Zeno's Bar & Grill

At least we really are who we say we are.

An article in today’s NYT (“The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He’s a She” by Warren St. John) describes the accumulating evidence that author JT Leroy doesn’t exist at all. The books written by Leroy are believed to have been written by the woman identified in the article as his adoptive mother. The books were works of fiction dealing with themes relating to Leroy’s harrowing “true” story of a journey from life as a truck-stop prostitute and drug addict to eventual recovery.

It brought to mind Armistead Maupin’s story The Night Listener, which was based on a true experience in which Maupin came to question the truth behind a supposedly autobiographical manuscript he’d been sent by a terminal AIDS patient. Maupin commented on the unfolding JT Leroy story in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

For the record, we really are two overcaffeinated mothers who have made the harrowing journey from full time employment to stay-at-home mad motherhood, eventually recovering our sanity, throwing away our Baby Einstein videos and writing a novel based on our experiences in extreme mothering.

--Melanie & Kelly