camera with an expression that fell Laura Albert, the writer behind somewhere between defiant and sad. the literary persona JT LeRoy. The next day, when Albert sent me both an email and a Facebook opportunistic asshole (or, more sim- friend request, I ignored them. Read- ply, a journalist). But if she did, she ing all of the stories had spooked me didn’t show it: “So awesome to hear and suggested untold multitudes of from you!” she wrote. “It’s been wild drama. I didn’t understand what life over here.” experiences could produce some- When we finally meet up a few one like Laura Albert. I wasn’t sure I months later at a café not far from wanted to find out. Albert’s home in Russian Hill, it’s But at the Sundance Film Festi- July. Magnolia Pictures, which is val this January, it suddenly seemed releasing Author with Amazon Stu- that everyone wanted to find out dios on September 9, has arranged who Laura Albert was. The festival for a publicist to accompany Albert marked the debut of Author: The JT to the interview. But she turns up LeRoy Story, a feature-length docu- at the café alone, wearing the same The first time I met Laura Albert, I by wigs and enormous sunglasses, mentary that promised a definitive newsboy cap she wore when I met had almost forgotten who she was. bearing a passing resemblance to look at the JT saga. Directed by Jeff her two years earlier, a T-shirt that It was June 2014, at a pop-up kosher a late-stage Michael Jackson. Two Feuerzeig—best known for another reads “Fuck Gucci,” black-and-white- restaurant in SoMa. “Do you remem- more books followed his star-making documentary about a poorly under- striped arm warmers, a long, ruffled ber JT LeRoy?” our mutual acquain- debut, as did an associate producer skirt, and rings on seven of her fin- tance asked me before introducing us. credit for Gus Van Sant’s Elephant gers. Around her neck hangs a type- “That was Laura.” and a screenwriting gig for the HBO writer pendant embossed with the I remember thinking that Albert series Deadwood. words “Write Hard Die Free.” It dan- looked like no one else in the room: And then, in late 2005 and early gles next to another necklace, this Dressed in a bustier, an ankle-length 2006, articles in New York magazine one strung with a silver raccoon skirt, a floppy newsboy cap, and and the New York Times brought it penis bone. In Sarah, the raccoon sleeves that went from her wrists to all crashing down: JT, it was revealed,YOU stood outsider artist, The Devil and penis bone is depicted as a protective her upper arms, she was an island of wasn’t actually a living, breathing, Daniel Johnston—and bankrolled by amulet for the truck-stop prostitutes, Dickens Fair goth in a sea of casual writing human being. On the page Vice and A&E, Author is told almost or lot lizards, who also use it to stim- linen. We chatted for a while: She and over the phone, he was instead solely from Albert’s perspective, draw- ulate the prostates of their clients. GONE was friendly, easy to talk a San Francisco writer ing on her vast archive of home videos, After the book was published, celeb- to, slightly haunted. She named Laura Albert—who, drawings, writings, and the telephone rity admirers like Rufus Wainwright gave me her business as part of the ruse, had conversations she began recording as and Michael Pitt were photographed card and suggested that also posed as JT’s assis- a teenager. The film, as an early Vari- wearing their own raccoon penis we take a bike ride some- tant, alternately called ety review pointed out, is essentially a bones. Later in our interview, Albert time. It was a distinctly Speedie and Emily Frasier. podium for Albert to air her side of the would give me one, too, wrapped in San Francisco experi- Another woman, Savan- story—and nobody else’s. And, as the tissue paper, tipped with silver, and ence: Of course I’d go to nah Knoop—who was the review also noted, it’s actually the sec- signed “JT LeRoy.” a kosher pop-up and talk half sister of Albert’s boy- ond documentary about Albert: The “It’s insane. It’s absolutely fucking about bikes with someone who used friend, Geoff—played the role of JT first, Marjorie Sturm’s The Cult of JT crazy,” Albert says when I ask her if to be someone else. LeRoy during public appearances. LeRoy, was released last year and takes it’s strange, after spending so many When I got home that evening, I As I continued