I was originally supposed to be named something else.
I don't mean the name I would have had if I'd been a boy. In those pre-ultrasound days almost every family chose both boys' and girls' names for expected offspring, with the appropriate name deployed as soon as the doctor got a good look at Baby Blastocyst's external genitalia. The only exception I've ever heard of was my old piano teacher, who was the first girl born to her family in five generations and didn't receive a name until she was almost two months old because no one thought a girl's name would be necessary (hint: it was, especially after she went to get a passport as an adult and discovered that her birth certificate read "Baby Girl Bunbun" since her parents had forgotten to amend her records).
No, my parents were fully prepared if I'd been a boy ("Mark," in case anyone is keeping score at home). It was a girl's name that was the problem.
Mum, misty-eyed at the thought of having a little girl to love and raise, initially wanted to go with "Sari" (pronounced "Shah-ri"), the Hungarian form of Sarah. That there no Hungarians on either side of the family didn't really matter. "Sari" was a pretty name, Mum liked it, and it would be unique. Dad pointed out that everyone would immediately assume the name was pronounced "Sairy," like one of those annoying backwoods matriarchs in 1930's social realist novels about hardscrabble life in Appalachia. Mum then suggested spelling it "Shari," to which Dad replied that everyone would think I was named after Shari Lewis and her puppet Lambchop.
So much for "Sari."
Betty chimed in next, professing a love for the first name "Heather." Mum and Dad objected on the grounds that "Heather Evans" would result in teachers, schoolmates, and everyone else basically imitating Daffy Duck every time they addressed me by name. Betty was not happy to have her contribution shot down with extreme prejudice, but since it wasn't her baby, it wasn't her decision.
So much for "Heather."
Mum next suggested that I be named "Elizabeth," in honor of my grandmother. This was actually not a bad idea since there'd been several previous Elizabeths going back to the family's ancestral villages in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Grandma, who was known to one and all as "Lizzie," objected on the grounds that she hated her nickname and didn't want a potential granddaughter to suffer as she had since Chester A. Arthur's less than glorious term as President. That the most common nickname for "Elizabeth" in Dwight Eisenhower's administration was actually "Beth" did not really register, even though it should. "Don't you dare name her Elizabeth!" my grandmother cried, and my parents caved.
So much for "Elizabeth."
Finally Mum found what the baby book claimed was a rare diminutive of Elizabeth. It was short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and would honor her family heritage without upsetting her crotchety seventy-six year old mother. Dad liked it, Mum's siblings liked it, and, most crucially, Grandma thought it was just fine.
Thus it was that when I was born, and turned out to be a fine, healthy, feisty girl, my parents bestowed that rare and precious shortening of Elizabeth upon me. It was recorded on my birth certificate (long form as well as short form, neener neener nanny boo-boos to the birthers, ha ha ha!), conferred upon me by the family minister, and duly has followed me throughout my life.
That's how I ended up with the first name "Lisa."
Which turned out to be the most common name for little girls born in the 1960's.
Oops.
"Lisa" may be ridiculously common among women of my generation, but it does have its advantages. It's easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and easy to remember, and I've long since made my peace with possessing the 1960's equivalent of "Jennifer" as my first name. I do use other names - "Sarah Ellis" for fiction, "Ellid" here and elsewhere on Teh Intartubz - but I've never seriously contemplated exchanging "Lisa" for, say "Araminta Millesosa Hroswith Gambelpudding auf Ulm." It was good enough for Mum and Dad, it's served me well, and the idea of trying to carve out a completely new life as Araminta Millesosa Yada Yada holds zero appeal.
The same cannot be said for the subject of tonight's diary, an Author So Enigmatic S/he’s Impossible to Define. Critically acclaimed, this brilliant talent had overcome a life of poverty, addiction, illness, and abuse to rise to the heights of literary stardom. Throw in a life story more compelling than any novel, and a charming, fragile personality, and it seemed that the literary world had been blessed indeed - at least until the truth came out thanks to yet another literary talent who put two and two together and got five.
The saga of the author variously known as Terminator, J.T. LeRoy, Jeremy, Savannah Knoop, and Laura Albert is compelling, complex, and so confusing the observer is tempted to fling one’s laptop out the window with the force of several very large atomic bombs, collateral damage be damned. I’ve been wending my way through Badbookistan for going on five years now, so when I tell you that I felt at least a dozen more hairs turn gray while researching and writing this diary, I speak nothing but the truth.
