The Secrets of My Life

by Caitlyn Jenner

  I remember Ella (she will become a regular on I Am Cait) telling me of her experience in high school, how she made no effort to blend in and just be one of the crowd. She wore her hair purple. She sometimes wore dresses. She made it clear that she was shedding her skin as a boy. She celebrated herself regardless of what other students thought.

  I so admired Ella’s fearlessness. I so admired her acceptance of her true gender identity not as a curse but as a blessing and liberation. I wonder sometimes why I didn’t do that in high school, just say screw it and set myself free. There were obvious reasons—the tenor of the times, the social conservatism not only of my immediate environment but of America as a whole. I would have been sent to shrinks who still believed that gender dysphoria, just like homosexuality, was a disease that could be cured using such barbaric methods as electric shock or inducing vomiting while showing the “patient” homoerotic images. I certainly would not have been able to play any sports. I probably would have been thrown out of school. But perhaps it was all more basic than that.

  I just didn’t have the courage. That’s what took me so long.

  I only wanted to blend in.

  As I near graduation from Newtown High, the only definite plan I have is to continue my education, which will also grant me a college deferment from the Vietnam War draft. Although I was the MVP of every sport I played at Newtown High for the five semesters I was there (basketball, football, and track), I am not heavily recruited.

  The only place I get any real interest from is Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. I am not interested in Graceland. I know nothing about Iowa except that it is flat and cold in the winter. The school is affiliated with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—known today as the Community of Christ—and I don’t know anything about the religion except that it’s a mouthful.

  I have never gone west of Ohio. I have been on an airplane only once in my life. New York City might as well be on the dark side of the moon. I have no hippie tendencies. I am straight and narrow and following in the conservatism of my parents. So my plan is to continue living at home after high school to keep my expenses down, go to a junior college nearby to get my grades up so I can attend a four-year school, and work for my dad’s tree business on the weekends to make a little money. I am kind of aimless, to tell the truth. Maybe a career in mechanical drawing. I don’t really know.

  I have just attended the first day of classes at junior college when I get a call from L.D. Weldon, the athletic director and track coach at Graceland.

  Hello?

  Can you be out here tomorrow to play football?

  Who is this?

  L.D. Weldon. I coach at Graceland.

  I don’t know.

  Well, the quarterback we recruited from a junior college is a credit short, so he isn’t eligible, and we only have one back-up quarterback, so we need somebody else.

  Okay.

  Football is still fun to me.

  Call me back tomorrow and I’ll give you an answer.

  I talk to my parents that night. They cannot afford to send me to college, so I go to the bank the next day and arrange for a student loan since the scholarship is only partial. Weldon calls me and I tell him my decision.

  Okay, I’ll be there tomorrow.

  He hangs up.

  July 15, 2015

  “Please, God, don’t let me trip”

  I am making my first public appearance as Caitlyn in Los Angeles.

  I am wearing a white Donatella Versace evening gown custom-made by the designer. I have not met her personally, but she has sent emissaries on several occasions to make sure the fit is right. Only one of them speaks English, but if I have learned anything from Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it is that the language of fashion is universal.

  I want to look sleek and gorgeous. Scratch that: I need to look sleek and gorgeous. If I come onstage looking like anything less, the behind-my-back ridicule, which you can always hear anyway, will be merciless. If anybody wants to know what that kind of savage mockery feels like, how it affects your self-image at a moment in your life where your self-image is still a blur, hire a swarm of paparazzi and ask them to chase you around from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night for the next ten years of your life.

  Gowns are tricky when you are not used to them. You can step on the hem and go flying. Good thing I switched into a pair of shoes with a shorter heel to minimize the risk. Actually, since you cannot see the shoes at all, I should have worn a pair of my old shot-put shoes for extra precaution.

  Please, God, you have made my life confusing enough already.

  Please, God, don’t let me trip.

  It is all I can think about, tripping when it’s time to walk up the small set of stairs to the stage of the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles to accept one of the most prestigious and meaningful awards in sports.

  If I trip, it becomes a bigger picture than the one Annie Leibovitz took of me in a cream-colored bustier for the cover of Vanity Fair a month and a half prior. Tripping is not the way I want to be remembered. Tripping would give the paparazzi way too much satisfaction. Social media would hit the jackpot.

  I also have a great deal to say. It is an important moment for me, maybe the most important in my life besides the birth of my children. The final day of the decathlon in Montreal, when I either would win the gold medal and have something to show for those twelve years of training or not win the gold medal and go home a nobody with nothing to show for those twelve years of training, pales in comparison. This is my life, not a sporting event.

  The trans community already has issues with me, and I’ve only reached my four-month anniversary. They are fabulous, but some can be tough and critical, frustrating and debilitating at times. I am already hearing I am not “representative” of the community. I certainly won’t dispute that, although such judgment strikes me as hostile and exclusionary and counterproductive to our collective cause, since much of our fight is to get society to remove such meaningless labels as representative. We are all in this together, or at least we should be.

