Is androgynous wordsmith JT LeRoy really a rock musician mom pushing 40 who goes by the name Speedie? New York Magazine seems to think so. Wunderkind LeRoy has had people gossiping about his existence, or lack thereof, for years now due to his unwillingness to show his face in public. Now we come to find out he might just be the figment of a desperate middle-aged woman’s imagination.
The accusations are pretty outrageous: Speedie has been disguising her voice during phone interviews acting as JT. She’s hired some long-haired physical Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love mishmash to impersonate him in blink and you’ll miss him public appearances. Yeah, all of those supposedly true adventures of a gay cross-dressing teenage hustler might be nothing but fiction. That’s pretty fucked up. This could turn out to be the literary world’s Milli Vanilli.
If true, Speedie might just have wanted to get caught. We’ve had a big fat clue right in front of our faces. LeRoy’s homepage features a picture of a slew of female typists with the caption: “The JT LeRoy’s hard at work on the next novel.” Yeah, we get it.