To prevent such a fate from befalling anyone who decides to join me on this particular journey, perhaps I should start with the dramatis personae…
J.T. LeRoy(aka Terminator, aka “Jeremiah,” aka “Jeremy,” aka “The Grace Jones of Literature”) – former hustler, former cutter/burner/heroin addict/abuse victim, former truck stop hooker, literary sensation/songwriter/party animal, email/telephone confidant of numerous authors and rock musicians, claimed transsexual. Later revealed to be a pseudonym/alternate personality/male persona of Laura Albert as portrayed by Savannah Knoop.
Laura Albert (aka Emily “Speedie” Frasier, aka Geoff “Astor” Knoop’s partner, aka J.T. LeRoy) – punk rock singer/lyricist for Daddy Don’t Go and Thistle, gifted mimic, novelist, possible multiple personality, pretended social worker, former sex-line operator, possible grifter, mother of “Thor” even though she doesn’t look a damn thing like Renee Russo, partner of Geoff Knoop. Later revealed to be the author/creator of J.T. LeRoy.
Geoff Knoop (aka Astor, aka Laura Albert/Emily “Speedie” Frasier’s partner) – punk musician, lead guitarist/composer for Daddy Don’t Go and Thistle, former sex-line operator, househusband to Laura Albert and/or Emily “Speedie” Frasier, father of “Thor” who is not Anthony Hopkins, increasingly annoyed witness to/participant in the J.T. LeRoy controversy.
Savannah Knoop (aka Geoff “Astor” Knoop’s half-sister, aka J.T. LeRoy) – fashion designer, pretended transsexual, physical representation of J.T. LeRoy because Laura Albert couldn’t have imitated a teenage hustler to save her immortal soul. Fond of wigs, expensive clothing, very dark sunglasses, and makeout sessions with male partners who were suitably impressed by the quality of the “made p---y” that had allegedly replaced J.T. LeRoy's original equipment.
Dr. Terrance Owens (aka J.T. LeRoy’s therapist, aka possibly Laura Albert’s and/or Emily “Speedie” Frasier’s therapist) – first person to recognize the talent of J.T. LeRoy. Refuses to comment publicly due to client/physician confidentiality, even in the case of clients like J.T. LeRoy who do not actually exist.
Ira Silverberg – longsuffering New York literary agent who was taken in completely by J.T. LeRoy/Laura Albert and fired him/her/them as soon as he found out, even though Laura Albert was certain he’d be played by Richard Gere in a film adaptation of the J.T. LeRoy story.
“Richard” – street hustler who was the first person to attempt to portray J.T. LeRoy as an actual human being instead of an email persona/whispery voice on the telephone. Replaced by Savannah Knoop.
Stephen Beachy – journalist for New York who finally figured out that something very, very strange was going on in the LeRoy/Knoop/Frasier/Knoop/Astor/Speedie/Asgardian household and revealed the astonishing truth to a pole axed world.
Winona Ryder, Susan Dey, Terry Gross, Gus van Sant, Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill, Karen Rinaldi, Henry Dunow, Eddie Vedder, Danielle Steele’s children (and possibly Danielle Steele), Billy Corgan, Courtney Love, Lou Reed, Tatum O’Neal, Bono, Marianne Faithfull, Lisa Marie Presley, Nancy Sinatra, etc., etc., etc. – some of the many, many, many creative talents who read/met/hired/collaborated and/or emailed/spoke with J.T. LeRoy and/or Laura Albert and/or Savannah Knoop.
Jewelry-quality raccoon penis bones, disappearing scars, “really good made p---y,” “Uncle Bruce” the non-existent government agent and legal guardian of J.T. LeRoy – some of the more peculiar people/objects in the most peculiar literary scandal of the 21st century.
The story of how a middle aged woman with a career as a musician/sex-line operator became a reformed truck stop hooker with a gift for deathless prose began in one of several ways. The chronology may be somewhat unclear, but the following is what seems to have happened, possibly in this (or some other) order:
1. Laura Albert (then known only as “Laura Albert”), then working as a sex-line operator, began reviewing porn sites for a virtual newspaper in San Francisco sometime in the 1990’s. She had previously written mainly song lyrics for Daddy Don’t Go, the punk bank she’d formed with her partner Geoff Knoop but hadn’t written much since. She would occasionally read her reviews aloud to Geoff in the voice and persona of a whispery teenage boy from somewhere in the South, which was unnerving even though Laura was a gifted mimic who’d honed her skills imitating a variety of sex fantasy objects for her clients.