  But tonight, like it or not, I am the face of the transgender community to millions who have never seen a trans woman or man in their lives. The first impression is often the lasting impression. If I screw this up, I will set back the movement. I will have squandered a rare opportunity on behalf of all of us who are different and should be celebrated for it, not forced underground.

  Controversy has begun well before the annual ESPY award ceremony at which I will receive the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, named for the great and gracious tennis star who died of AIDS in 1993. I have been to the ESPYs, ESPN’s version of the Academy Awards for sports, many times. It is a huge honor, given my respect for Ashe and others who have won the award in the past: Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Nelson Mandela, Robin Roberts.

  That’s the simple part.

  The fact that this will be Caitlyn’s first public appearance is terrifying enough. Now add to it that it’s an appearance before the world of sports, from which I came. Then add to it the millions watching on television. Do I think I deserve it? Absolutely not. But nobody would turn down such an honor.

  I am also dealing with a rumor that I was the one who came up with the idea. The scenario goes that in return for giving ABC’s Diane Sawyer an exclusive two-hour interview on 20/20 in April 2015 in which I publicly announced my intent to transition, I insisted on receiving the Arthur Ashe award at the ESPYs as a quid pro quo. The rumor was fed by the fact that the same company, Disney, owns ABC and ESPN. It is one hundred percent wrong, complete bullshit. There is no other appropriate word. The actual interview took place months before I was told I would be receiving the Arthur Ashe award. But like so many false rumors today, it has jumped beyond the tabloids into such mainstream media as the Los Angeles Times. You would think they might like to check first given their holier-than-thou reputations. In today’s world?

&nbs
p; Be serious.

  So right at the beginning there has been negative spin in some corners. Then come several prominent figures in sports saying I do not deserve the award. One of them is Frank Deford, a renowned writer for Sports Illustrated and an NPR commentator. It was Deford who wrote the cover story on me in the August 9, 1976, issue of the magazine after I won the decathlon:

  Jenner has an almost mystical ability to divine his own limits, and those who have been with him at meets say that by studying his opponents as the events go by, he can perceive their exact capabilities that day. Montreal, he felt, was his “destiny.”

  Almost forty years later, the tenor is different:

  Courage is usually involved with overcoming something. Caitlyn Jenner is being forthright and honest, but this is something that she wanted, and she has a fallback position—a reality show, fame and lots of money. There’s not a great deal of risk involved in the same way that someone who worked down at the body shop would experience. Bruce Jenner had a good idea that he wasn’t going to lose by doing this; his family is in support of him.

  Deford and I are in agreement that there is no particular courage in my transition. As for overcoming something, the only thing I overcame was knowing I was in the wrong gender for most of my life and being too scared to truly deal with it. I was in the public eye and worried about ridicule and scorn and hatred and condemnation and what the Frank Defords of the world would think in the context of the 1980s if I showed up for some rubber-chicken sports award dinner in a skirt and pardoned myself to go to the ladies room, assuming I would be allowed into the ladies room, to freshen up.

  As for the support of my family, they have all been incredible. More than incredible. But it has only been a little more than a month since I publicly became Caitlyn, and every day I wonder what all my children from my three marriages really think, whether they do truly accept me and can still call me Dad as if it still has meaning or instead look at me like some quasi-stranger who is selfish to do this at such a late stage in life. It is not a reflection upon them but upon me, the fear of acceptance I now feel no matter how outwardly effusive that acceptance has been, waking up in the morning and thinking about gender and the decisions I have made and going to bed thinking the very same things.

  As Caitlyn instead of Bruce, I am now a public person no longer in the private shadow. That does things to your head. Doubt—different from regret because I have no regret—is a universal sensation among virtually every man and woman after initially transitioning. Once you do so you never go back. Never. And every relationship you have will change either because it has changed or you think it has changed. All of which is a way of saying that in my mind at least there is a lot on the line—my relationship with my family and the rest of my life.

  The other vocal critic is NBC sportscaster and commentator Bob Costas. Speaking on the Dan Patrick Show, Costas says he wishes me:

  all the happiness in the world and all the peace of mind in the world… However, it strikes me that awarding the Arthur Ashe Award to Caitlyn Jenner is just a crass exploitation play—it’s a tabloid play.

  In the broad world of sports, I’m pretty sure they could’ve found someone—and this is not anything against Caitlyn Jenner—who was much closer to [being] actively involved in sports, who would’ve been deserving of what the award represents.

  Costas is an excellent sportscaster and commentator. I know how hard it is, having done it. He insists it is not a personal attack on me, and I believe Costas, but it sure sounds like one, the obvious implication being that I am not worthy of the award. There have also been recipients like me, who at the time of receiving the honor had performed at their peak much earlier.

  If he and Deford want to see what it’s like to be a transgender woman or man—even one as privileged as me—they should transition. I will be happy to help them shop. Sensible heels for Deford since he’s tall. Stilettos for Costas since he is rather diminutive.

