Laura Albert aka JT Leroy talks to the NY Post’s Andrea Peyser in today’s edition. It’s a wacky read:
NY Post: I Still AM the Real Leroy…: LAURA ALBERT is not a teenager or a prostitute, and, at 41, probably not a teenage boy.
But she sailed into the newsroom yesterday – a bone from a raccoon’s penis hanging jauntily from her neck – dropping A-list names like Bono, Madonna and even Paris Hilton. And the middle-aged mom originally from Brooklyn Heights insisted she was, deep down, that teenage, transgendered hooker…
…Albert describes a Dickensian childhood of beatings and sexual abuse. She was a “street kid” who says the JT LeRoy persona became real to her.
On the stand during her colorful trial, she described childhood taunts about being overweight with heartless children calling her “Fat Albert.”
She said it sparked a “Sybil”-like personality split.
“I grew up Albert. They called me ‘Fat Albert.’ There was the song, ‘Hey, hey, hey, Fat Albert,’ ” she said, dissolving into sobs before the jury.
“I didn’t want my name . . . I could have my character come out. But when that’s gone and there’s nobody but ‘Fat Albert,’ there’s no place to go,” she testified.
Yesterday, she explained how she won the battle.
“I was able to take problems of the soul and transform them into problems of art, to put on a disguise.
