Month: January 2006

So Monday the NY Times broke the story that JT LeRoy is a big ole’ hoax. The London Telegraph has covered the story as has the SF Chronicle since LeRoy Inc. has their headquarters here. Writer Susie Bright talks about being one of the dupees on her blog.

I exchanged a few emails with this JT person when I the author Arthur Bradford (whom I knew from graduate school). I saw “JT” in one of his rare public appearances at Arthur’s reading that September at Booksmith. His assistant (whomever that was) sent me a racoon penis bone soon after.

I certainly didn’t have the kind of contact or relationship with “JT” that Ms. Bright did, or Ayelet Wadman (as she writes here) nor do I possess the kind of justifiable outrage San Francisco writer Violet Blue does, calling out LeRoy for exploiting a troubled past for fame and profit. I was just someone else, someone much less famous and connected, in his orbit.

Know what? In a perverted way, it felt good. It felt good. I feel pathetic even saying it but I was new in San Francisco, just starting to get my writerly legs and here was someone who hung out with Winona Ryder and Dave Eggers who wrote back, who said “hey thanks” who wanted to know what I was up to.

LeRoy never asked me for anything but I had nothing to give. In the rigid hierarches the hoax was built on, I was somewhere between penthouse and basement, not famous but not really a fan. I’d never read his books, never raved about how much I related to his story because I didn’t. I was taken in by someone who swore by the power of writing so much and wanted share a little with me.

When I look at the coverage (particularly in the Chronicle) of this whole ugly, sad mess, I can’t help but think of the Kaycee Nicole story, a blog of a fictional teen girl dying of lukemia, which was actually written by an adult woman playing her mother. The web’s brightest stars (including the huge-hearted John Halcyon Styn) were taken in by the story and devestated by its implosion. But the aftermath revealed a kind of junior high stratification of grief, where high profile bloggers had their grief magnified by their influence and how badly you felt reflected how close you were to the white, hot center of the then young blogosphere. I was new to blogging and knew nothing about it.

The list of folks wronged by the unveiling of JT LeRoy is long and distinguished, many of whom have very public forums to lay out their grief and outrage. Maybe I was lucky that LeRoy and company never wanted anything from me and thus, don’t feel gamed. A sad little part of me wishes (s)he had because maybe it would bespeak a level of notoriety or acheivement I didn’t know I had. But when I’m real, like in the case of Kaycee Nicole, I mostly feel bad that I couldn’t feel worse.