Early this century I came across a thin book with a Barbie Doll dressed in a really short dress by a pick up truck in the book store. The title was "Sarah," the name of the mother of a transsexual teenage boy prostitute who narrates the novel. The book unlike what you may surmise is not depressing. It made the grimiest most disturbing and disgusting parts of left over humanity, the people who surrounds child prostitution seem magical. There are talking moose heads and magical stew. The boy is given powers by a gold penis pendent. The boy never feels sorry for himself because he knows no other life. A very strange but satisfying, enjoyable, and transgressive novel indeed.
So I read a little about the author, "JT Leroy," supposedly was a teenage boy and this book was his "memoir." A beautified version of his disturbing story, a way for him to deal with the pain and abuse he had suffered. The cult of JT Leroy grew, he became "phone" friends with Writer Dennis Cooper, Actress Wyona Ryder, poet Sharon Olds, rock star Courtney Love. He wrote for Rolling Stones, the New York Times and a host of magazines. Hundred of thousands of gender bending, abused, confused teens held him up as their own, as well as millions of rather normal adults who simply liked the idea of the boy and the stories he wrote. But the trauma of his life left some indelible masks. He didn’t like
his photos taken. He was desperately shy. He ask others to read
for him at book signings and did his interviews
over the phone or through email. No one had ever met him, not his book
editors, not journalists, not his readers.
Then rumors surfaced that maybe JT Leroy was not a real person. JT was a figment of imagination of another author. Probably a well known author who didn’t want to be known to write such things, or maybe an unknown author desperate to be published. JT Leroy is a figment of our collective imagination.
When I read it I instinctively knew that was what I believed in.
How can a boy who missed his education, never
went to school write a novel which made references to obscure writers
and poets, and tell his story of being abandoned and sold by his
mother with such warmth all the while the prose
lilting and floating away?" Shouldn’t the "real" JT Leroy be like every other abused and abandoned child in this universe, angry, confused, inarticulate.
"That is his genius," the reviewers and press lauded. "His ability to transcend the horrors of his life and make it beautiful."
Personally I loved the hoax, the story of JT himself was probably a superior urban fairy tale than that of the novel itself. A young boy, neglected, used, and drug addicted, sold by his mother, used as a sex toy by older men, finally travelled across the country, and found himself in the city of San Francisco; there he was rescued by a well meaning couple: Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, who took him to therapy where JT eventually wrote his story and given the opportunity to becoming a well received international author. With the constant news stories of pedophilia rings, child porn on the Internet, children abused, neglected, forgotten, how desperately does our world need a myth like this?
It was zeitgeist.
A Fairy Tale for the 21st Century to render our monsters in the forest powerless through magic of a young child. It is possible to vanquish evil mothers and neglectful society with San Franciscan Hippies and Liberal Therapy.
But I never knew how much the myth of JT Leroy had leaked into the popular consciousness over and above the writing itself. In fact I had not kept up with any of his new releases in the intermittent years. It wasn’t until quite recently I came across "Sarah," on a bookshelf and started to talk about it with a friend. I mentioned in passing how there were rumors that JT was not real. How he doesn’t exist, he is a figment of someone else’s imagination.
"No," was the reply I received. "No, that cannot be true. I have seen a photo of him. He dated an actress."
"Are you sure?" I asked,
"Yes. I saw a photo."
"Maybe you got it mixed up, he doesn’t come out in public."
"No, I saw a photo. You have it wrong" He said again.
"Maybe it was someone posing as him…."
"No. I am sure he was in the paper. He is real. That is complete rubbish."
I wanted to argue, I actually wanted to prove my theory but the other person was not listening and just talked right over me.
Boy, I am stupid.
Maybe JT Leroy is real.
I meant to search more for JT Leroy, to find a photo perhaps, it’s been quite a few years since I last thought about this story. Could I have been so wrong? The recluse finally came out in public to dispel the lies. It’s also possible my friend had gotten it all mixed up, after all he had not read the book. But how could someone who I truly don’t believe exist ever appear? Would a photo disprove my suspicions? Such big questions with no answers to for sure. I always meant to do more research but I forgot.
Until in today’s Salon I read:
As everyone by now knows,
JT Leroy does not exist. He is a literary hoax. New York magazine outed
him three months ago, and Monday the New York Times came through with
the rest of the story. The public face of JT Leroy is Savannah Knoop,
the sister of Jeffrey Knoop, one of the authors of the fraud, and JT’s
books and stories were most likely written by Knoop’s wife, Laura
Albert, singer for their band Thistle, an entity nearly as contrived as
JT himself. More
Oh my. JT Leroy as some suspected, and many people secretly believed, does not exist. There are a lot of really embarrassed people around, there is an equal amount of outrage. So what to do? Throw away his books? Be angry at his creators? Demand one’s money back?
I say none of above. I say laud the writers who created JT Leroy as what they are, creative greats for this century. In the world where celebrities are often more famous for themselves than they are for their work, it is only time that the public and the press falls in love with an imaginary figure whose persona is as large and imaginative as that of what he supposedly wrote. Turn the words Laura Albert "rescued" him off the streets into Laura Albert "created" him from the streets. See JT as what he really is, a complete literary fictional character in every sense of the word. The authors created his words, his looks, his thoughts, his actions completely from within themselves. JT Leroy is a total package fictional Character in an age of multimedia conglomerates, where an idea can turn into video games, books, TV shows, toys, all in a kaleidoscope of product streams. JT Leroy is simply a transgendered, cross dressing, ex-drug addict, sex worker version of Harry Potter marketed to a different demographic. People know Harry Potter does not exist but his impact on our imagination, on the publishing industry no less.
As obvious as it was to me that JT Leroy was not real, he was as easily lapped up by many people who should have known better. Why? Because he was comforting. We needed JT Leroy more than Laura Albert or Geoffrey Knoop needed us. They needed us to pay their bills, we needed them to create a semi-realistic superhero for the marginalized. The people society has failed and we as individuals have no way of helping. It’s impossible to care for those abused children personally, but we can love JT to absolve our own complicity for his existence. What pain we cannot soothe, we can pretend by buying his books and making him the exception to the rule. Within our power we can save a child as long as he himself is not broken.
Jose Rose, Graphic Novelist and journalist who once struck up a friendship with this enigmatic young boy said, “I have deep mourning for someone who never existed.”
It is true. For Jose, he is mourning a "person" he knew and loved that does not exist. For the rest of us, we should also mourn not for JT but the absence of such person. We have to accept that no child who has been abused the way "JT" was supposed to have been could possible see his world as beautiful. There are no fairy tales. Those boy and girls relegated to the sex trade in this universe all suffer in the same way and remain very voiceless. But as fake and untrue "JT Leroy" is in "real life," he did exist for a while, he did speak for many and spoke to many more. I know it’s impossible to ever view him in the same way, but much like how many Gods and deities have fallen in the secular last century we can still take solace in the tales of their lives written down for perpetuity. JT isn’t here anymore but the book "Sarah" as well as his other two novels still is.
Fiction is not real but it has never stopped it from being powerful.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 