WTF with Marc Maron podcast, episode 738 - Laura Albert & Jeff Feuerzeig Transcript "highlights" by @benjaminseagram, for Media Monarchy MM: Marc Maron JF: Jeff Feuerzeig LA/JTL: Laura Albert/JT LeRoy (21:45) MM: Now, what you reveal in the film through Laura's eyes, and also through the eyes of the people that were her champions, was that this was a character, or a part of her, or somebody speaking through her – however you want to see it – or mental illness – whatever you want to frame it as, depending on your particular, uh, mystical or psychological discipline. This character evolved out of a relationship with a phone, a teen counselor, really. JF: Yes, she – as we came to learn, or I came to learn in the film – was addicted to calling telephone hotlines and helplines; and she, as it turns out, had been calling hotlines or helplines since she was a young girl… (22:55) MM: So this is a woman that you establish at the beginning of the film as having a difficult childhood – Laura that is – being overweight, having an absent father, an abusive mother, a little sister, Jewish, Brooklyn; but sort of not mentally well and progressively more unstable as a child. JF: Yeah, as you see in the film, she's institutionalized multiple times – it's just a fact – and she ends up in a group-home for girls, uhm, where she became a ward of the state. MM: At 16, which is odd. I mean that, in a sense, is really a flagrant disregard of parenting responsibilities at that age. JF: Her parents gave up custody to put her in this group-home; she needed a lot of help, and she was still on those hotlines calling as boys all those years. She – I got boxes and boxes of her phone bills – she would dominate the phones, and to quote her, that was her life in fiction. She never knew where the story was gonna' go; she never knew who

was gonna' pick up the other end of that phone. She didn't know if the story was gonna' last a day, or a week. MM: With a particular operator. JF: Correct. MM: And with a particular character. JF: Yeah. So by the time she calls as "Terminator" – Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy – in San Francisco, I dunno', 20-something years later, she calls a hotline, Dr. Terrence Owens, guy picks up – that could've been the 17,000th call she's ever made as a boy at this point in time. (24:45) MM: …You decide to reveal the depth and the nature of the sexual abuse as, like, a capper almost. At the end of the movie. (25:10) JF: …So [the sexual abuse] is foreshadowed, and if you can't figure out that that was going on, you're not paying attention. Regardless, that's the inciting incident. (25:25) JF: …What I was doing was playing with her backstory like Memento ... and hopefully we arrive at a whole person. (26:00) MM: Now, as an artist myself – and I rarely call myself that, but as somebody who respects that – that despite anything that happened, whether I wanna' look at it as she really fuckin', you know, did a number on the literati community, and the celebrity community, and, you know, the affected nature of parasitical businesses that revolve around artistic talent, that she really turned them on their nose; but then you go a little deeper, and it's sorta' like, well, she deceived these people. And then you start to think, well isn't it genius that these people see what they wanna' see, because her British accent was not great. And there was enough stuff around the performances, and around everything else, that if anybody was sorta' halfway going like, "What the fuck is this?" They would've been able to smell something. JF: There were many tells. MM: Tells. But, like, to bring the audience who's listening up to speed, once these books became the celebration of the literary community, and then moved into the artistic community, the world of the intelligentsia, and a certain type of celebrity is just in love.