to search the web for a much more critical view of its subject. years assuming the identity of some- went online and began to reacquaint details about Albert’s history, I found a And so, spurred by all of this one else, to be starring in a movie myself with a period of time in the few post-fall-from-grace articles about renewed interest in a woman who about herself. “When I meet some- late 1990s and early aughts when JT her; the backlash had come quickly, presented an admittedly fascinating body and they say, ‘Oh, she was doing LeRoy was seemingly everywhere. along with a fraud lawsuit centered picture, I finally emailed Albert back. this for fame,’ it’s like, ‘Dumbass, I A transgender former child prosti- on a movie contract that she’d signed I figured she’d think I was being an was hiding.’ I mean, John Waters said tute, the story went, he (his pronoun as JT LeRoy. In one mem- of choice) was born in West Virginia orable 2007 New York Times and abandoned by his mother on story, a reporter accompanied the streets of San Francisco. He pub- Albert on a road trip from her lished his autobiographical debut home in San Francisco to Los novel, Sarah, to great and bestsell- Angeles and depicted her as a ing acclaim in 2000. Only 19 years old, high-maintenance mess he quickly accrued exhaustive media with veracity issues. I coverage and a coven of celebrity fans also found a 2010 photo from Winona Ryder, , from Zoo magazine and Lou Reed to Carrie Fisher, Bono, of Albert flashing her and . There were pic- boobs, which was most The woman who invented the boy who seduced the literary tures of JT everywhere: He was slight, notable for the way she world a decade ago is still searching for answers. androgynous, and usually obscured stared directly at the By REBECCA FLINT MARX PHOTOGRAPH BY Justin Kaneps

102 San Francisco | September 2016 September 2016 | San Francisco 103 to me—said to JT—that the most un- Antoinette to get a rewrite, you American thing you can do is reject Even a decade know?” Albert says after I comment fame. It’s like, dude, you had to drag on this resurgence of interest in her me out, how can you say that I did story. She’s thrilled with the Feuer- this to get attention? But I also feel later, attempting zeig documentary, which she’s seen that I’ve been made ready, and I know four or five times now; telling her what my intention is. I didn’t do the to make sense story is “the process whereby the pain reality show. I’ve proven myself. I’ve of the past in its pastness may be con- proven you can’t buy me, and I think verted to the future tense of joy,” she that makes it very frustrating to peo- of JT LeRoy—let says, quoting Robert Penn Warren. ple. I’ve maintained my integrity.” But, Over the course of our four-hour she adds, “I don’t feel proud of that, alone Laura Albert— interview, Albert talks a lot about the because there was no other option.” pain of the past—hers, mostly, but The question of Albert’s intention also that of the JT fans who she says and integrity has for the past decade requires not so approach her after readings to share been central to what people talk their own stories of abuse. She talks about when they talk about JT LeRoy. much a flowchart about the time her mother tried to The saga wasn’t simply a question of a set her on fire; about how Deadwood pseudonymous writer duping readers creator David Milch gave her a piece and a bunch of celebrities. Using the as a suspension of Franz Kafka’s house to carry with persona of JT, Albert, who was then her during the fraud trial; about how, in her 30s, formed emotionally inti- of disbelief: after the trial, when she felt the “gate mate telephone relationships with a of writing shut,” people told her that number of people, writers like Den- no one would care about her in seven nis Cooper and Mary Gaitskill among It’s like a Möbius months, that everyone else would tell them, who believed they were helping her story. She was offered reality televi- an abused HIV-positive transgender strip tied into sion shows, book deals, countless talk street kid by offering him both their show interviews, she says. But she time and their lit-world connections. turned it all down: “That would have In The Cult of JT LeRoy, one of JT’s a Gordian knot. been a profound betrayal of what [JT] former admirers gets choked up as was all about,” she explains. “You can’t he recalls how he