Kim

by Sean Smith

  Not surprisingly, Robert became suspicious. He kept seeing Todd in the company of his wife, especially at the house, where they would play tennis together. Todd amusingly recalled that on one occasion Robert decided to umpire their game and kept calling foot faults against him.

  More seriously, Robert hired a private detective to follow his wife to the modest apartment in Studio City, which she and Todd were using as a love nest. The inevitable clash with Robert is another incident that the two lovers remember differently. She recalled that it was in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, where they were having a cosy breakfast together. Todd said they were pulling out of his garage in an open-topped Jeep, when Robert dashed up in a convertible Mercedes, jumped out and started swinging a golf club at the back of the car. Todd was all in favour of stopping and confronting Robert, but Kris was worried that her distraught husband might have a gun, so the two vehicles set off on a high-speed car chase through Beverly Hills, which ended when Todd swerved into another road.

  Todd, who only came forward in 2012 after he featured as Ryan in Kris’s book, was concerned for his personal safety, especially after a phone call he claims he received from O. J. Simpson warning him to stay away from Kris. O. J. apparently invited Todd over to his house to discuss things further – an invitation he had no trouble turning down.

  One of the cruel ironies of the affair was that Kris paid for almost everything. But she, by her own admission, had no money. She was using credit cards that were paid for by her husband. The first thing Robert did on discovering the affair and deciding on a divorce was to cancel all of Kris’s credit cards. The financial implications would eventually lead to bitter and acrimonious divorce proceedings.

  The whole sorry saga was shaping up like a bad episode of Dynasty (or a good one, depending on whether you were living it or just watching). To her credit, Kris hasn’t tried to justify her behaviour other than to acknowledge how unbearably miserable she had become in her marriage. The shattering effect her affair had on her family, particularly the two eldest girls, became clear when divorce papers were revealed in Star magazine in the US and published in America and the UK.

  The most heartbreaking incident occurred in May 1990, when Kimberly, as they called her then, found her mother crying after a ‘brutal’ conversation with Robert. He was so emotionally distraught by what was happening that he would call Kris some horrible names whenever they tried to speak to one another. In her statement, Kris said, ‘She became so upset I had a difficult time getting her to her [school] carpool on time.’ She added that Kim called twice that afternoon begging her to come home. Clearly the young girl was worried that her mother was going to leave them.

  Khloé, being that much younger than her sisters, seemed fine with Todd and would happily sit in the back seat of the car if he was going out to lunch with her mother. He thought she was smart and ‘just the cutest kid’.

  Robert moved out of Tower Lane, leaving Kris to manage on her own. In the divorce papers, her sworn statement details what she termed was a ‘luxury lifestyle’. The mortgage payment on the house alone was $15,000 a month and then there were wages for the gardener, a maid and a housekeeper, as well as $800 a month to pay for the children’s clothing and $2,000 a month for herself. Credit card debts on various store cards had grown to more than $21,000.

  The unhappiness that both Robert and Kris were feeling didn’t end with her sailing off into the sunset with Todd – far from it. At first, they carried on in much the same way. If Robert was looking after the children at the weekend, she would drift over to the apartment in Studio City to see Todd. Reading between the lines of her account, the enormity of what she had done – giving up what was so important to her life, the privilege and luxury of what Robert provided in Beverly Hills, for sex in a tiny bachelor flat – began to affect her.

  She finally realised she had made a ‘ginormous’ mistake when she arrived at Todd’s apartment unexpectedly and discovered him in bed with a girl he had met in a bar. It was, apparently, a one-night stand. ‘I think I got busted,’ recalled Todd 20 years later, although he didn’t remember the exact circumstances.

  Though they split up soon after, there is little doubt that they genuinely cared for one another. Todd told the Daily Mail that he was heartbroken when their relationship ended, but he knew that it would never have worked in the long term. He observed, ‘Sometimes you stop something not because you stop caring, but because it isn’t practical.’ At that point in his career, he couldn’t give Kris anything like the life she was used to and that was before you factored in the age difference. They both ended up with nothing to show for the pain and the passion.

