I wanted this marriage to work. Both of us did until the last five years, when it became acrimonious misery for both of us, a toxic combination of her withering anger with me and my defensiveness and generally being at each other’s throats and the kids asking their mother why she yelled at me all the time. We had many great years together beforehand; it only began to implode when Keeping Up with the Kardashians became a runaway success and Kris was at the helm of a multimillion-dollar family franchise in which she controlled all the purse strings, including mine.
As we are courting and I see more and more of Kris’s personality, it is also clear she can also help me fix my relationship with my kids before it is too late. My connection to Burt and Casey and Brandon and Brody, who are now between eight and thirteen, had never felt right. How could it when I lived with the three boys for at best little more than two years each and never lived with Casey? I like imbuing them with the same sense of adventure that I have—car racing, flying, motocross, activities on the edge. The boys love those activities and will become gifted at them, so something of me rubbed off. I know they were proud of the Jenner name. But my connection to them has never been stable. I know they felt close to me in the late 1980s, but given how much time I had on my hands because I basically wasn’t working, I should have seen much more of them.
Linda at one point said to Brandon and Brody that the only thing they need to know about their father is that he lives in an emotional wheelchair. That hurts terribly. But maybe it’s true, turning on the switch of disconnect because of my own disconnect.
I do know I love my kids. I do know I want to become a better and more present father. With four kids of her own, Kris knows what it means to be a parent, and she seems to relish juggling eight young lives into the mix.
They all get together for the first time at Kim’s tenth birthday party. There is no friction or jealousy, just the common bond of happiness. I sit back and watch and am incredibly moved by what I see. Maybe this can work. Maybe there is a way of making amends.
Not long after that, Kris decides we are going on a ski trip to Deer Valley in Utah. She divides the living room of her Beverly Hills home into eight different piles to make sure each child has the necessary equipment—boots, poles, outfits (no designer required at that point), gloves, hats—and runs out and buys anything that is missing. There are two SUVs just for the luggage to the airport. It is only a family ski trip, albeit a complicated one with a lot of moving parts. But even then you can see Kris take complete charge in the way that will one day make her so successful, figuring out every detail no matter how small, refusing to relax until everything is right in the exact way she wants it right.
Once again I sit back and marvel. Actually, it is much more than that. It is magical that I am here with this woman of vibrancy and style, going skiing with my kids and her kids and everybody having a ball, our true-life version of Eight Is Enough.
All the children are there when we get married. Of the thousands of pictures that have been taken of me in my life, one in particular on my wedding day is my favorite. We are on a lawn outside a private home in Beverly Hills. I am sitting in the middle in a black tuxedo and white tie. Brandon is to one side of me and Burt is standing behind him with one hand on Brandon’s shoulder and the other holding his hand. Brody is on the other side leaning into me so much that our heads are touching. Casey is sitting in front of me in a white dress with a garland of flowers wrapping around her forehead, blond and lithe and stunningly beautiful. My hand is resting on her forearm. Rob is next to her, looking a little shell-shocked, maybe because he knew something the rest of us did not. Behind Rob is Kim, who even then had the exotic features that will ultimately make her a worldwide sensation. On the other side in a kneeling position is Kourtney, who looks like her sister Kim but with longer hair and lighter features. She is happy and smiling although I know she is struggling with the idea of a stepfather coming into her life. Behind Kourtney is Khloé, standing and impish with a twinkle in her eye and also a touch of the devilish. Kris is in back in a strapless white gown with one arm around Burt and the other around Brandon.
Sometimes pictures lie, particularly wedding pictures. But this one does not. It was magical. It was a miracle. It was truly perfect, or as perfect as anything can be in life. There was no family fame then and no fortune. There was just us.
Kris and I have to figure out how to generate income. I know I need to get back in the game. I am optimistic because I am always optimistic. As much as I struggle with my own issues, I still believe that things will work themselves out. But I have let my career go, and I am not sure at this point to what degree it can be rebuilt. The culture of celebrity does not look kindly upon those who disappear. Becoming relevant again once you have largely made yourself irrelevant is often impossible.
The rumors of my private life don’t help, either. Like an infestation of termites they have made their way into the palm tree corridors of Beverly Hills. Even some of Kris’s closest friends, at least those who are still talking to her since the divorce from Robert, have heard about them. But Kris vigorously defends me, and after we get married the rumors fade away. Her women friends now love me, and her men friends are probably jealous that I never have to shave.
I am not quite sure where to start in resurrecting my career, but Kris knows exactly. She views it as still one of untapped potential that has been allowed to wilt. All it needs is someone to take control, and Kris will be that someone.
She looks at the team that has been managing me: Wallach, Rogers and Cowan, and my lawyer, Rothenberg. I am still paying them in one fashion or another, either on retainer or by giving them a percentage of the business I generate, and Kris concludes that they have to go and go quickly, because nothing has happened for quite some time. I come to the same conclusion, but the bonds of loyalty and the hatred of confrontation makes it impossible for me to sever the relationships.
