I kind of hint around with Trudy. She knows where I am going, and she has to grant written approval in order for me to do it: I just can’t walk into an endocrinologist’s office and say, “Hey! Got any estrogen for me today?” Trudy gets up out of her chair. She walks around the office, and I can tell she, too, is wondering if it is the right thing to do. She knows more about me than any person in the world. Every secret and desire and fantasy. She knows I have children. She knows that giving up Bruce carries with it enormous implications. She knows all these things. Which makes her conclusion all the more important.
You know what? I think it would be good for you.
Trudy calls an endocrinologist she knows in Beverly Hills and tells him the circumstances and the need for total discretion. I speak to him on the phone. He is reading a book on Russian history at the time and says he is going to give me a code name from the book. I don’t remember the name now, although I know it wasn’t Igor. That way when I call the secretary and give my code name, he will know who it is and take the call. As a further precaution I go after hours when no one is in the office on Wilshire Boulevard besides him. He puts me on a regimen of shots. I also take a testosterone blocker in pill form.
I feel my emotional state changing with hormone therapy. The estrogen begins to have a calming effect after just a few months. Before I had an edge. I could be snappy and irritable. Estrogen takes the edge off. I don’t seem to be so uptight about everything—my identity, my gender, the daily tasks of life that annoy me when they should not. Three months into therapy I find myself lying in bed at the Malibu shack crying my eyes out at some melodramatic movie on television.
My God, what the hell are you crying over? What’s wrong with you?
I have never done that before, nothing even close. I learn a lesson—I will never ever say to a woman, Why are you crying over this? when we go to the movies.
Okay, girls, I get it.
All of this is still not enough. I need to venture out even more. I am still worried about getting caught. But the possibility only heightens the risk. How much can I get away with? The risk is not the foundation of why I am changing my appearance. But given I am basically living my life as a hermit in the Malibu shack, I need some excitement somewhere. I push the envelope even more. I know I am playing with fire.
I am about to get terribly burned.
Chapter Eight
Busted
Maybe I am getting careless. Maybe I am getting bold. Most likely I just don’t want the role of Bruce anymore since I have decided to transition. The woman inside me has always been clawing and scratching to get out. Bruce cannot handle her. Bruce does not want to handle her. Bruce wants to have simply not existed in the first place. He never belonged. He has worn out his welcome. Here’s your medal back.
Obviously when you have a nose job of sorts and your beard removed and the effects of hormones kick in, people are going to notice. I don’t think anybody suspects that I am in the actual process of transitioning, but they do think I am looking stranger than ever these days. My upping the ante only adds to the rumors that Bruce Jenner is off his rocker. Maybe they do think I am becoming a woman. But so be it. Nothing matters. I am depressed, and I am not someone prone to depression. My loneliness is so powerful I can taste it as I wake up in the morning to another day of indifference.
It is hard to know what I would do without Wendy Roth. She continues to be a remarkable friend, allowing me to pour out my soul. Jayne Modean, an actress and model, is someone else I confide in. Then there is Tomisu Friedkin, a vintage Texas girl from a vintage Texas family of wealth and grand style. The first name alone is a dead giveaway.
I meet Tomisu while giving a speech in Houston. Breasts are definitely beginning to show, but Tomisu either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. I do have them well hidden, and they are always less visible when I’m wearing a suit.
I notice her right away because of the great outfit she has on—a flowing gray dress—and I immediately admire her style and wish I could wear the same. We exchange numbers, and see each other again. She invites me to the ranch her parents own in Colorado. I stay there several days, and it is one of the few instances, maybe the only one, where I distinctly remember having a good time in the mid to late 1980s.
We fish and ride horses. Tomisu and her dad, Tom, want me to go hunting with them, not terribly surprising since as soon as you walk into the main house there is a stuffed polar bear on its hind legs that looks about twelve feet high. There are other trophies of animals on the wall, so it’s clear that Tom Friedkin is a big-game hunter. So is Tomisu, for that matter; she once sent me a picture of her standing next to a lion.
I like to accommodate. I don’t like hunting at all, but they work on me and sort of convince me that killing animals such as deer or elk is good because it controls the size of the herd and prevents overpopulation and starvation. Tom is particularly persuasive.
Dammit, you are helping nature if you go out there and get one of these things.
We set out on horseback. We go down a road and scan with our binoculars when we see a deer with a large rack of antlers. Tomisu whispers instructions.
Okay, get off the horse.
I get off the horse.
Like I say, I do what I am told.
I can see the deer thirty or forty yards away through the scope of the rifle they have given me. I’m looking at the trigger, and then back at the deer and then back at the trigger.
My finger is on the trigger now. I don’t know if I want to pull it or not, but I am surrounded by hunters and when in Rome…
I’m about to squeeze the trigger.
I can’t back down now. I have to take the shot.
I squeeze the trigger.
There is a loud boom. The deer disappears into the woods.
I missed.
Thank God.
I actually missed on purpose by raising the barrel up a little bit before I shot. I may want to kill Bruce, but I am not going to kill an innocent animal.
I do my best to act as if I am disappointed, that I was really looking forward to taking the deer home with me to Malibu and mounting it on the wall of the shack to give it a little added color next to the couch and chairs.
