Oh, to have time to race down to the Centre Street area to watch the budding carnival that is the Laura Albert lawsuit. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post cover yesterday’s proceedings, including Albert’s raison d’etre for adopting the Leroy alter ego. “He was my respirator,” she said. “He was my channel for air. To me, if you take my JT, my Jeremy, my other, I die.” Later, she said to the Post outside the courthouse, “It’s like they got a meal at a restaurant that they didn’t like and now they want a different dish. And so they say, I want that dish. Or more like, I want the whole restaurant.”
Despite the dramatics, Alan Feuer at the NYT rightfully points out that this is essentially a contract dispute between Antidote Films – which wants its $110,000 investment in a movie based on SARAH back – and Albert, who promises to do nothing of the sort. But if it were just about contracts, major newspapers wouldn’t be covering, but as long as quotable lines like “She became JT. It’s like a trinity. We experienced it. It was as if he would leave me and enter her – I know how it sounds,” keep emerging from the trial, the media will keep coming back. And there’s more: “He wanted his own body. He so wanted to be out of me. I wanted this other child I had to be out in the world,” said Albert, who has a son. “He didn’t like being inside me. He could talk such smack about me.” All we can say is, tune in tomorrow for the next episode of As Laura Albert Turns…