Kris has no such qualms. She doesn’t know any of these people. This is business. Purely business.
Why are you paying this guy?
Good question.
How much are you paying this guy?
Better question.
How much has he done for you the last couple of years?
Best question.
We go to George’s office. George is on one side of the table, and Kris and I are on the other. Kris does most of the talking.
We’re doing this on our own.
George looks at me. I feel compelled to say something:
You did a good job, but we’re moving on. We’re doing something different.
I feel terrible. I shouldn’t, because other than Grambling’s White Tiger, the television project he brought to me, there has been little in the last eight years as far as I recall. Part of it admittedly is that I didn’t want to do anything for some of those years. Kris and I both feel that I need a fresh start. But I feel like I have let him down because of our history. He was my first and best champion.
He came to me before the 1976 Olympics when he saw a preview issue of the Games in People with my picture in it. He called directory assistance for San Jose and asked for my number—those were the days your number was listed. He dialed it.
I’m a manager. I would love to talk to you.
He flew to San Jose just to meet with me. Under amateur rules I was not allowed to have a manager before the Games. I told him that.
It’s not going to work out, but you never know what the future holds.
I had a good instinct about George. I knew right then and there I would use him if there was any opportunity. He had shown faith in me, unlike all the other managers and agencies who only called me after I was a champion.
He helped sort things out for me the final night of the Games after the closing ceremony when I was naïve about who was who. Like Irwin Weiner, the vice president of financial and talent affairs of ABC and the network’s ultimate dealmaker. Everybody knew Irwin, except for me until ten minutes before he approa
ched saying that ABC wanted to hire me. When I excitedly told George, he said it would be best not to commit to anything too quickly since NBC and CBS were keenly interested as well.
It was the beginning of a fun and beautiful relationship, particularly for the first five or six years when the offers were rolling in and George screened what made sense and what did not. But now the phone isn’t ringing off the hook, and it hasn’t been ringing off the hook for some time. He is getting 15 percent of my business, which he has certainly been entitled to in the past, but I need to market myself and reinvent myself.
George is shocked. He is looking at Kris, trying to figure out exactly who this woman is and why she has such a hold on me. I know why she has a hold on me: I like strong women, and Kris is the strongest of the strongest.
So poof…
That’s it for George.
Kris streamlines the business. Ties to Rogers and Cowan are severed. The same with my lawyer. Kris starts making hundreds of calls to corporations extolling my speaking skills because she believes the “Finding the Champion Within” speech is still effective and powerful. She still thinks there are legs in those two days of my life in Montreal. She also sees potential in the licensing of my name on reputable exercise equipment, using as promotion the then ridiculously cheap infomercial at $500 for a half hour. Ultimately we market such products as the Super Step, the Power Trainer, and the Stair Climber Plus. At the peak two thousand infomercials appear a month in seventeen different countries.
On a personal level, Kris gets me back in the gym after a long absence. I go to Gold’s in Venice Beach, and with the exception of those breasts/man boobs (they remain even after stopping hormones), my body begins to build muscle and firm up again. I look good. I feel good.
Sorry to the woman inside me.
Brucie’s back in business!
March 30, 2016
“I remember sitting in my room, afraid to go out”
I am at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage in California.
It is the first major championship of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, and I have been invited to play in the pro-amateur the day before the ANA Inspiration tournament begins. Danielle Kang, a good friend over the years, is the pro. Abby Wambach is one of the amateurs: she helped keep me from tripping at the ESPY awards nine months earlier in my first public appearance. I will always be indebted to her for that.
The sad sack snoops make note of what I am wearing: a purple skirt that is described as a micro mini when the fact is that all professional golfers wear a skirt above the knee to effectively hit the ball, a white quarter-zip sweatshirt (in other words, a standard golf jacket), and a white visor. They call me “sexy” as if I dressed up for the occasion when all I am doing is trying to play golf in an outfit that was given to me by Kang. I didn’t even pick it out. Plus, what really pisses me off is that most of them don’t mention my game, because I am on fire, folks.
I love golf. For many years it was my therapy, playing on the Sherwood Country Club course in Thousand Oaks, California, to have some peace and get away from the endless chaos of the Kardashian household filled with camera crews and fashion fitters and repairmen and everything else morning, noon, and night. I still love golf, more than ever since my transition. I always used to play alone, too awkward and uncomfortable to play with others. But now I join other golfers. Plus Sherwood, as high-end as it is conservative, changed its locker room policy without a bit of fuss or drama.
I wondered how Caitlyn would hit a golf ball as compared to Bruce, since Bruce hit it pretty darn good, 280 yards off the tee when the groove was right.
The pro-am answers the question.
Not only can Caitlyn still hit the crap out of the ball, but her short game has improved.
I score an eagle on the very first hole of the Dinah Shore Tournament Course, nailing it from 122 yards out. This time at least one media outlet is where it needs to be. The Golf Channel is covering the event, and for the next two days, it shows the shot over and over.
