JT LeRoy and the Narrative of Abuse

Between Oprah's tears over James Frey's memoir, and a subsequent national moment of betrayal over the discovery that nonfiction writers sometimes lie, the fake stories told by Frey overshadowed the more complex lies in the stories of JT LeRoy and Nasdijj, who were revealed as frauds almost simultaneously. Nasdijj, it turned out, wasn't a Native American who'd cared for orphans with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but a white former writer of gay S & M porn, Tim Barrus. JT LeRoy wasn't a homeless and abused street kid, but a middle aged mother named Laura Albert. Although Frey's compulsion to change the details of his girlfriend's suicide may have some fascinating psychological implications - if there actually was a girlfriend and if there actually was a suicide -- his compulsion to exaggerate his prison time and his general badness is a predictable enough marketing ploy; “privelege” is unfashionable enough, but its imaginary opposite - not poverty, but degradation - can belong to anyone. Frey took obvious pleasure in becoming The Monster. “I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal. I am missing my front four teeth. I have a hole in my cheek that has been closed with forty-one stitches. I have a broken nose and I have black swollen eyes… That's what I am and I don't blame the Nurse for not wanting to touch me.” Tim Barrus's performance as a damaged Native probably offered similar pleasures, as easy as saying it was so: I'm your Scapegoat, your Angry Minority, your Mysterious Other, all wrapped up in one oddly white package. Frey's attempts to garner street cred through his detailed examinations of his own supposedly sordid life, however, and Nasdijj's attempt to gain authenticity with imaginary native bloodlines were milder versions of Laura Albert's creation of a West Virginia, white trash, child prostitute identity...

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