For the past five years, Albert had been doing exactly that -- creating a persona that would be irresistible to listeners. With her sexpert and singing careers having crashed to the ground, she concentrated on being JT LeRoy. She showed friends a copy of the unpublished manuscript of the novel "Sarah," and said it was written by a boy she knew from doing sex outreach. But with certain friends, she bragged that she wrote it.
When the literary publishing house Bloomsbury released "Sarah" by JT LeRoy in April 2000, it detonated in the publishing world like a secret bomb. The lurid tale, told in teenage slang, had the whiff of autobiography. An androgynous 12-year-old narrator, nicknamed Cherry Vanilla, competes with his mother, Sarah, for tricks at truck stops in the South.
An elaborate back story quickly unfolded in reviews and articles. This was the life the author had lived as a young boy. He eventually ended up wandering the streets of San Francisco, and was rescued by a doctor and sympathetic writers and editors, who encouraged him to put down his hellish life on the page. Although Albert didn't initially publicize LeRoy as being HIV-positive, at some point in the media swirl, the young prostitute was mentioned as having the virus, and Albert never discouraged the rumor, which continued to disseminate through articles and blogs.
As she had done with her rock band, Albert donned the mask of a publicist to promote herself. "Dear friends," she wrote in an e-mail spam, "I am writing to plug a book, one that I'm fairly certain will be unlike any other you have ever read. It just debuted on the LA Times Best Seller List at #10! It's by a new writer, JT LeRoy and the book is titled, 'Sarah.' The reviews and the word of mouth is phenomenal." As were, apparently, the helpful e-mails from friends.
"For a first novelist, JT LeRoy is astonishingly confident," wrote Catherine Texier in the New York Times Book Review. "His language turns the tawdriness of hustling into a world of lyrical and grotesque beauty, without losing any of its authenticity." Piped in Suzanne Vega for a cover blurb: "JT LeRoy has a gift, to be able to articulate his world so clearly and astringently, with grace and humor, but without glossing over the pain and brutality of it."
A San Francisco friend recalls Albert's joy and excitement at being published. She was no longer a sex hack, churning out reviews. She had given birth to her very own literary baby, complete with a chilling back story and telephone persona. Like mother and son, Albert and JT were connected at the DNA. His experiences were based on hers. He had lived through hard times, just as she had. Together, they fooled the entire publishing community. It was a thing of beauty.
One afternoon in 2001 my phone rang and on the other line was a hesitant, tiny voice with a Southern drawl. I was unlisted, but JT/Albert had found my number somehow. We talked for three hours, and as others can attest, the experience of talking to a young boy who had worked as a truck stop hooker was eerie, fascinating and addictive. He recounted his crazy life and adventures, mentioning that everything he wrote was autobiographical, and furiously dropped names of celebrities. He said he had just gone to San Francisco's swanky Charles Nob Hill restaurant with Gus Van Sant, where they got drunk and threw food around. Albert gave great phone.
Not long after, JT e-mailed me, asking if he could interview me for his column in New York Press. I had just published an unorthodox guide to oddball San Francisco called "San Francisco Bizarro," which JT said he loved. He was very chirpy and flirty and becoming a big shot. The book could use some exposure. So of course I agreed.
JT sent over a list of questions, and I answered them, blathering on, sharing my adult wisdom with a genuinely curious kid. I could feel my ego swell. I was now one of the groovy insiders in JT's universe. He had interviewed Suzanne Vega, Nina Hagen, Mick Rock, Mary Karr, Jerry Stahl, Joe Strummer, Gus Van Sant, Dorothy Allison, Penelope Spheeris, Rancid, Silverchair and me. I feel a little sick thinking about it today, but back then it was pretty cool.
After the release of "Sarah," Laura Albert the sex writer disappeared. Her Web site shut down, she stopped doing porn reviews. Playing JT became a full-time gig. She now had to do JT interviews for newspapers and magazines, and National Public Radio with Terry Gross. Celebrities started calling and she developed a major-player list of JT phone friends.
She and Knoop formed another band, Thistle, and solicited producers like Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads. Bay Area drummer Prairie Prince (notably of the Tubes) even filled in on a recording session. Thistle quickly eclipsed Daddy Don't Go in popularity. The gigs were now at high-profile clubs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Rome. Not because the music was much better than Daddy Don't Go. But this time, the lyrics were written by JT LeRoy, literary wunderkind.
After a few gigs, Albert stopped performing with Thistle and was replaced with Jennifer Hall, a young actress who came via a referral from Drew Barrymore. But Albert was still involved behind the scenes. "She was at the shows," remembers former Thistle drummer Stephen Heath. "She was totally supportive; she was always up front, rocking out, getting the crowd moving."
When JT's second book was published in June 2001, "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," Albert sent out an e-mail as JT, inviting people to a night of readings at Manhattan's FEZ club. "Why are they reading?" she asked. "Because they all love JT!" The list of celeb readers was impressive. It included actor Matthew Modine; writers Sharon Olds, Mary Karr and Arthur Bradford; and musicians Rufus Wainright and Theo Kogan from the Lunachicks.
As JT's star kept rising, Albert worked the phones and e-mail far more than necessary to sustain the ruse. She was obviously caught up in the excitement. Part of it was so punk rock, messing with people's heads. And it was also a chance to demonstrate that her own writing, her own version of an emotionally damaged character, was as valid as anyone else's. To let the whole opportunity slip away would be a big mistake.