  It wouldn’t be the last time Kris enjoyed the obvious benefits of a younger male companion, but she vowed that never again would she be so vulnerable financially. It was a lesson she vigorously taught her children – Kim in particular.

  Both Todd and Kris have since regretted the heartache their relationship caused Robert and the children. Todd could see how badly Kourtney, the eldest, was affected. She struggled to accept what had happened and certainly didn’t want anyone to replace her dad. It may or may not have affected her attitude to marriage but, at 36, she has yet to say, ‘I do’. Kim, on the other hand, appeared to deal with it more easily, but had married three times by the age of 33.

  She has said that at the time she was more troubled by the size of her growing breasts, and would sit in the bathtub praying to God that they wouldn’t get any bigger. For a girl in the fourth grade, who had only just turned 10, one can understand her embarrassment, especially at school, where there was always some wise guy kid happy to twang the strap of her training bra. It didn’t help that her big sister would tease her mercilessly. The bath prayer didn’t work. She was a C cup at the age of 13.

  More serious were the health concerns of their beloved grandmothers. Both Robert and Kris’s mothers faced grave problems that weren’t helped by the cataclysmic events in their children’s lives. Helen Kardashian had a stress-related stroke and Mary Jo Shannon was battling cancer. Fortunately, they both pulled through and the grandkids had many more happy times with them.

  Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get any worse for Kris or her children, she went on a blind date that changed her life. The meeting with former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner was arranged by one of her close friends, Candace Garvey. She was the wife of Steve Garvey, one of the superstar baseball players with the Los Angeles Dodgers, known during his career as ‘Mr Clean’. Steve and Bruce were on the celebrity sporting circuit together. They were always bumping into each other at the various tennis, golf or fishing tournaments they were forever being invited to.

  Candace obviously thought, quite rightly, that Bruce needed smartening up and that the fashion-conscious Kris Kardashian would be a perfect match. Bruce wasn’t so sure, until he discovered his date had four children, just like he did.

  They met for the first time at the Riviera Country Club, where Bruce was playing in a golf tournament. He was immediately smitten by his vivacious companion, who was a good listener. The casual meeting led to dinner that first night, with Bruce pouring his heart out. ‘I’m 40 years old,’ he told her, ‘and I’ve never been in love.’

  4

  The World’s Greatest Athlete

  Rather like her mother in 1976, Kim had no idea who Bruce Jenner was. He was just suddenly there. She was still in the fourth grade at school and had to do a project on someone famous. She was asking Kris whom she thought she should do, when Bruce interrupted her and said, ‘Why don’t you do me?’

  Kim replied, innocently, ‘Well, who are you?’ He had to explain to her that he was an Olympic decathlon champion.

  Her project was a resounding success, especially when the man himself went along to the school. She pictured him taking part in all 10 events. Unsurprisingly, she got an A, which was unusual for Kim. Kourtney was acknowledged as the brighter of the two, while Kim was a steady B sort of student.

  William B
ruce Jenner came into the lives of the Kardashian family like a whirlwind. He was an action man who could ski, drive racing cars and power boats, play golf, water ski and, of course, run and jump. He was fearless.

  It hadn’t always been like that. He was shy and suffered from poor self-esteem growing up in small-town suburbia in New York State. Nobody realised back then that he had dyslexia, and believed him to be either lazy or stupid – he was neither.

  He was eight years old, a solitary child with few friends, when he started sneaking into the rooms of his mother and two elder sisters to try on their clothes. He was a boy, still in short pants, and he had no real awareness of what he was feeling or why he was fascinated by female clothing. He just knew it made him feel good. Instead of retreating more into his own private world of self-doubt, Bruce was able to find acceptance when it was discovered that he was a superb sportsman. He acknowledges simply, ‘Sports saved my life.’