sent JT a birthday white-male literary establishment a flowchart as a suspension of disbe- buy me. I know the rules to your game, present for every year of his life after more inclined to love a pretty young lief: It’s like a Möbius strip tied into and you don’t know the rules to mine.” JT told him he’d never had any birth- boy than a thirtysomething woman. a Gordian knot. So it’s unsurprising Talking with Laura Albert is less days growing up. Later in the film, the And your level of personal offense over that not one but two documentaries like having a conversation than like writer Bruce Benderson likens his the whole affair seems roughly propor- are now trying to unravel the story— being flattened by a runaway train experience with JT to being “caught tional to your ability to laugh it off as or that they have such wildly diver- of thought. Ask a question about in a terrible nightmare…one of the some kind of postmodern cultural cri- gent points of view. And perhaps it’s why she felt she couldn’t apologize most sadistic manipulations of myself tique. In a prophetic 2001 interview also predictable that enough time has for fooling people and you will get that I’ve ever experienced.” with the Independent, Gaitskill said passed to warrant a reappraisal, par- a winding anecdote involving the The subsequent fraud trial, at the that if JT was a hoax, “it’s a very enjoy- ticularly given the backdrop of our group home that she lived in as a end of which Albert was ordered to able one…a hoax that exposes things evolving cultural conversation about teen and Barbara Barrie, the actress pay almost $500,000 in damages and about other people, the confusion the fluidity of gender and identity. (If best known as the mother in the 1979 legal fees, brought to light Albert’s own between love and art and publicity. A you think a 33-year-old woman pos- film Breaking Away, who (accord- history, which included her sexual and hoax that would be delightful, and, if ing as a teenage boy is crazy, then try ing to Albert) led a petition to try to physical abuse as a child, institution- people are made fools of, it would be Rachel Dolezal on for size.) This— get the home kicked out of the tony alizations as a teen, and years spent in OK—in fact, it would be useful.” not to mention America’s love of Upper West Side building where it a group home as a ward of the state— a good redemption story—may be was located. Alternately angry, regret- a time during which she began call- part of why JT and Albert are having ful, defiant, and introspective, Albert ing crisis hotlines in the persona of a “moment”; in addition to the doc- cries, laughs, and makes points with a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy. So it umentaries, a feature film based on such force that spit flies out of her became possible to argue, as Albert has, ’s own account of mouth and speckles my recorder. that JT wasn’t a persona so much as a the saga is in the works, with James There’s a thread of defensive pride mechanism for coping with her past Franco (naturally) attached; Helena that stitches her words together. “I trauma. In a video Albert sent me, she Bonham Carter has signed on to play built this thing popsicle stick by pop- tells an audience of fellow group-home Albert. And in August, HarperCol- sicle stick,” she says at one point of survivors that donning the persona of lins released new editions of Sarah JT, “and people saw the Taj Mahal.” JT LeRoy was like putting on “asbestos and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Over and over again, she emphasizes gloves” in order to handle the toxicity Things—with a photo of Albert on that JT wasn’t a choice but a necessity. of her past. Whether or not you believe their back covers, accompanied by an After he was taken away from her, she her seems to depend on whether you Even a decade later, attempting to explanation that “JT LeRoy is a liter- says, she felt as if she were lost in the felt manipulated by her—or whether make sense of JT LeRoy—let alone ary persona created by Laura Albert.” fog of war after a battle: “It’s like you you believe she was the victimE of a Laura Albert—requires not so much “Look how long it took for Marie don’t even want to know who’s alive I ask Feuerzeig if he’s seen The Cult of JT LeRoy. “I 100 percent have not seen it, so have no thoughts on it,” he says. “I wasn’t interested. One of my