An insane, drug-pumped, decade-long road trip from hell that propelled both a child and his mother into prostitution provided the fuel for JT LeRoy's wrenching first novel Sarah. Bizarre is invited in to take a look around his fairytale nightmare

Reclaimed from foster parents by his mother when he was four years old, Jeremiah LeRoy found himself on a mentally disturbing, gender-confusing and hurricane-force road trip the likes of which most adults, never mind children, fail to survive. A drug-crazed merry-go-round into the depths of human hell, it was a ride mother and son shared for a decade, until finally going their separate ways.

While hustling his ass to live and supply himself with 'horror-escaping' drugs, Jeremiah was inspired by his shrink to write. Aged 16, he started getting published under the moniker 'Terminator'. Then... having been taken under the creative wings of respected US poet Sharon Olds and legendary US novelist Dennis Cooper, at the still tender age of 21, JT [T for Terminator] LeRoy became a literary superstar with his debut novel Sarah.

It was his factual memoirs in a fictional framework: a sense-wrenching, rites-of-passage story of a 12-year-old boy and his truck-stop hooker mother. Playing out like a Grimm fairytale for the terminally twisted yet huge at heart, it was dedicated to the mother who in real life sadly died before the book was published.

With a second novel (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things) in the bestseller lists, JT's words have proved him a rare breed of human. The kind that shines like a crazy diamond in the shitheap called life... and this is a short insight into how he became that way.

Growing up, did you have any imaginary friends?

Well it's kind of a trick question, because it depends on if you think they're
imaginary or if you think they're real.

I mean the ones that aren't really there but you believe they are real.

Yeah.

Any in particular?

I don't wanna go into specifics... I think there are ways when your world is dumped upside down, that the brain either surrenders or it finds creative ways to survive. And my brain found creative ways to survive.

You need to escape so you create these places and people and creatures and whatever...

Yeah, your brain does create a place to survive. And I think one thing that helped me too was feeling like I was filming everything... you know, like my brain was a movie. And I was writing everything down like I was a reporter.

When did you start writing stuff down?

I don't really know. I had a notebook, but my mom found it and that was the end of that. Then what I started doing was putting a word on each page so only I could know what was written... I could fill in the page, the rest of the words and she wouldn't be able to.

As well as words, you've never hidden the fact that drugs featured prominently as a means of 'escape' in your life... what were your drugs of choice then?

Anything really. I just did whatever was around... constantly. And I guess because I was really young and I was kicking a lot, it wasn't so bad... They could never quite figure out exactly what I was addicted to [laughs] 'cause I could never really tell them - I just took whatever anybody handed me. I preferred downers, you know, anything that relaxed you. I wasn't so much into speed. Speed just made me really anxious. I tended to lose reality a lot.

I was one of those people that seemed like I was on drugs when I wasn't, because I would start thinking I was seeing things when I wasn't. I guess like when people came back from Vietnam... I kept thinking I saw my mom, or... things that had happened, I would start seeing them. Sometimes that would happen in the middle of a 'trick', I would start to lose it. That got me in trouble.

With the trick?

Yeah. I mean... imagine you've just like hired some kid and you just wanna fuck 'em and get it over... and all of a sudden they start freakin' out. You know, I guess it's not very conducive for...

Sex?

Yeah... for an erection.

So what about dreams... have they ever held any great importance?

Nah. I have a real problem with nightmares... constantly. For a long time I wouldn't sleep because I was really afraid... always waking up fucked-up.

So what sort of shit were you dreaming about?

Stuff... things that had happened.

Replaying reality and having it blown up out of all proportion?

Yeah, sometimes reality but with a twisted dream kinda thing to it. It's hard when you can't tell the difference between what really happened. I really think that whole 'recovered memory' thing is just such a buncha bullshit, you know. I think [with] shrinks that do that, it's like, "Oh if you think this happened it happened". People are suggestible. [Like with] My mother... when she was high, very often that's when she would tell me the truth about things. It was very confusing for me 'cause she [also] used to start [saying] that my grandfather was my father. And that just didn't seem true. It didn't resonate with me... I think he was a sadist, but I don't think... there was ever any like sexual, you know... I knew she had something over him, but I never could figure out what it was, but I was terrified that that's what it was. After my grandfather died my grandmother was addicted to valium and she was sent to rehab. She became all Christian and told me stuff. She told me who my father was, and I was just really relieved to find out it wasn't my grandfather. I contacted him. He's actually a theologian writer, which is really funny that he's a writer... But he wanted nothing to do with me, which was incredibly painful.

The point is, I think people are really suggestible. I mean, I'm suggestible, but while I knew inside that my grandfather had never, like, sexually abused me or anything, I could start imagining it, you know, through my mother. She would tell me how he did this stuff to her, and I really don't think that was true. I think she just... in a way wanted it. Wanted some kinda contact, 'cause he was very cold and the only time he would really touch you was when he was hitting you. And I think that she just really had that fantasy of that, because... I really, really, really don't think that was true at all.

I'm not just in denial or anything, I know he didn't. What I'm saying is I could have started to imagine that he'd done that to me, and if I'd had a therapist who encouraged that, next thing you know, I'd be like 'Oh yeah I was raped by my grandfather and this one and that one'. Like you could just go on and on and it takes away from actually what did happen.

It's like... whatever it was thathappened in your life is a knock, you don't have to kinda add some glory to it... you know what I mean?

Having performed what's tantamount to open-heart surgery on yourself via your words, why do you feel the need to disguise yourself in public and the press behind wigs and masks?

You know, there's a lot of reasons... but I've worked so hard trying to figure out who I am. [But] when I was 17 a story of mine [under the pseudonym Terminator] came out in this anthology called Close to the Bone, put out by Laurie Stone. I did interviews and had sex with some of the reporters 'cause I just thought that's what you do - I didn't have any boundaries.

It's like fear against being kinda taken over in the media. The way they do. The other thing is gender. It's like... that movie Boys Don't Cry came out just as Sarah was in 'galley' stage and that was really intense. I mean... that kinda thing's happened to me, 'cause sometimes if I wanna go out as a boy I go out as a boy; if I wanna go out as a girl I go out as a girl. And I don't wanna have somebody come up to me and say "I know it's you really." People get beat up and I've had that happen to me - you could get killed. I have people out there who are just kind of obsessed. I make myself very available to fans by email and stuff like that. I guess when they read my books they feel very warm towards me and they wanna come and hug me and stuff, and I have a very hard time being touched.

I've heard reports of people being at bookstores and someone will think they spot me and they go up to that person and say 'I know you're JT, I know you're JT, sign my book, sign my book' - and they're all over the person. I don't want that to happen to me. And the person that's not me can't even convince them that they're not me, and they won't leave them alone. People expect a certain warmth from me and I can give it through email, but I really am not capable of doing it in person, I have a hard time being around crowds.

There's too many things I'm not sure of, and it's funny because the more I'm trying to find my own identity, the more this kind of mythology gets created. You know, like Bono invited me to come to the [U2] show. I did and I got to hang out with him after and it was cool. I could deal with it. It was like one on one, it was 'I'm getting out and I'm doing things'. But, I have to do it on my own terms... where it feels like, you know, safe.

Buy or steal, but definitely read Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (both published by Bloomsbury)