JT LEROY Conversation When It Was Still New” Laura Albert
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“JT really brought gender fuidity into the JT LEROY conversation when it was still new” Laura Albert Interviewed by Eduardo Gión Portrait courtesy of Donatien Veismann At what age do you start writing? a wonderful phrase by Fellini. Do you like ci- wake me up, and I’d be crying. Sometimes, the Tere's a play my mother typed up in 1972 when nema? kid would survive and sometimes he would die. I was six years old, a musical version of Beauty and I was a child of the movies right from the start. And, in the daytime, I would play with my dolls the Beast – I would dictate and she would write. I grew up with people constantly singing to me, and do scenes and situations that I had watched She was a playwright and songwriter, among other “Laura – is the face in the misty light / Footsteps at night. School was awful, I was bullied and ridi- talents, and she would use a tape recorder to tape that you hear down the hall...” Not until years culed, and that mistreatment from the real world me singing songs I made up, and then she'd write later, when I frst saw Otto Preminger’s classic made me all the more involved in the fantasy them out. When I was in third grade, we were flm Laura on television, did I realize that I’d been world of my dolls. assigned to write a story for Mother's Day, and named after a girl who didn’t exist. I’d already In Te Heart Is Deceitful Above All Tings I quo- I wrote Te Flower Tat Grew Overnight, about a been in movies by then: I’m there as a toddler te proverbs, “Withhold not correction from the boy, Sam, who takes his vitamins and buries them with my mother at the Brooklyn Promenade, ex- child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall with the seeds he bought to try to get fowers tras in a scene from the Sandy Dennis' flm Sweet not die.” As a child, I had seen how my Christian to grow faster so he has a gift for his mother for November. In elementary school, I was cast in an friends, in homes with pictures of Jesus on the Mother’s Day. My teacher loved my story, and my educational movie, which only made me all the walls, were being beaten by their parents. Main- mom asked me if I wanted to turn it into a play more devoted to flm. I am even in Taxi Driver, taining a patriarchal power structure requires not for Plays Magazine. I did, so she plugged in her you can see me in my light blue overalls in the just the threat of violence, but violence itself. So electric typewriter and showed me how we rewrite election scene. As my family began to disintegra- people keep resorting to it, even though it doesn’t it in a play format. She put it in an envelope, I te, I found my refuge in the movies and started work – it just makes each succeeding generation kissed it, and we sent it of. A month or so later I existing more in the storytelling of flms than I as confused and cruel as the last one was. It’s no got a letter from Plays saying yes they would take did at home. It wasn’t safe for me there any more, accident that the people who think they’re the it and pay me $60 for it. But I had to change the so I’d spend my days in movie theaters, watching most like G-d are the people who are the quickest vitamins to orange juice because they didn't want flms. I saw them all, from the latest releases to to harm others. Once someone thinks they have Sam dealing with "drugs"! It appeared under my black-and-white classics like Ninotchka and Te the high ground – morally or socially or just phy- name in 1976, when I was ten years old. Philadelphia Story. In my writing, I’ve always sically – they’re more than ready to beat you with kept in my mind the shared immediacy that an a rod. I learned that the hard way with the attacks You really wanted to write like a kid at school audience experiences at the movies, and I’ve tried I experienced after it was made public that I had but they would not let you. It is true? to re-create that. I’ve often thought that I didn’t so written the JT LeRoy books. Certain people who When I was attending Eugene Lang College, I much write Sarah as flm it – I transcribed a flm had been very fond of JT really were savage in the had a creative-writing teacher who was incredibly I saw in my head. way they lashed out. It was the same dynamic I supportive and one of the best teachers at Lang had described in those books – which had made – but she would not let me write in a male voi- In your infancy we can see that you played with them weep. But once they believed they were bet- ce. Tis was in the 1980s, and I'm sure she had your Barbies, stripping them, lashing them. ter, they couldn’t wait to swing a belt. read enough kids mangling the opposite gender How did you create this parallel world of sa- in their attempt to write. I certainly had been in dism and religion and why? Why did you write your frst books under the enough classes hearing freshman dudes trying to When I was a child I was sexually molested, and pseudonym JT LeRoy? Tere is much autobio- write in a female voice, so I could understand that molestation involved being spanked while graphy and fction, the reader is warned on the why a teacher might want to ban them for life being touched. For me, violence and sex became back cover that it is Fiction. from ever attempting to write in a female voice. merged forever. I think I was reenacting to what Tese obsessive stories of abused boys led to my But she didn't understand what it meant FOR had been done to me with my dolls. And I think I calling hotlines as a boy, a behavior that persis- ME to write as a boy. I am really grateful that has felt if I was a boy, this would have never happened ted into adulthood. When I began speaking to changed. to me. Or if it had, there would be a rescue. I felt Dr. Owens, he encouraged the boy to whom he At the time, people really had very little unders- as a female, I deserved it. It all became very mixed was talking to write down his experiences, and tanding of what would come to be called ‘gender up in my head with body shame, dissociation – I that was how JT LeRoy emerged, as an authorial JT LeRoy is a beloved writer and a true 90's phenomenon, adored by the most modern infuencers of that decade such as Asia fuidity.’ It was still an unspoken concept when told no one, I only knew I felt sinful, dirty, dis- voice, not just a voice on the phone. And in his Argento, Madonna, Gus Van Sant and Courtney Love. Here we spoke with Laura Albert, the person behind the myth who shares JT LeRoy began to live that idea – or ideal, if you gusting. prose I could begin to deal with my own trauma, with us everything about her life, from her childhood and adolescence to her next book, her own biography that we hope will like. JT really brought gender fuidity into the As a child in my mind at night I would hear and only in metaphoric ways – my own experiences of leave us breathless. conversation when it was still new, especially for see stories of children in crisis, usually boys. So- abandonment and abuse and institutionalization the literary scene at that time. metimes, they would go into my dreams, but were still too searing. JT was like the mechanical most often this would happen before I would fall hands scientists use to manipulate radioactive ma- “Lick it up baby, lick it up.” Winona Ryder Te documentary about its history begins with asleep. Sometimes, they’d keep me up, or they’d terials that no human can touch directly and live. 355 A part of fashion - such as Calvin Klein - is in- With guns so readily available in the US, we have writing, there is so much more emotion I can terested in the fgure and character of JT Le- created an environment where violence is readily put into a song, I miss that outlet deeply. Geof Roy. Are you a fashion lover? available as a solution. I wanted to explore this was also in punk bands, but our music ended up Fashion is intriguing because it boils down to subject in a screenplay, and as soon as Gus pro- being edgy melodic pop. I explored what I wrote story. I’m very drawn to the steampunk look, posed it to JT, I wrote the frst scene that night. about in my fction. But being on stage was scary Mad Max mixed with Victorian sensibilities. For It's the one in the flm where a homely girl in the for me, I was not ready for it. me, it's a humorous mix of toughness and the library gets shot.