The Cult of JT LeRoy

- Where were you when she turned tricks?

And who would be taking care of you while she was out?

- Well, there's a lot of women who work

in truck stops and very often

their kids are just there.

You know, we'd hang out in somebody's car,

one of the people's cars, you know,

or somebody had a hotel.

Or in the diner, you know, you'll see a lot of kids

just hanging out in back rooms in diners.

- JT LeRoy is a 21 year old writer

with two books of fiction based on his experiences

as the son of a truck stop prostitute.

LeRoy's books can be described as transgressive fiction,

filled with the kind of emotional and physical violence

and sexual extremes that he's been exposed to.

In fact, some of the content of our interview

may not be appropriate for children.

- In the spring of 2002,

with JT LeRoy's notoriety rising,

a friend invited me to begin

a documentary about him.

I'd been working with the mentally ill homeless

in San Francisco's tenderloin district

and doing poetry workshops at that time.

He said that this Burroughsesque poet

would be right up my alley.

- St. Mary's McAuley is the adolescent psych unit

that saved JT.

They did some outreach back when he was 15.

He ended up there, and he's been in therapy

with Terry Owens ever since.

He's dedicated his books to Terry Owens,

his psychiatrist.

- I spoke with Dr. Terrance Owens

on the phone, but due to patient confidentiality,

he was unable to be interviewed,

and he referred me to another director at the site.

- Kid were really struggling and having

just a really tough time keeping themselves safe.

If they can't contain themselves on their own,

if they can't be safe, like if they came in here

and kept cutting or trying to strangle themselves,

then they might end up in restraints

which is what's on the bed.

We get kids referred to us from emergency rooms,

schools, doctors, and they'll come to us

because something's happened.

They've tried to commit suicide

or they're so depressed that they're thinking

about suicide.

Then the other big category of kids we have

are psychotic kids who are hearing voices,

and having hallucinations.

- His mother was 14 when he was born.

He spent the first few years of his life

with foster parents.

They tried to adopt him, but his mother sued

to get him back when she was 18 and won.

When LeRoy was 15, his therapist at a hospital

adolescent psychiatric unit, Dr. Terry Owens,

encouraged him to write.

So, you started writing stories

because your therapist asked you to write stories

about your life.

- He kept asking me to write

'cause he wanted me to write,

and I didn't wanna write.

And he was just asking me to write for

probably about a year before I started.

Drugs interfered with my ability to write.

So I stopped doin' drugs because I wanted to write,

and it just started takin' over,

and I would go off from seein' him,

and go get high, and just do drugs

and just self-destruct

and do very self-destructive behaviors,

and often end up in the hospital

from doing something that hurt me.

- Dr. Owens, how often would

you talk with Jeremy?

- For the first two years, seven days a week.

- You talked to him every day?

Yeah.

- What would you discuss with Jeremy

on those calls?

I mean, obviously there's a lot of calls

so it's a very general question.

- A lot, a lot of calls.

That's very hard to say.

I can say that my primary reason

for speaking with him that frequently

was that a very common theme

was his suicidality

and the fragmentation of his thinking.

- How did you first get published?

- My work got passed from writer to writer,

and before I knew it, I had a book deal

and an agent before I even had a place to live.

I never once sent out anything.

I never asked anyone to send it to their agent

or to, I didn't even know how all that worked.

- One day, the phone rang in the office,

and my assistant said there's a 15 year old girl

on the phone identifying herself as the Terminator.

I thought this is too good.

So I picked up and indeed, there was someone

called Terminator who apparently was a boy.

- I got a phone call from this person.

You know, he was just saying how much

he worshipped my work and all this crap,

and then, you know, that he wrote and stuff.

And you know, just a very long conversation,

just a very peculiar and interesting kid.

I said, "How old are you?"

And she, I thought it was a girl,

said, "I'm 15" and I thought,

"Oh my God, maybe I could get arrested

"for talking to this person about a book

"that deals with transvestite prostitutes and junkies."

- The next thing I know, Jeremy called me

- on the phone. - He ended up

just calling me all the time,

almost every day, you know.

That started a long

and deep series of phone calls.

- The person on the other end of the line

made a request.

It's a request I usually dread,

"Can I show you my writing?"

And I said, "Well, sure, sometime I suppose so."

And he said, "Well, I have it right now.

"I can fax it to you.

"Do you have a fax number?"

So, I gave my fax number,

and with dread waited for the text

to roll out of the fax machine.

And when I did, I read it, and I thought,

"My God, this kid is incredible.

"I can't believe he's 15 years old."

It was a story about balloons and heroin.

He was a 16 year old boy.

I thought it was astonishing.

- Joel presented him almost like a frightened deer,

a frightened, feral animal who would bolt

at the slightest sign of pressure

or intrusion or somebody trying to get too close.

He was an extraordinary found object

in the literary fields, so to speak.

Coming from, it seemed,

places that no one else was coming from.

- Although LeRoy is forthcoming

about his life, he doesn't like to show his face

to the press.

He's photographed with masks or disguises,

and does most of his interviews by phone.

So, why do you still feel it's important

to keep your identity hidden?

- You know, I'm writing about pretty personal

stuff and to be out on the street

and have people come up to me and say,

"I know what you really are."

And be in that position where they could hurt me.

Sometimes I like to go out as a girl,

sometimes I like to go out as a boy.

And I really don't want that to be an issue

for anybody else except myself.

- Everyone was always saying he writes like an angel.

That was it, this idea that it was

this ethereal vibration coming out

of this wounded creature.

There was such a feeling with JT that you were

helping prevent some further pain,

or helping prevent some further unhappiness

or misery or really doing a good thing.

It was,

it was a kind of pleasurable altruism.

- Our conversations became more and more

intimate on the level of friendship

until finally, I felt a responsibility

to kind of look after him.

- I got a series of urgent phone calls from Jeremy,

and spent the better part of that Thanksgiving Day

not playing with my kids, but on the phone

in a long crisis conversation with Jeremy

that must have gone on for five or six hours.

- JT might tell me that he was going out

to seek violent sex, and I wouldn't be able

to sleep that night because I would worry

that something terrible was going to happen to him.

- He would freak out, go into, obscene to me,

altered states, speaking in different voices,

different characters.

Really bizarre shit.

- If you look at the outsider in fiction

and the person who's kind of representing the margins.

For me, that lineage is very much a Jean Genet,

William Burroughs, Dennis Cooper lineage.

These writers have really kind of kept us thinking

about a certain kind of darkness,