The Secrets of My Life

by Caitlyn Jenner

  No matter how sensitive Diane is when she interviews me and how well versed she is on the issues facing transgender men and women, what if I say the wrong thing? What if people simply think me perverse, or inauthentic, or think I am doing it for money (I could have sold my story to the tabloids for millions if I was doing it for money), or fame beyond the role of befuddlement I have on Keeping Up with the Kardashians? What if I inadvertently insult the transgender community because I still know very little about it? There is no second chance here.

  Because the interview is not airing live, I will be given the opportunity to reword something if upon reflection I regret saying it, standard operating procedure in interviews of this nature. Both Diane and Mark are reassuring.

  This is your story, not ours.

  But no matter how many times I want to reword something, I obviously will not see the segment beforehand. Plenty of reporters have promised pure intentions and then beaten the hell out of me. As much as I trust Diane and Mark, I am not naïve.

  They can still crucify me.

  Alan better be right.

  Between the tracheal shave and my pending divorce from Kris, the paparazzi are more relentless than ever. I live in a gated community, and any time I leave there are four or five waiting outside to take pictures and often follow. They are resourceful.

  But so am I.

  Because I was once a race car driver, I am pretty skilled at making stealth lefts and stealth rights and U-turns, so instead of the paparazzi following me, I am following them. There are few better feelings than watching one look into his rearview mirror and then turn around so I can wave because I am trailing behind. Sometimes they get so confused that they wait by the side of the road to reorient themselves when I drive by. That merits a nice wave as well.

  On one occasion, after they chase me into the driveway of Brandon’s house, I manage to block them in with my car and call the police. The most amazing part is the offended look on their faces, as if I haven’t played fair.

  I don’t go many places, mostly to a nearby Starbucks on the Pacific Coast Highway to get my grande vanilla latte fix. I wear a baggy sweatshirt with a hood pulled over my head so they can barely see my face. I also wear the same outfit every day on the assumption that they are getting the same picture all the time and no outlet will want to buy it. The customers at Starbucks know me pretty well, and sometimes when there is a photographer lurking in the parking lot, they form a protective shield around me and escort me to my car.

  They don’t like that. They will regroup and redraw battle lines and retaliate: the Nail Offensive.

  Several months before the 20/20 interview and the Vanity Fair cover, I start having girls’ nights. They are informal gatherings at my house and a way of introducing the woman I will call Caitlyn to close family and friends.

  There is no way I am going to host a girls’ night without getting my nails done. It would be like Kim showing up at a public event in flannel pajamas. But I can’t go to a manicurist. So I go to Sherwood to play golf, then sit in my car in a mostly empty parking lot afterward painting my nails, then let them dry as I drive the half hour to my home. I put one of my hands out the window so they can dry a little more quickly and I won’t have to fuss with them when I get home.

  I am at a stoplight. My hand is raised just enough so it is visible.

  Zzzd. Zzzd. Zzzd. Zzzd.

  A photographer has been following me ever since I left the golf club. He is across the street going in the opposite direction.

  Zzzd. Zzzd. Zzzd. Zzzd.

  It’s all over the tabloids the next day and for weeks afterward.

  The painted lady.

  All because I raised my hand six inches too high in my car stopped at a light.

  Okay, you got me on this one. Never again.

  I start wearing work gloves whenever I drive.

  It is impossible for my children or my mother and sisters to walk through the grocery line and not see the picture plastered on the rags. It makes me look like a fool and is extraordinarily painful to my family. And all of this is before the Diane Sawyer interview airs. What will it be like after I tell my story and publicly announce my intent to transition in front of millions?

  In the weeks before the airdate, I go through my Rolodex and call people I am close to, or once was close to before I drifted away, to tell them what is happening.

  I call my sister Pam. Since she has known of my issues for a long time, I doubt she will be very surprised. What does surprise me is her reaction. She tells me not to do it because she is worried I will be labeled a freak. Then she talks about what her friends will think.

  I was always proud of the fact of being Bruce Jenner’s sister. Eventually people find out. I watched the Olympics: what a hero he was. I was very proud of that, and now, Oh my God, how is this is going to come across?

  I have to be honest: I really am not worried about what Pam’s friends will think. I am worried about surviving all of this. But I now realize her reaction was really one of being scared, not just for her but also for me.

  Now comes the most difficult moment of all.

  Because my mom is so sharp at the age of eighty-eight and still lives on her own and still drives a Cadillac even though she can barely see over the dashboard, she knows that her son has been in the news. A few weeks earlier, she had called me to ask what was going on.

  The tabloid magazines are tearing you apart and saying things that I didn’t know about you wearing nail polish and that business when you went to the doctor and had a bandage. I can’t help but see it every time I go to the grocery store. And if someone is writing about you, I am going to read it. I don’t buy it. I go down the aisle and read it and then put it back because I don’t want to contribute financially to those people. But what is going on?

  I still deny everything. I just blame it on tabloid journalism, and that seems to satisfy her. My mom is a person of faith and goes regularly to church. I wonder how that part of her life will be able to deal with this.

  But at the end of the conversation she says something that gives me great hope.

  I don’t care if it’s true or false. I loved you the day you were born, and I’ll never stop.

  I can’t put it off any longer.

  I dial my mother’s number.

  Mom, are you sitting down?

  She is sitting in a tall chair at the island in the kitchen having her coffee.

  Yes, dear, I’m sitting down.

  I’ve got something to tell you.

  Okay.

  You know how you’ve been reading all these stories about me, and actually I’ve been denying them and blaming it on the tabloids, but it’s about time I talked to you about this. Actually there is a lot of truth to them.