Damn, I missed!
Tomisu and I continue to be close friends for a year. I love being with her, and she loves being with me. There is chemistry. But my sense is she is looking for a full-blown romantic relationship, and I don’t want that, nor do I think I am capable of it. I don’t want to hurt her or think I am rejecting her, so I tell her the truth and confide in her about my gender dysphoria. She takes it well and does not seem shocked or turned off.
I don’t know if she is thinking of marriage, but it is my habit when I find a single woman I instinctively feel close to. I have tried marriage twice, and I have failed both times. I don’t want to put myself through that again, and I don’t want to put her or anyone else through it.
I am too far down the road of transitioning anyway, and I am not turning back. I am only going deeper.
I have a friend named Bob Flaherty who does traffic reports in Los Angeles, and we have flown together and like each other. He wants me to do an interview for a fundraiser. The day before I had a round of electrolysis with Olga. She has done my chin, and the next day when I wake up it is red and swollen. It looks like I went three rounds with the woman inside me.
I can’t go to that thing today. There’s no way. I need to get ice on it.
But Flaherty has been good to me, so I can’t suddenly bail out. I do what I always do, come armed with the excuse in case my swollen chin comes up—I banged it on something. Fortunately no one brings it up, although it does look pretty nasty.
Wigs are still hit and miss. I still don’t dare do it in person until I realize Halloween is coming up.
Halloween! The best day of the year!
I walk into one of those Halloween costume stores and tell them I want to dress as a woman. They think that’s hilario
us and give me a wig to wear that I can actually try on in person.
I’m driving on Santa Monica Boulevard later that night and am at a stoplight when my next-door neighbor recognizes my car and pulls up next to me. I can tell he is surprised.
Oh my God, what are you doing!?
I’m going to a Halloween party!
Oh, okay! Have fun!
It is a close call, but I think I have gotten away with it. Actually I am not sure. But I do make a mental note to never drive my Porsche again when I am in women’s clothing. It’s too easy for somebody to notice a fancy car.
I am a factory race car driver at the time for Ford Motor Company. They have given me a Mustang to drive around town, and I think to myself that this is the perfect stealth car since nobody knows I even have it. Just in case, I keep a change of clothing in the backseat so I can quickly switch if something unexpected happens. It is more of a security blanket than anything else, since changing clothes in a Mustang when you are six-foot-two is not easy. I also have a pack of makeup remover wipes.
I worry about getting stopped by the police, so I always check to make sure all the car lights are working beforehand and go the speed limit. I am on the Pacific Coast Highway one night in the slow lane to the right. Suddenly I see in my rearview mirror the headlights of a car coming up. It must be doing eighty to ninety miles an hour, and I have no time to react. He shoots the gap between my vehicle and some cars in the parking lane all the way to the right. He hits a parked vehicle, bounces off it, and then goes back onto the highway and keeps flying. Then I see another car chasing him down the center lane.
I miss getting into an accident by several inches. But what goes through my mind is not the severity of any injury I might have sustained but the likelihood of getting caught. An accident would mean the police, which would mean potentially a lot of explaining to do once I gave them my driver’s license and they saw the name Bruce Jenner. I obviously am not breaking any law. I can dress however I want. But once the cop saw my driver’s license, he would think it was strange, very strange. He would undoubtedly tell other cops, who would tell other people, and it would only be a matter of time before the tabloids got it.
As a last-gasp measure I start carrying in my glove compartment a letter from Trudy Hill saying that I am gender dysphoric and am in therapy and part of the therapy is to drive around dressed as a woman. It probably will not do a bit of good, but I am still trying to cover my tracks.
Driving around is liberating to a certain degree. But it also heightens my isolation. I can’t just drive around for the rest of my life. I need to at least find a place where I can get dressed and walk around a little bit. But I can’t be stupid like I was in the early 1980s when I drove from Malibu to LAX. I had no plane to catch: I just wanted to park the car and walk along the strip of sidewalk outside one of the terminals. It is always in shadow, so I felt safe: the lights inside were way too bright. I walked up and down for a little bit and then went back to the parking lot. Makeup and wigs were still quite foreign to me then.
As I neared my car another vehicle passed me with the windows down. I heard a voice from inside:
Hey, that’s Bruce Jenner!
I beat it out of there. Fortunately I didn’t have very far to go. I jumped in my car and drove away as fast as I could and just hoped the driver of the other vehicle didn’t come back around for another look. Luckily he did not.
I was pissed at myself afterward for getting recognized. I also lost confidence and realized that if I was going to keep doing this, I had to get better at it—I couldn’t wear a short dress because it attracted too much attention, I had to improve applying makeup, I had to do a more thorough job of plucking my eyebrows.
And yet once again I couldn’t deny the exhilaration of it all, the excitement and feeling of being right on the edge in a life that is devoid of either. I knew I was risking everything—my job, my reputation, all my relationships. Maybe in some subconscious way I wanted to get discovered because then, once the media frenzy was over, it would be easier to transition. But the experience at LAX showed I wasn’t ready. Once that exhilaration faded, I felt out of breath as I drove back home to Malibu afterward. Sometimes you can feel terrified in a good way. But I felt plain terrified, and it took me a long time after that to get up the courage to venture out again.
