenticity and I feel like this is a story of gender enacted for deception almost. Right, yeah, yeah. But I definitely feel like there's some sort of like dysphoric gender stuff happening. Yeah.

It's a story about sexuality, it's a story about the way our society views sex work. Ooh, yeah. Ooh, yeah. It's about identity. It's about trauma, especially body trauma. It's a story about mental illness, it's a story about like obsession and addiction. It's about the nature of artistic performance and the death of the author. It's about the ways in which the art world commodifies and exploits people.

It's about the performance of authenticity and vulnerability and how for many people that can be more satisfying than the real thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's about the folly of chasing celebrity and finally it's a story about a big scam. Oh, okay. I was having such trouble trying to synthesize this story and my feelings on it and I was... And then you remembered the fax machine and you're like, this is a scam. This is a scam.

It is a scam. It is, yeah. Whether or not they see it that way, whether or not the people involved see it that way, listen, you can live as this appendage of yours, J.T. Leroy. There's no rule that says that J.T. Leroy has to meet Bono. You pursued that.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And there's no rule that any writer has to have this public life as well. This cult of personality, right? Of all roles of celebrity writers, it seems to me can opt out in a certain way of those roles. Here's my final notes, here's where everyone in this story ended up. Ooh, ooh, okay, good, yay. I couldn't find any info on what happened to Jeffrey Noop.

I think he's just now a private citizen. Mr. Noop. Mr. Noop. Savannah Noop, as I said, released a memoir about the whole thing that eventually became a movie featuring a cameo from none other than Courtney Love. Of course. The heroine of this piece. Really, yeah.

No pun intended. Oh, I liked that, I liked that. Savannah continues to work in the public eye as an artist. Oh, okay. Laura Albert still writes, but now under her own name. Okay. She has never achieved the same level of notoriety as Laura Albert as she had when she was J.T. Leroy.

Yeah. You can find her on Twitter at Laura Albert. She still gives interviews about her time as J.T. and as I said, maintains that the whole thing was not a hoax. Says Laura, quote, the book says clearly on the jacket, fiction, the rest is extra. And that is the story of the many identities of J.T. Leroy. Fuck my dude.

Read it on the cover. It says fiction. Read it on the cover. Everything else is just added. Actually, I have the cover right here and it says, larger than life, comically Dickensian, San Francisco Chronicle. So I recommend, wholeheartedly, I recommend author to anybody, the documentary, because it stars, it's all about Laura Albert.

She's with the participation of Laura Albert, and for better or worse, to me, Laura Albert is the most compelling character in this story, and she's a good on-screen pre- like you feel, because really her psychology is what put all of this into play. I didn't like J.T. Leroy, which was the fictionalized one. I didn't like that as much because of the writing. It felt a little too detached, and then also, it was about the Savannah character, who to me, they were a less interesting character.

The only thing that I really, really liked about it was, I thought Laura Dern did a really good job as Laura Albert, and then I also thought Kristen Stewart captured, like, when I described to you that this is like a very shy, awkward, standoffish, vague person with a short haircut. Kristen Stewart. Beautiful. Or even finished that sentence, I was like, oh, you mean Kristen Stewart, yeah. So I have, are you ready for moral, or do you want to talk more?

I'm good for moral. Are you good for moral? I'm good for moral. In your mind, what is the moral of the story? Oh, God. I feel like the moral of the story is that lying may seem victimless in any little way, shape, or form. Right.

We, you know, we lie all the time, both you and I are fiction writers, like, that's a form of lying, but you have to be cognizant, you have to be critical, you have to be aware of where that line is, and when lying becomes hurtful and painful to people. I feel like that's the question of appropriation, too, right? I think about that a lot in my writing, because I'm a white lady writer, but I don't want my books to be filled with white ladies. And so then where, where is that? You also don't want to take on this mantela, you don't want to, you don't want to tell

other people's stories to them, I agree. I think that that's like, for what it's worth, I think that I like, like, I like that that's an ethical question that you're wrestling with and that I'm wrestling with because the alternative is not. Right. Yeah. And, and for a long time, the, the outcome has been like, oh, I'm not gonna think about that.

For a long time, people like Laura Albert would write stories like Sarah or the heart is deceitful or whatever, and they would be lauded for their authenticity. Right. Yeah. I also, another moral is I hate the word authenticity, I just, I have, I have rough stuff with it. This, to me, this story is like, I've always felt very pressured, especially I used to do these, I used to do a lot of, come and tell your story of homophobia so people will

donate money to our organization. And I would tell my version of my story of growing up queer or whatever. And I would feel pressure because it didn't fit tidally, like mine was more a story of internalized homophobia and mine was more a story of like, feeling uncomfortable being myself and expressing myself and blah, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't a story of getting shoved into lockers and called a faggot, but that was the story that people, even other queer people, would want me to go on stage and tell because it would get the most money, right?

That was the quote, unquote, authentic story. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, like I said, I felt very commodified. Like I felt like myself, my identity, my story, whatever, and I would feel guilty for not being a good commodity, for not being easily consumable or whatever. And so I feel like this story touches on a lot of that idea of like commodification of identity, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's definitely there and how, I don't know, that line is, it has always been changing. Yeah. But. But I have an alternate moral as well. Ooh, alternate morals.

You can do significant damage to your bones, to your nerves, to your muscles by carrying around a fax machine tethered to your leg. If this is something you plan on doing, please consult a doctor. I feel like, do you have a hotline you want to share? Yeah. You can reach me at 1-800-HOTLINE-BLING. That looks good. Wait, wait, 1-800-HOTLINE-CLING.

Cling? Yeah, like it's clinging to your leg. Is that too far? That's too far. Let's start to the end credits. Okay. Thanks to Taylor for that story and to all of you for listening in. If you want more infamy, we release episodes every other Sunday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

and at bittersweetinfamy.com. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this week's story were Who is the Real JT Leroy by Steven Beechey in New York Magazine, October 7th, 2005. One who helped create JT Leroy Unmasked Scheme, that was by Warren St. John in the New York Times, February 6th, 2006. JT Leroy Unmasked, The Extraordinary Story of a Modern Literary Hoax, by Steve Rose and The Guardian on July 20th, 2016.

I quoted a review by Travis Jefferson and The Stranger on August 3rd, 2000 called Walking on Water. I watched two films. One was called Author, The Story of JT Leroy. The second was called JT Leroy. I also read a selection from the book, Sarah, by JT Leroy. The article we discussed at the beginning of the show is called The Journalist and the Farmer Bro, by Stephanie Clifford in L, December 20th, 2020.

The song you're listening to is called Tea Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening.