Girl Boy Girl

by Savannah Knoop

  Across the way, Carrie pedaled on a treadmill. She moved her head back and forth in synch with her legs, singing along, “Laaaady!” She had a Diet Coke and remote control next to her. The Olympics were on TV, muted. “There are chocolate chip silver dollar pancakes in the kitchen for you, Van Winkle,” she said.

  “Don’t talk about those right now,” Sean moaned.

  Carrie lifted her hand off the treadmill and pointed at me emphatically. “And I’m taking you to the doctor for that nasty cough of yours.”

  GIRL BOY GIRL

  I LICKED MY THREE-HUNDREDTH STAMP, my tongue heavy and thick from the glue. My friend Brenda and I were sending out announcements for our event in New York City. We had teamed up with several other independent designers and rented a lounge at the Sheraton, which was next to one of the big fashion trade shows. We were hoping to tempt buyers to look at our clothes.

  My cell phone rang. The screen read, “private number.”

  “Hello?” I said, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  “Hello, Savannah.” It was a man’s low voice.

  “Do you know who this is?” He had a heavy-handed manner, like a stalker from a B-movie.

  I replied slowly, “No.”

  “It’s Warren St. John.” My stomach dropped. The New York Times reporter I’d met last year as JT was calling me by my real name.

  “Okay?” I managed, after a second. I moved into the neighboring office. How had he gotten my cell phone number? Who would have given it to him?

  “Is there anything you would like to tell me?”

  My voice squeaked, “No.”

  “I have a picture of you, Savannah.” His voice dropped an octave, “Without the wigs and sunglasses. I’ve been showing it to many of your intimates. They all agree that the person in the photo is JT.” He paused, savoring what he had just said. He sounded threatening, so different from the first time when I had met him, when he had seemed sweet and open. He had dragged Geoff, Laura, Holli Pops, and me all over New York City for a late lunch. Everything was closed. Finally, he took us into a hole-in-the-wall sushi joint. The walls were painted mint green. He motioned apologetically for us to sit down.

  Over rice bowls, I answered his questions in stilted shorthand. “Used to be Jeremiah. But then on the street my friends called me ‘Terminator,’ like in an ironic way. Then it morphed into JT.” I picked up my limp hamachi and glanced at Laura.

  She chewed and swallowed, then added, “JT told me that when he first started using his new initials, he sent a letter to Art Spiegelman, signed ‘JT, a.k.a Terminator,’ and Spiegelman sent a letter back to him signed ‘The Ruminator.’”

  Warren had written these details down avidly. Afterwards, we took him to watch Geoff’s band, Thistle, rehearse in a room full of mirrors. He wrote a very positive two-page article for the New York Times style section.

  On the phone, Warren continued, “Savannah, how old are you?” He seemed to enjoy saying my name.

  “Turning twenty-five,” I mumbled. JT and I were the same age, so this seemed safe to say.

  “What?”

  “Twenty-five,” I said crossly.

  “Well, I suggest you get a lawyer. People are angry. Many people are going to be angry.” He enunciated, “The article comes out on Monday and people will demand an explanation . I suggest that you speak for yourself. Now, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said quickly. This was not the moment to begin speaking up as myself.

  “I think you do,” he replied. “You have until tonight.” He began reciting his phone number.

  I pretended to write down the number. I wondered about Laura. He must have called her first. Did she talk?

  He repeated, “It would be in your best interest to answer for yourself. You are going to have a lot of angry people demanding an explanation, and you’re probably going to face—”

  “Look, I don’t need this in my life right now,” I interrupted.

  Then I hung up on him. The phone rang again almost instantly, and I threw it on the couch as if it had bitten me. I fumbled to turn it off as it vibrated menacingly.

  I called Laura from Brenda’s phone.

  “. . . and then he told me to get a lawyer!” I squawked.

  “Oh, don’t listen to him. Did you admit to anything?”

  “No, no. I don’t think so,” I said, sniffling. “Did he say that to you?”

  “All the same kinds of threats, but catered to my life—what will happen to Thor, Geoff, my mother—basically the threats were tailored to be my worst nightmares. Listen, don’t worry. You might not be JT anymore, but there is nothing that proves that you didn’t write those books. Who says you couldn’t have written them?” She said intensely. She still wanted me to say I had written the books? I was flattered that she thought I could have written them, but I was also confused. She thought we could still keep this thing going? “Can you come over in the morning?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “I’ll be there by ten.”

  I spent the night at Brenda’s. As soon as I woke up, I rode over to Laura’s apartment on my bicycle. It had rained the night before. I stopped to buy a cup of coffee and a copy of the New York Times along the way. At the deli I took a burning gulp of lousy coffee. I furtively glanced over my shoulder at the Pakistani guy behind the counter, who was watching an Indian musical and cracking pumpkin seeds between his two front teeth. JT had made the front page of the style section again. My fingers trembled slightly as I read Warren’s article. Indignantly, I tucked the paper into my shoulder bag and continued on my way.

  Ringing the bell, I waited for Laura to answer.

  From the top of the stairs, she called, “Who is it? Hang on!”

  “It’s me!” I yelled, looking around.

  She rustled the tie-dyed curtain at the base of the glass door, checking the tips of my shoes as always.

  Obscuring her body with the door, she ushered me in quickly as if there were a strong wind blowing. Hugging me, she said, “Babyhead.” Her hands slid down to my elbows and she sighed, “Maybe we should just pull the plug.”

  For lack of anything better to say, I whispered, “It’s all part of the journey.”

  “At play in the fields of the Lord,” she replied without missing a beat.

  Then she changed tone. “Geoff’s officially gone off the deep end. He’s threatening to call Warren and to do a tell-all.”

  “No! That doesn’t make any sense! Why?”

  She looked up to the stairwell and said, “I don’t know. He’s really mad at me.” Geoff had moved out a few months before. He had become fed up with the paradigm Laura had created in the house. He said he could no longer stomach living with JT. I could understand his feelings, but I couldn’t believe he would really betray Laura, that he would call the New York Times. Eventually, he did, when it seemed like there was a possibility that Laura could keep JT alive after all.

  “Is he here?” I asked.

  “No, he came by yesterday and picked up his equipment. He was storming around the house, saying, ‘The jig is up!’ as if he were happy about it. He doesn’t feel like the same person I once knew.”

  The teakettle droned. I followed her up the stairs into the kitchen. She swung open the fridge, one hand on her hip, and said, “The whole thing makes me revert into shame. I feel like I want to disappear.” Then, with the old customary joy of offering, she said, “You want tea?”

  “Sure, I’ll have tea.”

  “You want food? We got apples. Or leftovers from the macrobiotic restaurant, some vegan chocolate pudding. I could make you eggs . . .”

  I said quietly, “No, I can’t eat right now. I’m okay.”

  “You’re better than okay, Babyhead,” she said, and smiled wistfully.

  She pulled out the soymilk and placed it on the counter, bumping the door shut. “I got a lot of emails already. Some people are very clear about their intentions. It’s goin
g to be a witch hunt.”

  I watched her pour hot water into her stained Patriots mug. I wondered if everyone would really be as angry as Warren had suggested. The article had quoted a few people, and they certainly were angry. I thought about all the people we had met. And of course, I wondered about Asia. I suddenly remembered that the movie version of The Heart was going to be released in the US in just a few weeks. I thought with regret that I should have told her what we were up to that night at the Ritz, so that she wouldn’t have to find out this way. Laura continued, “I feel like I saw this coming. Like it was all in Sarah. This is the hunt, the part at the end where the boy is naked in the woods.”

  I paused, trying to picture how the book ended, then laughed, “Couldn’t JT have ended up lounging on a couch in a party dress, eating bonbons, and getting a foot rub instead?”

  Laura snorted, then sighed deeply, tearing up a little.

  “No, that would have been a dud ending.”

  I went over to the cupboard and pulled out the Cheat River mug, filling it with hot water, then followed her down the dark hallway to her office and settled myself into the torn cushions on the couch.

  I pushed JT’s stuff aside: a mess of loose paper, books and magazines, chocolate wrappers, and a trove of odd toys fresh in their boxes, which Laura always saved to give as gifts. In an attempt to organize the mire, Geoff had built a bookshelf, which stood loaded to the ceiling. He’d called Laura a packrat, saying that only someone who was mentally ill could live like this, and that he couldn’t put up with it anymore. The maroon blinds were pulled shut, as always. The carpet was a landfill of receipts, coupons, and newspaper clippings. But I knew why she’d saved these little mementos; each was a fragment of JT’s existence. Throwing out an article or a letter, for her, was like chopping off JT’s hand or a piece of his heart and putting it in the trash.

  Laura read aloud segments of the different emails she’d received since the Times article had come out that morning. Some friends had sent her notes of support, but most of the emails were accusing: “Laura, you exploited our sympathy to make yourself famous and to meet celebrities.” CNN, BBC, the Guardian, and Associated Press had called. Steve Garbarino had offered to tell her story for Vanity Fair.

  “Did you hear anything from Asia?” I asked.

  She darted her eyes at me painfully and confessed, “She said . . . it’s gonna be me and her walking the red carpet for The Heart premiere.”

  “Really?” I could hear my voice rising in pitch.

  She quickly added, “I don’t think we should go to that now, do you?”

  “I guess not,” I said, my throat burning with hurt. Now I knew how Laura had felt all those years when people had told JT to get rid of Speedie. This was what she had always tried to explain to me.

  “Well, it’s good she didn’t care, right?” I asked in a tight voice.

  “She was all business,” Laura said, trying to be comforting.

  “What do you think is going to happen?” I asked, hardly expecting an answer.

  I wondered how Laura was going to emerge in the world without JT shielding her. The glow of the screen reflected on her pale complexion.

  “I think we can keep it going,” she said reassuringly. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me. “Like I said, nobody can prove that you didn’t write those books. You would tell them you wrote them, right?”

  “Um, yeah, I guess so,” I said. Though it seemed crazy to me. Her willfulness amazed me. What I saw as a sinking ship, she saw as a small leak that she could patch up.

  We should have known the end was near when, a few months before, New York Magazine published an article titled, “Who is the Real JT LeRoy?” Stephen Beachy, the writer, was convinced that Laura had created JT. He wrote that the one missing bit of information was the identity of the person who played JT. I was coined as “Wigs and Sunglasses.” When the article came out, I had wondered if JT could go on with his life as if nothing had happened. Oddly enough, he could. He continued to write his restaurant reviews and monthly columns. Laura didn’t let JT go down to Los Angeles as often, but in many ways she seemed emboldened by the truth. Again, her “Chinese Finger Puzzle”: always go in further to get out.

  When the New York Magazine article came out, dozens of JT’s friends spoke up on his behalf. I groaned when I read the blogs of support, thinking to myself, it’s going to be messy when the truth comes out. The last thing Laura and I did while I was JT was meet Robert Wilson, the avant-garde playwright and stage director. He invited JT to sit for a video portrait. Laura walked in with a curtsy and introduced herself to everyone as JT, and we all laughed, seemingly shocked and amused.

  We didn’t prepare for JT’s unveiling. We didn’t want to.

  The doorbell rang. I sat on the couch, still focused on the paper piles littering the floor. Laura glanced from her computer to me. She stood up slowly, then moved cautiously toward the stairs. She was wearing oversized blue-plaid pajamas and a crew neck sweatshirt. Her shoulders were hunched protectively. I could see the back of her neck protruding from her collar as she sang out, “Who is it?”

  A strong, confident voice called out, “I’m a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m looking for Laura and Geoff.”

  Laura turned and whispered to me, “I used to work out with her at the gym.” I imagined a woman wearing an exercise suit, waiting downstairs at the gate. Laura adjusted the woolen nightcap that she always wore in the house, pulling it lower on her forehead as if she were a soldier preparing for battle. She replied loudly, “They’re not here. They moved to Mendocino.”

  “Do you know a number I could reach them at?”

  Laura issued her fax number.

  She yelled, “I’m sorry there was a car passing by, will you say it . . .”

  Laura hollered out the numbers, this time adding, “Get them! They should be brought down!” Her eyes shined.

  I shuffled on the landing. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said anxiously. But Laura couldn’t pass up these kinds of opportunities. Punk was punk.

  The reporter said, not yelling this time, “Could we have a chat? I have some wonderful pastries with me.”

  Laura countered quickly, “No, I’m very busy right now.” We both looked at each other, mouthing, “Pastries?” The woman had not done her research.

  “Well, if you change your mind, here’s my number. I’m slipping it under your gate.” We listened as a few cars passed by.

  Laura drawled, shucking her arm animatedly, “I’d give up mah whole life story for a pastry!”

  As I was saying goodbye to Laura, I reassured her that I’d call if I noticed anyone staked out in someone else’s driveway. I pulled out my bike, seeing no signs of reporters. But as I rode downtown, I noticed a helicopter suspended in the air a couple of blocks away. As I turned, it veered in the same direction as I was going. I rode down a one-way street, straying from my usual path. The helicopter was like a hunting dog changing direction with its nose. I made a U-turn, cautiously crossing the trolley tracks, and ducked into a little knick-knack shop called The China Bazaar. Inside, I could hear the chopper’s drone over the chirping of the auto crickets. A row of Disco Jesuses shimmered like a mirage. I dialed Laura on my cell phone. “Hey, it’s me. I feel like there’s a helicopter following me.”

  “What do you mean? When did it start following you?” she asked.

  “I think it had been staked out at your apartment.”

  “Shit! I knew it! Listen to your instincts.”

  I snapped my phone closed and turned, startled by a slight man in slippers behind a counter. I pretended to consider green plastic strainers. I smiled at him, and he returned a nod. I retrieved a stick of bamboo from a bin. The bamboo was wrapped in a plastic pouch filled with what looked like baby jellyfish. I tilted it up for a closer look, and the man said, “For good luck.” As the helicopter noise seemed to dissipate, I put it down and slipped out of the store.

  As I a
rrived at my building, I passed a couple of guys mending the ornate brass grillwork in the foyer. I asked Will, the doorman, “What’s that helicopter about?”

  One of the repairmen, balanced on a ladder, answered before Will had even looked up from his paper. “Bomb scare down at the Civic Center.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed and alarmed by my own paranoia. “Has anyone come by for me?”

  Will picked a greasy chicken wing out of a shallow gingham-checked pail and started to chew on it. “Nope. Not a soul.”

  “If a woman comes by asking for me, will you tell her that I’m not here?”

  Will licked his thumb and index fingers and smudged them on the sports page. He looked at me, and said casually, “Sure. I can do that.” I kind of hoped that he would ask me why, but obviously he didn’t care. I guess he wasn’t reading the New York Times.

  I walked slowly up the stairs and into my office, relocking the office door behind me. I lay down next to an iron burn on the polyester carpet and stared up at the ceiling. If somebody, another reporter or an angry fan, came by and knocked on the door, I would lie still and wait for them to leave. I had no idea what to say.

  I wanted to simplify my feelings by telling myself neatly and without regret that I was glad it was over. The whole experience had been a contagious lie, one that spread and complicated and obstructed what I wanted my life to be. I shook my head and thought, “What a relief to be done with it!” No more excuses about why I couldn’t make it to work. I would no longer have to tell the Capoeira group that I couldn’t show up for the performance, again, because of a root canal, or a doctor’s appointment. After all the lies, I knew nobody really believed my excuses. They just knew that I was unreliable. Living a double life had spread me thin. I had put being JT—which I had cautiously agreed to in the beginning, and which I thought would only be a one-time experiment, or an occasional outing—at the top of my list. Why had I done that? Being JT meant living in the moment. It was an exciting reprieve from real life. He had access to a world so beyond what I thought could be my own. And his pain was fully acknowledged, and embraced, by everyone who crossed his path. I sighed deeply as I admitted a deeper truth to myself: JT’s contradictions were now my own. I had come to rely on him to push the limits of who I was. And I had become so addicted to it that I didn’t know how to live without him.