Only Albert really knows why JT began acting out more in interviews and e-mails. This behavior was believable in the sense that success and celebrity power often do go to someone's head. And certainly writers are no exception. The combination of working for so many hours in solitary confinement, added to the adulation and money and endless invitations to parties and events and sex, can turn anyone into an asshole.
But there was a neediness to JT's tone that made you want to push him away. You imagined him stamping his feet like a spoiled child. His celebrity name-dropping became really annoying. In July 2001, after being featured in Vanity Fair, he told one reporter, "I was interviewed by the amazing Tom Waits and photographed by the righteous Mary Ellen Mark. It was amazing, too, because I have always loved the documentary film 'Streetwise,' which was filmed and directed by Mary Ellen Mark's husband, Martin Bell, based on the work she did for Life magazine."
His suicidal phone calls were the most disturbing. Susie Bright, who received her share of calls from Albert as JT, recalls, "This really breathy, tearful, high-pitched voice would say, 'I just don't believe in myself.' Being desperate, being like, 'I hate myself.' It wasn't comical. You felt like you really had to get into therapist mode and give him reason to hope."
Along with acting suicidal, JT acted moody or stoned out of his gourd. Albert's friends are baffled why her fictional character, who worked so hard to endear himself to others, would let himself act in such a way, often to those who helped him. Was Albert adding texture to the character? Was it supposed to seem more real? Did she feel these thoughts herself?
Jacob Brown worked on the JT LeRoy Web site for two years without remuneration. He had joined the JT e-mail list and was recruited to work on the site while still in college at Cornell University. Albert clearly saw him as an easy mark. He posted clips of JT's books, reviews and diary entries, and talked with JT at least once a week. Albert also asked him to do the Web site and logo for Thistle. He says he never suspected Albert was LeRoy.
Brown, who now works at Paper magazine, admits, "I was definitely doing a lot of fucking drudgery." When Albert was writing the JT story, "Harold's End," later published as a novella, she called Brown and read it to him over the phone. "It's really weird," he says. "Long before it came out, I was like, great, whatever. Same as the other stuff. At that point, I was getting tired of it."
The moment that really creeped out Brown was when gay novelist Henry Flesh passed away from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. JT was close to him, and when he died, Brown called up JT and told him the news. "I sat there on the phone while he cried," he says. "He was really emotional about it." The memory of this is still vivid. Brown makes a noise of disgust. That was the last time he spoke with JT.
As JT's career kept rising, rumors started to fly about his real identity. San Francisco writer Stephen Beachy began researching the facts of LeRoy's life, discovering that much of it didn't check out. His ensuing article was originally intended for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, an alternative weekly, but according to Ron Turner of Last Gasp, which published "Harold's End," the story was delayed because Bay Guardian editors and Last Gasp staff attempted to arrange a meeting with Beachy and LeRoy to sort out the facts and details. Turner says he always suspected something was up because "the first time I hugged JT, I felt a bra strap."
As the Bay Guardian and Last Gasp dallied, Beachy took his story to the more prestigious New York magazine, where it did a lot of damage in a hurry. After the New York Times exposed Knoop's half-sister Savannah as the actress who played JT in public, it became apparent that the photos of JT at readings and clubs were phony. They look just like what they are: a young woman in a bad wig. But at the time, Savannah was good enough for Carrie Fisher and Shirley Manson.
Now that Albert has been exposed, it's likely that in a few years, nobody will care about JT LeRoy, as we all move on to discussing other things. His books will sell out their print runs, maybe even be reprinted for novelty appeal. His fictional life is already immortalized in Asia Argento's film. Knoop's potential film version of the hoax, or one produced by the Weinstein brothers, are likely to be pop culture's final fling with JT LeRoy.
Albert's future is less solid. She is guaranteed a footnote in history as the author of a literary hoax. She can take her place alongside the 25 staff members of New York Newsday, who in 1969 penned "Naked Came the Stranger," an erotic memoir by "Penelope Ashe." In fact, her JT books are more like, and were probably inspired by, the 1993 memoir, "A Rock and a Hard Place," by Anthony Godby Johnson, a supposed 14-year-old HIV-positive survivor who turned out to be a creation of Vicki Fraginals, who masqueraded as his foster mother. The story was later fictionalized in "The Night Listener" by Armistead Maupin.
Today, Albert sits in her San Francisco apartment surrounded by ghosts, the papers and books and galleys and manuscripts, remnants of a career that punk'd us all. Producing these books was a collaborative effort involving many authors and editors. Does she have a writing future under her own name? Will anyone care if she puts out a book besides the tell-all story about the hoax?
"I see JT as an elaborate nom de plume," says former New York Press editor Strausbaugh. "Sort of a 21st century George Sand. Here's this middle-aged woman who's not getting anywhere as a writer. She reinvents herself as a girly boy and becomes a huge success. On whom does that reflect more poorly, her or all the rest of us?"
Many of her friends, like Blush, are proud of what she did. "It's very hard to pull off a prank these days," he says. Wilinski, who witnessed the hoax from the beginning, sees some positive aspect to all of it. "The runaway kids that I ran into on Haight Street were humanized for me because of the JT books," he says. "My friends felt the same way."
A few months ago, an old friend of Albert's got back in touch with her after several years. Rumors and news stories were circulating that JT was a hoax. Albert told the friend it wasn't true. Regardless, the friend continued, JT LeRoy was in a way pure genius. Albert replied, "You know, I just like to get good work out there."
About the writer
Jack Boulware is a journalist, author and co-director of San Francisco's annual Litquake literary festival, which has presented JT LeRoy readings for the past four years.
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