assistants saw it, and that’s all I know.” But as with everything else related to Laura Albert, it’s not quite that simple. Sturm, the director of The Cult of JT LeRoy, first met Albert during the height of the JT craze. At the time a social worker in the Ten- derloin, Sturm was invited by a pho- tographer who was working with LeRoy to film behind-the-scenes footage during various photo shoots and interviews—the understand- ing, Sturm says, was that she would be making a documentary about JT’s redemption. Sturm eventually incurred Albert’s wrath when one of her crew members ran into Savannah Knoop (dressed as JT) one evening and said hello to her; one of Albert’s cardinal rules, Sturm says (but Albert denies), was that you couldn’t talk to JT in public. Sturm parted ways with Albert, footage in tow, and began making her documentary in 2002. When Albert found out, “she called me up,” Sturm says. “She was and who’s not. It’s like, are you there?” bullying, crazy, extremely aggres- Her relationship with Geoff ended sive, like, ‘Kiss your children’s college (the two have a son, Trevor, who is education goodbye.’” (While Albert now 18); her livelihood was curtailed; doesn’t deny the phone call, she says and most of her celebrity connections her words were taken out of context.) were cut off. And so all she could do of the scandal, she did several inter- When Sturm later called her to “make was try to survive from day to day. views and even a 2010 monologue at peace,” she claims, Albert was again “Sometimes,” Albert recalls, “I’d be the Moth storytelling series (its title: “really vicious and aggressive. But by like, I’m going to ride my bike and I’m “My Avatar and Me”). But Feuerzeig then I had heard other people’s sto- either going to get a vegan cupcake thought she deserved her own cin- ries and I was like, ‘I’m going to make or jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.” ematic platform. Albert decided to this with or without your blessing.’” She was certain of only one thing: trust him, he says, because she had Through her lawyer, Albert sent “The work,” she says, “wasn’t a joke. seen The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Sturm cease-and-desist letters stat- That’s why hoax is really the n-word his 2005 documentary about a schizo- ing that Sturm couldn’t use the foot- for me. It really is. Because it’s insult- phrenic musician. It also helped that age because Albert hadn’t signed a ing for people who have the experi- Feuerzeig, like Albert, is Jewish and release. And then things got even dic- ence of the work and who have gone has a background in East Coast punk; ier: In 2008, Sturm says, A&E prom- through physical and sexual abuse.” as Albert explains, “someone needed ised funding for the film, only to pull Feuerzeig hadn’t read any of to get that paradigm.” out a couple months later when she Albert’s books when he approached Feuerzeig happily admits that his refused the cable network’s demand her about doing a documentary in film, which was built around an eight- that she take on a codirector. (The 2011. But he had read all of the news day interview with Albert, is “totally company eventually put its money about the scandal. “It was being subjective.” Rather than “moralize or behind the Feuerzeig film.) A few labeled the biggest literary hoax of our give you a happy ending or take some- years later, while Sturm was continu- time, and that was the hook for me,” he one to task, it’s more interesting to ing to drum up funding, one of her says. “My whole trip is New Journal- explore all of this and come out with producers learned about the Feuer- ism, and I’m all about the story.” He Top: Rocker Courtney Love, left, hangs your own opinion,” he says. zeig film and insisted that Sturm join remembers thinking that “the one in 2003 with the man she thought was “What I hope I’ve done is cre- forces with him. When Sturm met voice glaringly missing” from the story JT LeRoy (actually Savannah Knoop) ate the most immersive expe- with Feuerzeig, she says (and Feuer- was Albert’s. “I said to myself, ‘Wow, and the woman who claimed to be rience I can deliver within zeig later confirms), he claimed that that is a voice I would love to hear.’” LeRoy’s assistant, Speedie (in reality, a three-act structure, and he wanted to produce her documen- It’s not exactly true that Albert’s Laura Albert). Below: Actress Winona deliver hopefully the ecstatic tary and “mentor” her—and also