OR
2. Laura Albert read Dennis Cooper’s novel Try, loved it, and began calling Cooper late at night in the voice of an abused teenage boy very similar to the main character of Try. She used the name “Terminator,” which was allegedly the boy’s street prostitute name, and professed not only undying admiration for Cooper’s writing, but a desire to interview him for an unnamed magazine. Somehow this morphed into a friendship, and before long “Terminator” was sending Cooper his writing for critique. He also befriended several other important new writers (see above, and below, for names)
OR
3. “Terminator” began calling Dr. Terrence Owens, a psychologist at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco. He (or she, or something) claimed to be severely abused, stuck on the streets, and in desperate need of help, yet was so warped by childhood abuse and the need to trade his flesh for coin that he was much, much too shy and inhibited to come in for actual therapy sessions. That someone who was so severely abused might not actually have the gumption to make it as a street hustler did not seem to occur to Dr. Owens, but given that he has consistently refused to discuss J.T. LeRoy due to patient confidentiality, this is not clear.
Regardless of what happened and when, Dr. Owens was so moved by “Terminator’s” horrific life story that he began encouraging the youngster to write between phone therapy sessions as a way of keeping track of what they discussed. Soon “Terminator” was sharing these works with Dr. Owens, who was so impressed by his client’s obvious, if somewhat raw, talent that he asked if he could share “Terminator’s” work with student social workers as a way of giving them some idea of what they might face in their future careers.
“Terminator” readily gave permission, and soon a short by “Terminator” (now calling himself “J.T. LeRoy,” with the “J” standing for either “Jeremy” or “Jeremiah”) appeared in an anthology of writings by other young sex workers. He also began reaching out to other writers such as Mary Gaitskill and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon (CHECK DATE OF PULITZER). None of these people, even Dr. Owens, had actually met J.T., but that was because he was homeless, hustling for a living, and usually calling from a pay phone either on the street or in a public bathroom.
This was also how he was faxing his writings to his friends and his therapist: by hauling a portable fax machine someone had given him from bathroom to bathroom, hooking it up, and sending out his manuscripts page by page. That a homeless teenager might not have a place to store a portable fax machine while he was bending over and/or kneeling for his clientele was never quite clear, but he sounded so lost, and had such a filthy, uncultured mouth, and was so very, very sincere that no one questioned him. Stranger things had happened in San Francisco, after all.
(Also around this time Laura Albert gave birth to “Thor,” her son by Geoff Knoop. “Thor” is not his real name, thank God and the angels, but since his father called him that in a Vanity Fair article a few years ago, we’ll do the same here.)
Despite the willingness of otherwise intelligent people to believe that a terminally shy teenager still had the ability to hustle for tricks (not to mention an uncanny knack for finding fax line hookups in or near public toilets), rumors began to spread that J.T. LeRoy was not a real person. He was actually a fictional character constructed by Mary Gaitskill, or Dennis Cooper, or film director Gus Van Sant, who had hired someone to pretend to be J.T. LeRoy over the phone and on the page as a way to get certain material into print. Writers are odd sorts, after all, and are used to pretending to be other people. A hoax involving a fictional hustler/abuse victim/teenage could be a great way for an established writer to explore other, possibly more transgressive, literary forms.
That this was exactly what was going on, albeit with a sex line operator/punk rock lyricist, is one of the great ironies of recent literary history.
It was also a big, big problem for Laura Albert. The work she’d shown to Dr. Owens was starting to attract attention, and she was sure that she could manage to get a book contract if only she could convince the world that J.T. LeRoy was a real person. She couldn’t impersonate him herself – she was an adult woman with a child and a lifelong weight problem, not a scrawny teenage boy with a smack habit – and neither could Geoff, but street hustlers were not precisely uncommon in the area near Dr. Owens’ office. Surely one of them would work just long enough to fool Dr. Owens?
Thus it was that mere minutes before J.T. was supposed to meet his therapist in the flesh, Laura and Geoff were trawling the streets of San Francisco looking for a suitably weedy teenager they could foist off on Dr. Owens as his never-seen phone patient.
As ridiculous as this sounds, it nearly worked. The hustler, a blond waif who’d agreed to the deception in exchange for several $20 bills, Laura (who was pretending to be J.T.’s social worker, never mind that no one in the San Francisco mental health community had ever heard of her) and Geoff (who was there to drive the car), walked up to Dr. Owens, stuck out his hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Richard.”