JF: It was a zeitgeist moment in publishing history; we don't see it often. First of all, it was transgressive fiction; this was pretty hardcore material ... so, uh, it's of that tradition, and yet there was a rockstar-like phenomenon at these book readings. Like, you don't – listen, I got friends who write books; go to a reading, what is there, like 15 people there? This is lines around the block in multiple cities – for like 7 years – around the world. I saw this; I saw the footage – and this is not JK Rowling. So, you know, something happened where fashion, Hollywood, the literary community all converged around this writing and this persona. And who can predict why? (31:30) JF: All I know is the simple facts: that she had been calling this guy, Dr. Terrence Owens, right – or should I say he had been calling her. MM: You weren't able to get an interview with him post? JF: Absolutely not, and he's never spoken to anybody publicly, uh, but I do know– MM: Is that because of patient confidentiality? Or because he feels– JF: I've heard people theorize that. I just don't know the legal fact of that. MM: Uh-huh. JF: I just know that he's never spoken to anybody. And that's just how it is. I do know that he had spoken to JT for an hour a day for 3 years before he suggests that he should write some of this down as a form of therapy. And then, all of a sudden, Laura had an audience, and then wrote Balloons, faxed it to him, and he passed it along to a friend, and next thing you know, it's getting passed around as, "Holy shit, this is great writing."y And then all the sudden, Terminator got published. It was never – she's told this many times, but I came to learn from my research – she never, like, said, "Hey, do you know an editor, do you know a book agent, can you get me published?" There was none of that going on. MM: It was a viral phenomenon. JF: It was an organic journey filled with a massive amount of deceit. And it's like the Billy Childish song, you know? "I live by devious means." MM: Yeah. JF: There were unknown reasons of why this all transpired. And now I believe the film has uncovered those reasons. MM: There's a moment in the film where she knows what she's done; there's a moment where she is reluctant to have Terminator published as memoir, because she knew that it was not.

(34:14) JF: So basically, JT LeRoy existed as just a voice on the phone for many, many years. (35:55) MM: So, the two of them are out in the world, they're meeting Bono, and Laura – that's interesting, sort of, her mystical understanding of show business, and portals, and levels, uh– JF: Yes, Bono summoned her. MM: Yeah, and this was the portal that JT was going through; the portal – that Bono was ordaining, or giving her the magic code to rise to the next level. JF: Yeah, there's a U2 concert; it's somewhere in the area in San Fran. Bono invites JT; there's a surprise waiting – backstage passes are given to "Speedy" [Laura] and "JT" [Savannah]... (36:44) MM: But it was funny to me that the big advice [from Bono] was watch out for the assholes, basically. JF: Yeah, this, uh, that great proverb of all show business: never forget where you came from [emphasis his]. (39:35) MM: She needs to tell the truth, and she decides to do that with Billy Corgan, which seems because Billy Corgan – it seems like her and her husband love the Smashing Pumpkins; she believes that Billy's a portal or some kind, or a gifted being who understands her. And she tells everything to Billy. JF: Yeah she had, uh, this tingle, because Billy had written openly about abuse. So she felt that they were kindred spirits. MM: In a real way. JF: Yes. MM: That Billy would understand why this happened. (50:55) MM: So, when you watch the movie, and how much in retrospect – because, like, I was talking with Jeff, and I also know a little bit about this from my own journey in life; that if you are fragmented to whatever degree, and if you suffer from trauma of any kind, that disrupted your ability to have a full sense of self.

LA/JTL: Correct, yeah. (51:50) MM: Do you feel now like you? 'Cuz you were talking like Speedy out there – and it came very quickly. And I imagine that JT LeRoy could come very quickly. But you have distance from those things now, I assume. LA/JTL: You know, Laura was always there. It's not like, uhm, Sibel, you know? Which I think was just Hollywood– MM: You had control. LA/JTL: I think that was just a Hollywood version anyway – of garden-variety disassociation. So, I really just think that's a whole area that needs to be looked at. I think I'm not unique; I think there are many women and men– MM: Yeah. LA/JTL: People who go through – how many people go through abuse and they talk about disassociating? Seeing yourself from the ceiling. MM: Right. LA/JTL: I do that; I can do that. MM: Right. LA/JTL: And I was always there. It's not like: there was some Laura that was never there. (53:25) LA/JTL: You know how conjoined twins – so one is often stronger than the other and they share a lung, let's say; so I would say that Terminator, which later became JT – they're separate beings, actually, there was a morphing – was the stronger one. And it was like I was the appendage. But slowly, without paying attention almost, through this whole process, I became stronger; and I was breathing on my own with my own lungs ... And it needed to be cut – the chord connecting. But I never would've done it. It had to be done for me, you know, it's like God doing for you what you cannot do for yourself. (59:10) LA/JTL: When I would go to sleep at night, I would watch stories of boys. It was like – and I thought everyone had this; I remember, my sister was maybe 4, so I was 3 ½ years older than her, and she couldn't sleep and we shared a room, and I said to her, "Well, you just, what about the boys." She's like, "What are you talking about?" And I'm like, "Well, what do you think about before you go to sleep?" 'Cuz that put me out every time; I would just

