At SFist today, where I’m a columnist, there has been a lot of activity about the whole JT LeRoy unmasking thing. (Read all the comments.) I found out today when I read the Gawker post over my morning coffee, but then several people forwarded me Susie Bright’s extremely revealing post about beiung duped and used, and even it seems treated almost abusively, by the privileged people behind the pseudonym — people who even played “the AIDS card“. I’m not totally shocked, as being someone who survived a childhood similar to that of a LeRoy character, the whole presence of LeRoy in San Francisco seemed fishy and weird; too many cliches, and things like LeRoy’s column in local 7×7 magazine was always about something like shopping in expensive, exclusive botiques with a tiny crumb of “street cred” thrown in at the end. I’m a writer, so I know the tricks. Then again, I don’t trust anyone I don’t know. But still, it didn’t change the way the “Heart” book was way too close to home for me to even get past chapter 3, and it doesn’t change how burned Susie must feel after putting her reputation at stake for someone who could only live up to the characters in her (his) books.
It’s weird, and it really pisses me off. Not as a writer. *As a survivor.* I lived the very real horrors of my childhood to get where I am now — alive, articulate. I didn’t fuck anyone over to get my book deals, and I certainly didn’t exploit very real experiences (like of myself and my friends) to get my books published.
Gallery Carre