Not Jeremy. Not Jeremiah. Not J.T.
Richard.
Fortunately for Laura’s literary career, she was able to salvage the meeting by giving poor Richard a hard elbow to the ribs that brought him out of whatever opiate-induced haze had induced him to use his real name. He grinned at Dr. Owens, yelped that he’d had too much coffee, and scampered off into the street. Geoff took off after him, presumably to save him from running in front of a bus, and Laura somehow fast-talked Dr. Owens into giving J.T. the benefit of the doubt.
A similar meeting, once again using Richard, took place with Mary Gaitskill a while later. This time the actual hustler playing a fictional hustler didn’t say a word before he bolted, but he didn’t need to; that J.T. LeRoy was an actual individual who’d been seen (if not heard) by two trustworthy witnesses was enough. Soon J.T. had been offered a contract for his first novel, never mind that he was still supposed to be underage; yet another person was recruited to pretend to be J.T.’s “Uncle Bruce,” his supposed legal (and completely inept) guardian who signed the legal paperwork since J.T. was still a child.
That no one ever actual met “Uncle Bruce” in the flesh was easily explained. He was a covert government operative whose cover would be threatened if it became known that he a) had a teenage nephew who was selling his pert little posterior in the Tenderloin, b) that Bruce had completely failed to stop this less than ideal behavior, or c) that he was agreeing to let his uncontrollable nephew publish fiction that was largely based on his hideous childhood as an extremely underage androgynous truck stop rent boy in West Virginia.
“This is bad novel, bad movie time,” one of J.T.’s editors later said, and it’s hard to disagree.
It’s also hard to understand why anyone, even in the rah-rah 90’s, would have fallen for this…but fall the literary world did. J.T. LeRoy’s first novel, Sarah, came out to excellent reviews and respectable sales in 1999, quickly followed by the short story collection The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. Before you could say “raccoon penis bones” J.T. was contributing short stories, essays, and reviews to McSweeney’s, Oxford American, Blackbook, and Zoetrope: All-Story.
That doesn’t count the liner notes and biographies for albums by the likes of Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins’ front man Billy Corgan, Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love, Bryan Adams, and plenty of others…or the scriptwriting credit for Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant…or the appearance in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003….
Not only was J.T. LeRoy a fine and rising young talent, he was a genuine, albeit most unusual, star.
Of course such a bright young star could no longer fax his manuscripts from public bathrooms. Despite the abuse-fueled shyness that had led J.T. to flee from his psychologist and his friend, J.T., wearing a long, obviously fake blond wig and huge black sunglasses that concealed most of his face, began making public appearances around 2001. Some of these were less than successful – longtime friends noticed that he didn’t sound much like the voice they knew so well from all those overwrought midnight phone calls, and then there was the time he flipped out at a reading in Milan and hid under the book table – and no one much liked Speedie or Astor, who seemed to be all but glued to his side, but gradually he became more comfortable dealing with the public, and the public became more comfortable with his eccentricities.
After all, hadn’t Andy Warhol worn a funny wig and lived with a bunch of very strange “superstars”? Hadn’t Truman Capote spoken in a strange lisping whisper? Didn’t Tom Wolfe make a fetish of white linen suits? So J.T. LeRoy had an inconsistent accent (and a sudden penchant for makeup, women’s clothing, and an oddly female body) and was acting more and more like a spoiled brat. He’d suffered greatly as a child, to the point that his male genitals had never completely developed and he’d decided to transition to female. It was the work that mattered anyway, not the body that housed him. Wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
This was assuredly the hope of Laura Albert (aka Emily “Speedie” Fraser), Geoff Knoop (aka “Astor”), “Uncle Bruce” (a friend of Laura’s who’d played the part long enough to sign the paperwork), Underdogs, Inc. (the company set up to handle J.T. LeRoy’s literary affairs), Geoff and Laura's new band Thistle, Carolyn Albert (Laura’s mother, the president of Underdogs, Inc.), JoAnna Albert (Laura’s sister, who actually received J.T.’s advances), and of course “Thor” (who was dependent on the success of J.T. LeRoy to keep him in diapers, formula, Play Dough, and all the other extravagances needed by a very young child). They weren’t earning a huge amount - Sarah, written soon after “Thor’s” birth in what Geoff later described as a fog of sleep deprivation, breast-feeding hormones, and late-night chocolate binges, only merited a $24,000 advance – and were dependent on free hotel rooms, designer clothing, and plenty of other perks that came with appearances at book stores and movie premieres for many of their expenses.