Transitioning for me was like standing on a cliff with the beautiful turquoise of the ocean down below. All I had to do was jump to feel the freedom of that water rushing around me. I knew the feeling of it would be unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I so welcomed that. Take the plunge. Just take it and set yourself free. But whenever I got too close I took a step back.
Removing the beard I could get away with. The nose job I could get away with. The development of breasts from the hormones?
Not so easy.
I always wear something tight underneath to bind them and then a baggy shirt. Unless it’s a suit. But one time I am a guest on Dick Van Patten’s parody instructional video Dirty Tennis. In the show Van Patten, who is an excellent tennis player, shows ways in which to cheat that are ludicrous. The show is fun and goofy and I like that. The producers pick out a shirt for me to wear. It is too tight. The actress Nicolette Sheridan is also a guest on the show. We appear together and, for whatever reason, she puts her hand on my shirt. She is clearly startled. She feels something she did not expect.
Oh my God! What are those?! They’re bigger than mine!
I don’t miss a beat and keep right on trucking. Nobody says anything else.
Another escape.
Getting mic’d up for television is also tricky. Normally the sound person goes underneath your shirt to pull the microphone up. That’s not happening.
I know I am really playing with fire at this point. I also know I have to take these risks in order to survive. It’s okay when I basically lock myself in my house and never leave. No fear of detection there. I can dress to my heart’s content. But despite my reclusiveness I still have to deal with the outside world. To generate income I keep doing the speeches even though I feel like a fraud—Future Farmers of America in Kansas City, the American Diabetes Association, the emcee of the Eagle Scout banquet of the Boy Scouts of America. You name it, over the years I have probably been there. I am also doing the usual corporate work, which accounts for about 80 percent of my speaking business—such companies as IBM and Merck. I primarily speak to sales forces, revving them up with my rah-rah pitch. The money is anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000, which is why I always say that Jesse James should have gone into the speaking business rather than robbing banks.
It also means a lot of people are seeing me. Which of course gears up the rumor mill.
By the mid to late 1980s I am also venturing into what passes for downtown Malibu. I go a few times when it’s daylight out. I wear hats or sunglasses or both to conceal Bruce. But the sun is too bright and there is no place to hide in shadow. So I start going only at night. I think I am safe, but looking back, I am now sure I was recognized.
The rumors aren’t mere rumors anymore. As best as I can remember there are several small items in the tabloids. Then I learn that the New York Times has been poking around wondering what the hell is going on with me and seeing if they can pin down a story that I am a cross-dresser.
I cannot keep silent now. I have to tell the triumvirate that oversees my career: my manager, George Wallach; Alan Nierob of the public relations firm Rogers and Cowan; my lawyer, Alan Rothenberg.
I am giving a speech in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and I fly there in the Baron with George. I do the event and then we fly back. I am in the left seat piloting, and he is in the right seat. We are flying above the Rockies at an altitude of 22,000 feet. It is an excellent place to talk to someone, a ready-made captive audience. George isn’t going anywhere, and neither am I.
I try to bring it up as matter-of-factly as I can:
George, there are some things I gotta talk to you about.
He has obviously noticed changes in my appearance, but he is shocked when I tell him I am seriously thinking of transitioning before I am forty. In the case of George, there is a practical reason I need to speak to him—we have to figure out a way to kill that potential story in the Times. I still worry about the impact on my children. I still need an income.
The job falls to Nierob, and there is no one better.
He pounds the crap out of the Times.
It works.
But I realize more than ever the repercussions of potential discovery, and not only because of the kids and making a living. I have had a chance to see how people close to me react, which is not to react at all. After those meetings with the triumvirate, my gender issues are never mentioned again. I guess they don’t know what to say, or are afraid of saying something wrong, or assume I don’t want to talk about it anymore, when the opposite is true. I want to talk about it with the handful of people I trust. I have spent so much of my life not talking about it. When they don’t, I wonder if they view me differently, which in turn makes me think I never should have told them.
Down the road, somewhere around 2013, I will talk to Kim about all my issues before any of the other kids. Of all the Kardashians, she is the easiest to talk to and the most empathetic. Now that I have transitioned I hear from her regularly.
Several years before transition she will catch me in the garage wearing women’s clothing. Whatever explanation I will give, and I don’t exactly remember, it will be lousy. But she doesn’t bring it up. By 2013 there will be stories about my desire to transition to a woman regularly in the tabloids. So she will come up to me one day in the house where Kris and I will still be living in Hidden Hills.
What the heck is going on with you?
I will still be so reluctant to tell any of the kids. Part of me will also be dying to talk about it to someone in my family.
You name the day. I’ll come over to your house, where it’s quiet and nobody else is around.
I will sit with Kim in her living room and tell her what is going on inside and the issues that have been with me all my life. She will mostly listen. I will try to be gentle about it like I had been with George Wallach. She will be opening up some boxes of clothing in the kitchen, and as I am leaving I can’t resist.
The Secrets of My Life Page 13