  For most of the ceremony I am in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel across the street. I don’t watch on television, because it will only make me more nervous. About fifteen to twenty minutes before my appearance, I exit the hotel from the back and go directly into the theater so no one can see me. They put me in a small private room and I practice the speech for what seems the millionth time, what to emphasize, getting the beats right, figuring out the pacing, not garbling or tripping over words. I feel good, but there is still the issue of the steps to the stage: the anticipation is a little like when I ran my weakest event at the Games, the 110-meter hurdles, but at least I finished even with a few missteps.

  I have often used a Booker T. Washington paraphrase: “success is not measured by heights obtained but by obstacles overcome.” If there is a moment to invoke it, this is it.

  Abby Wambach, a forward on the United States women’s soccer team that just won the World Cup, is introducing me. I meet her for the first time backstage.

  Hi.

  Hi.

  A little brief, but there is something weighing on me.

  When I come up the stairs to the stage, you have to help me. I cannot trip. Make sure I don’t have any problems.

  Okay, I’ll get you up the stairs.

  I need a hand.

  Abby is in a tuxedo and I am in my gown. The symbolism of that is sublime, not to mention a photo-op too good to be wasted, no better way to visually show how far sports has come in terms of diversity (with a long way still to go).

  When we get up there, assuming there are no disasters, I want us to turn and hold hands and take a little bow.

  See, always thinking whatever the pressure.

  They bring me to the side of the stage. I can peek out and see that the place is pretty much packed.

  Here we go…

  I make eye contact with a woman in the audience. She gives me a huge smile and a thumbs-up.

  Maybe the reaction will be okay.

  At the commercial break there is the weird dance of audience members leaving and seat fillers taking their place. I sneak into the audience. I see Diane Sawyer. Had the interview not so accurately depicted what my life had been like up until transition, I probably would be in Antarctica sharing my tale of deceit and destruction with the penguins. I grab her hand and say to her:

  This is all your fault.

  I know this is supposed to be all very serious. But I can’t be. It has never been my style. Humor is always the best deflection.

  I am sitting in the audience when a video comes on showing the cavalcade of my life. I saw it two days earlier. It is elegant and tasteful, and I cried when I first saw it. The juxtaposition of Bruce and Caitlyn is shocking even to me. How could one become the other and the other become the one? I know that Caitlyn was my gender identity at birth, waiting for the right moment to subsume Bruce. But sometimes answers don’t quite answer it. As I have said to myself many times,

  I have had a most fascinating life.

  I can’t watch it now. It will make me emotional again, and I won’t be able to give my speech.

  Abby calls my name to come to the stage. I am next to my mother in the audience, the last person I told of my transition and the hardest to tell, which is why I waited so long. She is eighty-nine, and it just isn’t so easy to have your son call up on what seems to be a normal day in Lewiston, Idaho, and have him tell you, Oh, I forgot to mention, Mom. I’m becoming a woman.

  It wasn’t quite framed like that. But it had the same impact. There is no right way to begin a conversation like that. My mother has been remarkably understanding and supportive, although she readily admits to a little shot of something to make my womanhood go down easier.

  I leave my seat. As I get nearer to those little steps, I go past the rows on the left where my children are sitting. It is the first time in roughly twenty years they have all been together, not since the 1990s when Kris and I were first married and they were kids who adored each other just as Kris and I adored each other. There are many reasons for why our exte
nded family fell apart, but at the root of it was my failure as a father. On too many occasions I let my relationship to the so-called Jenner children from my first two marriages—Burt and Cassandra and Brandon and Brody—slip away. So it is beautiful to see all my family together again, just as it is also bittersweet. I know it is only a moment, one that doesn’t even last to the after-party.

  Abby gives me a hand as promised.

  I do not trip up the stairs.

  We do our pirouette to the delight of the cameras.

  Now all I have to do is give the speech of my life.

  I try not to look at the audience. There are dozens of sports legends assembled. They are my peers. I can’t avoid seeing LeBron James and Brett Favre sitting in the front row. I wonder what the hell they are thinking. I always wonder what everyone is really thinking underneath the surface of being nice to me. Are they just saying things to please me but don’t really believe a word? Are they lying? I sometimes wish there was someone who could interview them privately, get down their real thoughts as opposed to celebrity cocktail party kissy-face chatter. Do they really think it’s great? Or do they really think the whole thing is very very weird?

  Is the gown too much, however perfectly executed? Should I have shown up in my Olympic tracksuit? LeBron is a sharp dresser, but Favre often looks as if he just came out of a barn. So I think I have better odds with LeBron. I imagine he digs the Versace label, although maybe not in this particular style. Plus he is even taller than I am and far more muscled.

  Out of the hundreds I have given in my life, never have I written out an entire speech. At most I jot down highlights. I don’t like reading a speech, because it sounds like reading a speech. But this is different. I collaborate with a writer, which I also have never done before. His name is Aaron Cohen, and we spend several sessions together where I give him my ideas of what I want to say and he helps shape them. Then we get it down on paper. I need to know exactly what I am going to say here. I cannot riff, which I sometimes do (actually, I do it a lot), and suddenly veer off into unwanted territory.