They were also dependent on the acting skill of Savannah Knoop, Geoff’s half-sister, who was now the public face of J.T. LeRoy.
Savannah, an aspiring clothing designer, was not as gifted a mimic as Laura (at least until she’d leaned to copy Laura’s vocal mannerisms). She was, however, in her early 20’s and quite slender, which meant she actually had a chance of passing herself off as an androgynous, possibly transsexual, young man. That she was considerably more stable, and more easily controlled, than Richard the street hustler, only helped; not only were Geoff and Laura family, they were actually paying her a small but respectable salary. Her own love of makeup and women’s clothing was attributed to J.T. being genderqueer/transitioning, which was why a male lover shrugged off J.T.’s surprisingly realistic female genitalia as “really good made p---y.”
That whoever had created the “really good made p---y” was a good enough surgeon to remove J.T.’s cutting/burn/abuse scars without so much as a faint white line somehow never came up. J.T. was J.T., and to the literary mavens, abuse victims, transgendered folk, and HIV-positive individuals to flocked to his readings and bought his books, that was good enough. Remember, these were fans who loved the books, stories, reviews, and general existence of J.T. LeRoy so much that some of them actually shelled out $17.95 on J.T.'s website for raccoon penis bones (aka "baculums") because they figure in this passage about, God help us all, prostate massage:
Cassiemay hands me the thermometer slipcover and nods approvingly as I slither it on like a jimmie to the bone that hangs around my own neck.
“What about…?”
Cassiemay spits on the plastic covering. “That’s all ya need.” She suddenly grabs my hand, squishes it into a tight fist, and starts violating my fist hole with the bone. “When ya massagin’ work is done, you slide the coon bone out first.” She gracefully pulls out the bone, then gingerly plucks the flaccid thermometer cover out of my balled-up hand. “This ain’t something ya want even to think about after,” she says, tossing the plastic over her shoulder with a wink.
Doesn't that make you wish to rush right off and buy such a charming souvenir? If not, why not? Surely every family could benefit from such a
unique...conversation piece?
Regardless of whether J.T. LeRoy's fans bought themselves a baculum (or two, or three), none of them guessed that the books they loved were actually written by Laura/Speedie, who was not nearly as popular as J.T. due to her abrasive personality, obviously fake English accent, and penchant for bad wigs and worse Goth clothing. Nor did anyone suspect that Geoff and Laura’s relationship was on the verge of disintegrating; he was spending most of his time looking after “Thor” while Laura and Savannah took the “J.T. Roadshow” all over the world, and he wasn’t best pleased to be left behind while they partied with Bono and The Edge. His own band, Thistle, had a small following, but even that was dependent on the J.T. Roadshow since J.T. was credited as the lyricist.
Something had to give.
That it finally did in the waning days of 2005 thanks to an article in magazine. Around two dozen people (none of them Ira Silverberg or J.T.’s editors, oddly enough) were in on the secret by then, and most of them were telling Laura that it was time to have J.T. retire to a dignified virtual existence as a recluse so she could shine on her own (possibly writing children’s books, although how someone who’d gotten her start writing highly disturbing books about sexual abuse was supposed to do that isn’t clear). “Thor” was old enough to figure out that Mommy and Daddy and Auntie Savannah were working themselves to the bone for this “J.T.” person who didn’t even exist, and how much longer could a little boy keep his mouth shut?
In the end, it wasn’t one of J.T.’s entourage that brought the entire edifice crashing down, cheap wigs, raccoon bacula, and all. It was Stephen Beachy, one of the few San Francisco-based writers who hadn’t become a Friend of J.T. during the bathroom fax days, who outed the teenage hustler/media figure/addict/prodigy as a forty year old woman. Beachy had long had his doubts about J.T. LeRoy, and finally was intrigued enough to spend a solid year tracking down rumors, reading public statements for inconsistencies, and generally doing all the hard investigative work that no one else had bothered with.
Beachy’s case, as laid out in the aforesaid article for New York, was reasonably solid – but as hard as he’d tried to find definitive proof that Laura was J.T. (or vice versa), he hadn't been able to track down anything in writing, or an insider who'd speak on the record. J.T. had responded with (of course) an email claiming that Beachy was jealous of either himself or Astor, and his friends figured it was all a misunderstanding. The New York Times cancelling an article by J.T. was pure coincidence, nothing more. Ditto the article in the Washington Post calling J.T. “one of the great literary hoaxes of our time.” The literary world knew J.T., after all, and don’t the mediocre always envy the great?