I am spending the night at the Westin hotel in Rancho Mirage, where there will be a party for the tournament later that night. It brings me back four or five years earlier, when I had stayed at the same Westin. It was the familiar routine back then of having to give a speech and finding a little window for the woman inside me to surface. So I got there the night before: after the now-familiar rite of surveying the hotel like a cat burglar, I made the delightful discovery that this was a great place in which I could dress as I desired and walk around as long as I made sure to get a room on the ground floor. Which of course I did.
The rooms had sliding glass doors, which meant you could just go out the back and walk around at night outside with minimal lighting.
I brought several outfits because I wasn’t sure of what I was going to wear. I felt the pulse of fun and anticipation of getting dressed as usual.
I heard a party going on. I went to the sliding glass door to look. It was a lesbian-only affair, and there were several hundred. I heard them talk and I saw them laugh and I saw the ease with which they interacted. I saw them dress the way they wanted to dress, and wear their hair the way they wanted. They had freedom, such beautiful freedom. I could not take my eyes off them. If there was ever a group that was understanding toward me, this would be it. I wondered if there were some trans women among them.
I desperately wanted to slide those glass doors open and walk out into the mix of them. I just wanted to say “hi” in one of my outfits, have a glass of wine, and take in the new world like a revolving carousel. The hell with that: I would have led the party because I had been voted best dancer at Newtown High. Instead I snuck out in my outfit in the opposite direction. I did my brief lobby walk-through and then I went back to the room. The party still beckoned with its peals of laughter. God, they were having a good time. I should have been there, just do it, just walk into the room and let them figure out who I am.
But I was afraid. Afraid of what I was always afraid of. Getting caught. Being discovered. Subjecting my family to shame. Destroying what reputation I had left. I could not do it. Between Keeping Up with the Kardashians and some cosmetic surgery and growing my hair long, the sad sack snoops were already all over me at this point in the early 2010s. I could envision the immediate assumption they would make about the party because it was all female:
BRUCE JENNER CROSS-DRESSES AT A LESBIAN EVENT
The headline would have gone around the world.
Twice.
So I just sat in my room and continued to listen, the party like the sun on the horizon, eventually shutting down. Sitting on the bed with my hands clasped, trapped behind the sliding glass door, still closed because I was too terrified to open it, I couldn’t help but feel that I would do the same, carve out a life and somehow try to live with myself until I just shut down.
Now I am back at the Westin after transition with nothing to hide. No more sneaking around whenever I could, looking forward and backward over both shoulders. No more walking the fairway in loneliness and isolation, a great lay-up to the green with no one else around to admire it, a golf cart always for one.
I will go to the party tonight. Many of the top players in the LPGA are going to be there. I will have that glass of wine I was too afraid to have and be the self I was too afraid to be. My life is so much simpler now: I do what I want to do when I want to do it. Just for the record, Danielle Kang and I won the pro-am portion of the tournament.
A month and a half later, in the middle of May 2016, I go to Las Vegas for the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, known as SALT, a remarkable conclave of political leaders and hedge fund titans and top policy makers.
As Bruce, I always liked going to Vegas, not for the gambling or the garishness but because it was the best place of all to dress up, the only locale where you could do whatever you wanted and no one would notice. So I became almost giddy when there was a speech scheduled in Vegas. As I told Kris back in those days:
&
nbsp; I’m off to Vegas!
Have fun!
Oh, I will.
As always, I had my routine down to perfection.
I left the house in Hidden Hills. Almost immediately I drove to the back of a nearby parking lot. I applied makeup in the car, then tried on several wigs I kept hidden underneath the backseat and picked out the one that not only suited my mood but best concealed my identity. Next came putting on a favored outfit while still inside the car. Then five hours of blissful driving through hot and lonely desert, until I got to a Holiday Inn parking lot on the Vegas outskirts and wiped all the makeup off and removed the wig and wiggled out of the clothes.
I checked into my hotel room and did everything all over again. There can’t possibly be a place in the world that has more mirrors per hotel room than Vegas. Which is why I brought more than one outfit, since it was so much fun to try them on.
Then right before the speech I once again took everything off. The next day for the ride home, I put on minimal makeup and very dark sunglasses. I got back into the car, scanned for bystanders, and applied the rest of my makeup and put on another wig to disguise my identity and dressed in another outfit. Then I drove back across the desert to the same parking lot five minutes from the house where I took everything off and once again hid it. Then I went home like nothing happened.
How’d it go?
Fine.
Anything new?
Same old same old.
It must get boring.
Never.
The only problem with the Vegas routine was the Starbucks issue. I needed my grande vanilla latte, and there was one on the way back near Barstow. It meant going in dressed up or taking everything off again. So I drove on by. But I still missed the fix. I thought about it a lot, how I couldn’t even get a cup of coffee the way I wanted. Finally, during an appearance in Lake Las Vegas, I had enough.
I got dressed up early in the morning and walked to the nearest Starbucks. I ordered, the first time I can ever recall having an actual encounter with someone while in women’s clothing. I disguised my voice as best I could.
The Secrets of My Life Page 16