  Bruce was the third of four children in a comfortable, middle-class household. He was born on 28 October 1949 in the town of Mount Kisco, a little over 40 miles north of New York City in Westchester County. He described his mother Esther as an ‘all-American mom and housewife’. His father Bill was a tree surgeon who had competed in the US Army Olympics in Nuremberg in 1945 and won a silver medal in the 100-yard dash. Bruce was well built as a toddler and his proud dad called him Bruiser. Young William was generally known by his second name to avoid confusion with his father.

  As a small boy, it was his dyslexia, rather than gender issues, which was the most obviously troubling. Not unusually for the 1950s, his learning disability wasn’t diagnosed. As a result, his schooldays were ‘torturous’. He even had his eyes tested, because it was feared his inability to read properly might stem from problems with his vision.

  Bruce explained to Ability magazine, ‘If you are dyslexic, your eyes work fine, your brain works fine, but there is a little short circuit that goes between the eye and the brain.’ His undiagnosed problem ruined his self-confidence: ‘My biggest fear was going to school. I thought everybody else was doing better than I was. I’d look around at my peers, and everyone else could do the simple process of reading. I was afraid the teacher was going to make me read in front of class. There was always the fear that everyone would find out I was a dummy.’ Bruce had no enthusiasm for school and the teachers thought he was just a daydreamer.

  When he was 11, in the fifth grade, a teacher set up a game in which everyone had to run around some chairs and back. The idea was to see who had the fastest time. It was Bruce. He was the swiftest in the whole school.

  From that moment on, his life changed. Here was something he could excel at and receive a slap on the back from his fellow pupils at the quaintly named Sleepy Hollow Middle School. The village of the same name is famously the setting for Washington Irving’s short story ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. The author lived in nearby Tarrytown, as did the Jenner family. Nowadays, Sleepy Hollow is even better known for the television series that is set in the village and is, very loosely, a modern update of the original fantasy of the headless horseman.

  When Bruce was a freshman at the Sleepy Hollow High School, aged 15, he asked the captain of the football team, known as the Headless Horsemen, for some help with punting the ball. Within an hour, Bruce was kicking it as far as his coach was. The young Bruce was extraordinarily gifted as a sportsman.

  His family moved to Connecticut when Bruce was 16. They built a house on Lake Zoar, where they all could enjoy their passion for water skiing. Bruce was so good that he won the Eastern Regional Water Ski Championships and competed in the Nationals in 1966. At the local Newtown High School in Sandy Hook, he excelled in basketball, track and field and American football, and became all-state pole vault and high jump champion. He was unashamedly what Americans call a jock – a muscular athlete, usually good looking, whose life revolves around sports and girls and who is always one of the most popular guys in school.

  Aged 18, Bruce was named the MVP (Most Valuable Player) in the track squad and the basketball team. He played both running back and quarterback in the school football team. His coach, Peter Kohut, recognised that he was an outstanding athlete: ‘He was a good kid, came to practice every day, seemed like he was always in good condition.’

  At this stage of his life, Bruce was a very clean-cut young man – the sort of suitor who was bound to impress your mother. Nobody knew that behind the masculine exterior beat the heart and mind of a man who was more female than male.

  Bruce was never going to be a great scholar, but he did win a football scholarship to a small college called Graceland in Lamoni, Iowa. Any hopes of becoming a professional footballer were soon dashed by a knee injury in his first year. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the athletics director, L. D. Weldon, recognised his potential and persuaded him to put all his energies into the decathlon. Bruce needed an operation to repair his damaged knee in early 1969, but when he was fully recovered, he abandoned football and became a full-time athlete, reluctantly also giving up water skiing.

  Weldon was one of the most respected coaches in the country, whose CV, crucially, included training Jack Parker, who won the bronze medal in the decathlon at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He was an acknowledged expert in the multi-event discipline and encouraged Bruce to train hard.