Then Warren St. John of the New York Times published an article in early January of 2006 that definitively outed Savannah Knoop as J.T. LeRoy’s fleshly avatar, an enraged Ira Silverberg fired his erstwhile client despite Laura's assurances that Richard Gere would play him in the inevitable movie, and that, as they say, was that. J.T. LeRoy was at least one woman, possibly two, and all of Laura's claims that he was simply part of her personality that had come to the fore in her writing did not make a difference. J.T. wasn't a star anymore, and never would be again.
Or maybe not. No one went to prison, after all, and the J.T. LeRoy books and films weren’t consigned to the literary ashcan. Ira Silverberg may have fired Laura Albert as a client, but Billy Corgan claimed that he’d known about the deception for years and compared it to Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Geoff and Laura’s relationship failed just before the excrement clotted the air circulation device, but it had been on the rocks for a while so no one who knew them was all that surprised. The literary world had seen such things before – next week’s diary will concern an early example – and soon a new crop of hot young writers had replaced J.T. LeRoy as the literary sensation of the moment.
As for what ultimately happened to those involved in this story:
Laura Albert – currently a successful scriptwriter (including a stint on the legendary TV Western Deadwood), has worked as a radio and TV host/editor for a local cultural guide/fashionista, still receiving royalties from the J.T. LeRoy books. Appeared at The Moth in 2010 in yet another not entirely successful or convincing attempt to claim that J.T. LeRoy was an attempt to explore other aspects of her personality, not a harmless deception that jumped a sharknado.
Geoff Knoop – despite early fears of being blackballed, still a working musician with a YouTube channel. Communicates with former partner only through lawyers and only in regards to their now college-aged son who may or may not have moved back to Asgard in disgust.
Savannah Knoop – wrote a less than critically acclaimed memoir about her time as J.T. Leroy, Girl boy girl, in 2008. Last spotted trying and failing to get the “Tincwear” line of high-end sneakers off the ground.
Ira Silverberg – still working as an agent, editor, and public relations man, still pissed that Laura Albert kept up the whole J.T. Leroy business for so long. Has not been played by Richard Gere.
Dr. Terrence Owens – still won't talk publicly about his work with either Laura Albert or J.T. LeRoy, even though at least one of his former clients is a literary construct and thus not subject to HIPAA.
“Richard” the hustler – unknown.
The wig, sunglasses, and clothing used by Savannah Knoop to portray J.T. LeRoy – God knows, I sure don't.
The J.T. LeRoy movie Laura Albert was convinced would happen - hasn't.
Winona Ryder, Susan Dey, Terry Gross, Gus van Sant, Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill, Karen Rinaldi, Henry Dunow, Eddie Vedder, Danielle Steele’s children (and possibly Danielle Steele), Billy Corgan, Courtney Love, Lou Reed, Tatum O’Neal, Bono, Marianne Faithfull, Lisa Marie Presley, Nancy Sinatra, etc., etc., etc. - have moved on from J.T. LeRoy. Not clear which, if any, are fans or BFF's with Laura Albert.
Jewelry-quality raccoon penis bones - available on Laura Albert's website for only $14.95 for plain, $15.95 autographed by Laura herself. Can be used as jewelry or for purposes that cannot be described in a family newspaper (which this is not, but never mind).
The J.T. LeRoy books – now available in e-format and print editions (including a boxed set with new cover art), plus translations into German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
J.T. LeRoy - resurfaced in 2014 to portray Dorothy in a Wizard of Oz-themed fashion show, now portrayed by genderfluid model "Rain Dove." Also the subject of a recent Brazilian musical, JT, Um Conto de Fadas Punk (JT, A Punk Fairy Tale). Shows no signs of retiring even though everyone and her aunt knows that J.T. is actually Laura.
The New York literary world – still scratching its collective head and wondering what the hell happened.
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Do any of you have a J.T. Leroy paperback stuffed into your backpack or downloaded onto your Kindle? Have you seen Elephant? Did you shell out $17.95 for a jewelry-quality baculum from J.T. LeRoy's website? Do you think the mere idea of such jewelry is pretty gross? Are you as bemused by this entire saga as the rest of us? We take no names on our forays into Badbookistan, including this one, so don't be afraid to admit what (if anything) you know....
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