watch the movie. And it was always a different boy, and they were going through some horrible thing; and I would just watch that, and they would either be rescued, or they would die. And I never knew which way. I mean, I would cry – it was like turning into your own soap opera. I remember all the old ladies would watch As The World Turns, and it was like, "Oh, err, ooh, you love me," and that kind of thing; and I had boys that were being raped and beaten, and that was my soap opera I watched every night. MM: In your head. AL/JTL: Yeah. (1:00:26) MM: And what do you think this, sort of involuntary exercise of imagination was for you? LA/JTL: I dunno'. MM: Well, I mean, you did suffer physical and sexual abuse as a very young person. So, do you think you were acting that stuff out mentally through the boys? LA/JTL: I think it was a release. It's like, if you squeeze a balloon, it's gotta go somewhere, right? (1:05:55) MM: Is she [Laura's mom] still around? LA/JTL: No, she – after the trial, they killed her. She was in a coma a week after the trial. MM: Your trial? LA/JTL: Yep, they sued her. They sued everyone around me. (1:07:40) LA/JTL: JT was asbestos gloves to handle material I otherwise couldn't ... But it's not only that. He wanted his own body. All the boys who came through that didn't die wanted their own body. (1:08:50) LA/JTL: You wouldn't believe how many dysfunctional people – I would call hotlines and I would find, like an alcoholic who works in a bar, there were so many times I would call a crises hotline and they wanted sex with my boy. And I would do it. MM: On the phone.

LA/JTL: Oh my God, you would not believe it. And I did it; I totally accommodated all the time. Because that's why I was running the Mafia's phone-sex lines in New York. My mom put in a phone-sex line for me so I could contribute to the family, and I loved it. (1:13:25) LA/JTL: They said it in the trial; they accused me of violating the Patriot Act. (1:16:55) LA/JTL: It depends on what people were there [in her and JT's lives] for. And let me just say this: there were a lot of people – like I said, I know how to make a trade; and there were people who were very happy they had an underage boy that had no parents, that was a professional prostitute, and was available. And a lot of phone-sex – sexual relationships were entered into. Again, if we were on To Catch a Predator that's what would happen; I would be 70 year-old woman with tits down to my knees, and guess who's going to jail. Not me. Okay? I have those recordings – perhaps, maybe, yes. MM: Okay. LA/JTL: So, in other words, trades were made; and so their reaction might be informed by the fact that their best orgasm was had with a 40 year-old, middle-aged woman! And not a little 12 year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed professional prostitute that conveniently didn't have parents. (1:27:31) LA/JTL: Violence and sex are connected, okay? For me to feel, to have an orgasm I need to think about being hurt. And that's true; I would never say that. That's it, and I dunno' how you disconnect those wires. And, I, you know, I've experimented doing that; and I feel maybe if it was my choice that would be something, and it'd be, like, fine, you know? I'd go to Folsom Street Fair, and you know, if you can't beat 'em, just join 'em. It wasn't my choice, so have issues with doing that; and I wanna' disconnect it, but I don't fuckin' know how. And ever since I could remember it's been like that, and that's shameful to me. I understand it, and being able to talk about it is, like, you know, you're only as sick as your secrets. And it is liberating talking about it, and I know it creates a space for other people to do it. Part of why I created JT, yes, it's to protect myself, because I had no words for this. MM: Yeah, and that's directly connected to the abuse when you were 3– LA/JTL: Yeah. MM: That guy who said you were a bad girl for feeling joy – for sex. LA/JTL: Because he spanked me and touched me at the same time – and the wires got crossed. And that was it.