  Success was almost immediate. Jenner broke the Graceland decathlon record at his very first try at the 10 events. At his first open meeting, he placed sixth in the prestigious Drake Relays in Des Moines, the state capital. The following year, he returned to win the competition. In 1972, he came from nowhere to place third in the Olympic Trials, earning himself selection for the US team that travelled to Munich for the summer games. He could finish only tenth, but the promise was there. He had four years to fulfil his destiny.

  Bruce was still at college in 1972 when he married his girlfriend, Chrystie Crownover, a minister’s daughter from Washington State. She had no idea, when they became man and wife, of the internal struggles her new husband had faced all his life. During their first year of marriage, she became the first person he confided in. She recalled, ‘He told me he always wanted to be a woman. Understandably, I was speechless. It was hard to wrap your head around it because he was such a manly man.’

  His confession didn’t harm their marriage. In some ways, his revelation brought them closer together, as sharing a secret sometimes can. In her eyes, he remained a real guy, who was, quite simply, her hero.

  After graduation, the couple moved to California, where the training facilities and the climate were better suited to an athlete with his eye on Olympic gold. Chrystie worked as an air hostess for United Airlines to support them, because in those days the Olympics were strictly for amateurs. She was entitled to free plane tickets, which were a godsend for Bruce, as it gave him the means to travel to athletics meetings all over the world. Today sport is a professional career and Bruce Jenner, an all-American hero, would have been a multi-millionaire, travelling first class around the world.

  Chrystie was by his side when he flew to Montreal for the 1976 Olympics. He was the current world record holder and favourite to win. He was in second place after day one, but came charging through to claim the gold. He embraced his young wife, wrapped himself in the American flag and, for a fleeting moment, was the most famous man in the world. Now he needed to make some money.

  Frank Litsky of the New York Times famously wrote of his triumph: ‘Bruce Jenner of San Jose, California, wants to be a movie or television star. After his record-breaking victory in the Olympic decathlon, he probably can be anything he wants.’ He wanted to be a woman and that was one thing he couldn’t be … then. Instead, he immediately retired from athletics.

  Just when it seemed nothing could interrupt a happy future, tragedy struck the Jenner family. His younger brother Burt died in a car crash. Bruce was visiting his parents’ home in Connecticut and during his stay was loaned a Porsche by a local car dealer. Eighteen-year-ol
d Burt volunteered to fill her up with petrol, but ended up crashing into a telegraph pole. He died in hospital, along with his young girlfriend, who had skipped school to go for a ride in the top-of-the-range sports car.

  Bruce named his first child Burt in honour of his much-loved brother. His son was born in 1978, six years after he and Chrystie were married. Sadly, the cracks had already begun to appear in their relationship. Faced with a future that did not contain eight hours of athletics practice a day, the reality of Bruce’s gender dysphoria – the technical term for his gender identity crisis – was making him unhappy and discontented with his situation.

  He and Chrystie separated for the first time the following year, and he met the woman who would eventually become his second wife at a celebrity tennis tournament. It was held at the Playboy Mansion in upmarket Holmby Hills, LA, where he had been staying temporarily. Bruce won the tournament and the beautiful Linda Thompson presented him with the trophy.

  She provided another bizarre link with Elvis Presley in the Kardashian family saga. His relationship with her was probably the most important Elvis had after Priscilla. She was a 5ft 9in willowy blonde, who was the reigning Miss Tennessee when she met The King. He moved her into Graceland, his famous mansion near Memphis, in 1972, and she was with him for four years.

  Linda had been a speech and drama major at MSU (Memphis State University) and, by all accounts, was the brightest of Elvis’s women. She was popular with the notorious Memphis Mafia – the entourage who seemed to be ever present with Elvis – and she had looked after him well. Marty Lacker, the unofficial foreman of the group, explained, ‘She was like a mother, a sister, a wife, a lover, and a nurse.’