TOP: MATTHEW PEYTON/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/GETTY IMAGES DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/GETTY RIGHT: IMAGES; PEYTON/GETTY MATTHEW TOP: voice had gone unheard: In the wake Ryder with Knoop. truth. That’s my goal.” wanted to CONTINUED ON PAGE 116

September 2016 | San Francisco 105 JT LeRoy but vulnerable woman doing her CONTINUED FROM PAGE 105 best to survive the lasting scars of an awful childhood. The two were option her footage. In exchange, at the group home together; Stau- he said, he’d get her a letter ber remembers standing outside from Albert’s lawyer saying that phone booths as her friend, who Albert wouldn’t pursue further she says suffered from agorapho- legal action against her. Sturm bia and an eating disorder, made declined; her film eventually calls in various personae. “She made it to the festival circuit often found different voices other and is now available on iTunes. than her own to transmit some- Unsurprisingly, it takes a much thing that was inside her that she less flattering view of Albert couldn’t really transmit in her than Feuerzeig’s documentary, own voice,” Stauber says. Watch- presenting her essentially as an ing Albert go through the post- expert manipulator who took JT fallout was tough, she adds. advantage of people’s time, inter- “People were wanting her to just est, and capacity for compassion. die and totally dehumanized her Sturm doesn’t mince words and in many ways took her story about Albert. “She’s a good con away,” Stauber says. “I can’t imag- artist,” she says flatly. In her eyes, ine what that’s like, to have your presenting Albert as a tortured life rewritten in the public domain soul just trying to express herself by the media [in a way] that’s so misses the point. “Your art doesn’t not true.” give you permission to abuse other Everyone I speak to obviously people. Your therapy doesn’t give has an agenda, whether it’s to pro- you the right to abuse other peo- tect a friend or to promote a film. ple,” Sturm says. “Art and science But it’s easy to understand how doesn’t transcend ethics; that’s Albert can project any number of fascism. So the idea that her writ- qualities during the course of a ing is so brilliant it would tran- single transaction. Before this sto- scend abusing and lying to people, ry’s photo shoot is to take place in it’s fascism in a sense. It’s not deep late July, she emails me to request thinking or clear thinking or ethi- that I, too, attend; she needs me cal thinking.” there, she explains, to act as a sort of doula to help deliver her To be fair, it can be exceptionally into this new world where she’s  +!)'&(*)(.'(!%#&**&%&$-/!) hard to think clearly about Laura “the person that puts on makeup "+)* $!%+*)(&$%(%!)&&'(*(&$-&(# Albert. For every person who and dresses up and is in front wants to tell me how smart and of people.” #))!#!*/&,(/)/(+(#*& +! sensitive she is, there’s another When I arrive at the shoot, )'&(*)()!%#+)* (% *&''!%  )+'((   who rips her as vengeful and Albert greets me warmly—and    $&#).'(!%))*(**  opportunistic. When I talk to Ste- then has me talk to both her lawyer phen Beachy, the writer whose and her friend and longtime col- &('&(*(&+')#&$ New York story first revealed that laborator Nicole Gagné. As Albert JT LeRoy was actually Albert, he poses for photographs, Gagné recalls one conversation prior spends the better part of an hour to the story’s publication where telling me how wronged her friend Albert “veered from a threaten- has been, and what a brilliant art- ing tone to a seductive tone, like, ist she is, and that Albert’s detrac- ‘Maybe you could climb aboard tors are jealous and bitter and don’t the bandwagon,’ to insulting me truly love art. “When the sage and suggesting I’m jealous and points, the fool looks at the finger,” horrible and mean.” In his eyes, Gagné says. “All of those fools got Albert is “just this kind of path- angry because the finger was taken ological liar and sociopath who away.” As she talks, I think of did something really extreme something Geoff Knoop, Albert’s and interesting but who is not ex-boyfriend, told me about their fundamentally that interesting early days together, back in the late as a person.” Not long after I talk ’80s, when they were writing acous- to Beachy, I call up Lauren Stau- tic folk rock together in San Fran- ber, one of Albert’s oldest friends, cisco. Not long after they started who describes Albert as a brilliant perform- CONTINUED ON PAGE 118

116 San Francisco | September 2016 JT LeRoy decade after the fact. “I can’t give CONTINUED FROM PAGE 116 them back their time,” she says. “All I can tell them is we’re paying ing, Albert got them a full-page it forward.” spread in SF Weekly with a photo What matters now is the work, of the band captioned, in refer- she tells me. And even more ence to Albert, “Sweetness in the important are the people whose Flesh.” “I was like, this woman can lives the work has touched, like make something fucking happen,” the nervous, shaking girl who, Knoop said. Albert says, approached her at a One thing everyone seems to reading in Brazil and proceeded agree on is that Albert was, and to tell her she was being sexu- still is, troubled. Feuerzeig deems ally abused by her uncle. Or the her “on the spectrum,” while young German woman who came Sturm is of the opinion that she to a reading in England with self- has “some kind of unchecked inflicted cuts covering every inch insane narcissistic personality of her arms, and who gave Albert disorder.” In his court deposition her diary to sign. (The woman has for the fraud trial, Dr. Terrence since stopped cutting, Albert tells Owens, the therapist who began me; they stay in touch on Face- treating Albert when she first con- book.) “These are the moments tacted him as Terminator, JT’s when I feel everything makes early incarnation, told his inter- sense,” she says. “Everything that viewer that he didn’t think Albert I’ve gone through, it’s all that fuck- was putting on a hoax. “I think ing matters and it’s all fucking it’s a superficial understanding worth it.” She starts to cry. “That’s of her psychopathology,” he said. what I’ve instilled in my son. You “I think it really misunderstands know, if someone wants to be cyn- her…. She’s a lot sicker individual ical, whatever, God bless ’em. Go than I think is obvious on a super- look. It’s in the work, you know?” ficial contact with her.” I ask Albert how she’s feeling The enduring question—and these days, now that her story is UNDER ONE criticism—underlying any dis- being told the way she wants it to cussion of Albert’s mental state, of be told. Now that she’s working course, is whether it excuses her on a memoir, now that she’s repre- deceit. After the crash and burn, sented by Bill Clegg, the star New ROOF, AND she didn’t make any kind of pub- York literary agent who has him- lic apology or acknowledgment self written openly about his per- of her actions, which only deep- sonal demons. “I don’t know that DOWN ened the popular assumption that I can feel happy,” she says. “The she’d been up to something, none best I feel is when I connect with of it any good. But the reason she someone, when I get out of myself, didn’t apologize, Albert says, is where I have that connection, THE STREET. simply that she couldn’t, “because when I write.” She tries to keep in to me, it wasn’t a joke or hoax.” mind what David Milch once told “I know it caused pain for peo- her: that “you have to keep com- Kaiser Permanente ple, and it’s not like I’m saying ing in faith to the process of life.” you shouldn’t feel what you felt,” More than a decade after he San Francisco Mission Bay she says. “All I can do is share my was taken from her, Albert still experience of what it was and say grieves for JT. She feels him some-       I’m grateful that you gave him [JT] times when she hangs out with time. You did save my life, and this Billy Corgan, the Smashing NOW OPEN art came out of it, if that’s any con- Pumpkins frontman, who some- solation. And if you want to stay how brings JT out of her. But the angry and furious, that’s your last time it happened, Albert says, right. I can just say I apologize. she was “fucked up for a couple of My behavior damaged people. All weeks.” As much as everyone else I can do is say my truth.” In retro- loved JT, she tells me, she loved spect, she adds, “it was a pretty him more. “I miss it, man. Show- intense thing, it was pretty crazy. ing up in life as me is never as Yes, there was deceit. I deceived good as showing up in life as him.” people. I did.” But there’s only She shrugs. “I’m sorry, but it’s kp.org/sanfrancisco so much she can do about it a true.”

118 San Francisco | September 2016