  A pause…

  Ever since I was very little, I have suffered from gender dysphoria. I have always had this woman that has lived inside me. And it’s made my life very difficult. I’ve had to deal with a lot of things that you didn’t know throughout the years. I wasn’t honest with you. I wasn’t honest with anybody. But that Diane Sawyer interview is going to come up and you’re going to hear a lot of things that you probably didn’t know about me. But it’s going to be okay.

  A pause.

  Now it is my mom’s turn to say something.

  Why didn’t I know? What could I have done? You were in pain. This is my fault.

  Mom, it had nothing to do with you. This is just kind of the way I am made.

  Well, I could have done better. Why didn’t I see this?

  We talk several more times in the days that follow. She still feels guilt in not having detected anything as I was growing up and helping to alleviate it. But typical of my mom, she begins to copiously read about the issue of gender dysphoria on the Internet. The more we talk about the issues, the better she feels and the better I feel. She is relieved to finally get an answer to why I held myself at arm’s length when I was growing up, how there had always been a subtle discomfort. She r
ealizes that none of this had anything to do with the way I was brought up. With each conversation our relationship, never a perfect line, draws closer and closer.

  Of course, she’s my mom. So she still worries.

  She braces herself for what will happen when I go public on television.

  She is not the only one.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Looking Glass

  I watch the segment at the home in Hidden Hills where Kris and I once lived together. It is ABC’s East Coast feed, so it begins at six p.m. All the Kardashian kids are there with the exception of Robert. Kendall and Kylie are on opposite sides of me on a couch in the living room. Kris is behind us in a chair by herself. How shocked or not she is by my transition is immaterial at this moment: it has to be very, very, weird to see your former husband of twenty-three years and with whom you have two children go on television in front of an estimated 17.1 million people and say:

  … For all intents and purposes, I am a woman.

  Wow…

  I can’t believe I just said that.

  I am a woman.

  Do you know how incredible that sounds from my lips, how I never ever thought those words would come except in moments of privacy with a handful of others, how I was convinced I would die with a life that was incomplete?

  I am a woman.

  The secret is out after sixty-five years.

  I am a woman.

  Say it again to the heavens so God can hear it and smile.

  I AM A WOMAN!!!!

  Jesus, Jenner, what took you so long?

  Kendall and Kylie, who between them have close to 200 million followers on Instagram and Twitter (the couch collectively has close to 500 million), start hitting the social media channels almost immediately after the interview has begun. Their sisters join in.

  Here it comes.…

  Kendall gives the initial results.

  Dad, you should see the reaction you are already getting! It’s incredible.

  It is a great moment.

  But frankly I am worried about logistics.

  I go over to Casey’s house in Santa Monica and make it in time to watch the West Coast feed at nine p.m. All the Jenner kids are there and their spouses and significant others as well as Chrystie and Linda. They, too, are elated with how the segment went. Everybody in the three families is happy.

  At least for a day.

  Several of the Jenner children were interviewed during the show, as were my mother and sister. The Kardashian side feels slighted by their noticeable absence. They are right to feel slighted. They were slighted on purpose because of research showing that anytime a Kardashian is on television, many in the public tend to think it is a publicity stunt to make money. I love my kids, and the last thing on Earth I ever want to do is somehow think I am rejecting them. But because of the research, I needed to build a wall and distance myself for this interview. It was too important. After all of the time it took to get here, I needed to make clear that this is real, this is my life and not some publicity stunt. I couldn’t afford to add any fuel to the rumor that I was only doing it for money. I only had one chance. This had to be about me and only me. If I screwed up, at least it would be on my own terms.

  Much to my relief, the public reaction is phenomenal. My honesty and sincerity have come through, no doubt because I have one great advantage—I only know how to be candid, regardless of repercussion. The level of interest was amazing as well: the show had the highest ratings for the newsmagazine in more than fifteen years, and the highest rated non–sports network show on a Friday night in twelve years.

  I have made it through whole. I am still in one piece.

  But I’m not quite done yet.

  Wait until they see Caitlyn for the first time.

  Everybody has advice about what I should wear for the Vanity Fair photo shoot. The older Jenner children really want me to tone it down, elegant but not too flashy or revealing. Their intentions are good: they want me to set the right tone of womanhood as they define it. They are also sincerely worried that the more glam I try to be, the more I will feed the accusations of exploitation. They are trying to protect me. But their vision of womanhood is not my vision of womanhood: the most resonant advice comes from Kim, who, as she points out, doesn’t simply know fashion but is fashion.

  You gotta rock it.

  Before the actual Vanity Fair shoot we need to go back in time a little bit. Because there is an actual date, a literal moment when Bruce takes a final bow and Caitlyn steps onto the stage.

  March 15, 2015.

  Several days earlier I had played golf by myself one final time at Sherwood, hitting three balls on each hole before I quit after the seventh and eat a steak sandwich in the dim womb of the clubhouse. I sit lonely in my house one final time watching television. I am in my cocoon of isolation one final time. Or am I? Will the comfort I hope to feel as a woman only lead to discomfort in others? Will people look at me and say privately to themselves, “My God, what have you done to yourself?” Will I think the same thing?

  What have I done to myself?

  I do not feel scared. I feel confident that this is the right thing to do. I am excited. But when you have surgery such as this, there is no turning back. There is no oops, I made a mistake, just put everything back the way it was.

  The questions are daunting. The answers even more so.

  I leave the house in Malibu at four fifteen a.m. Ronda is once again driving. The appointment is not until six a.m. at a surgical center in Beverly Hills, but I hate being late for anything. Plus I doubt that the paparazzi are up at this early hour hoping to snap my picture. We take the Pacific Coast Highway to I-10 east to I-405 north and then into Beverly Hills. Ronda, who knows my moods better than anyone, can tell that I am nervous. Sometimes small talk can often lessen those feelings, but not now. I just want to get this over with. I am tired thinking about it.

  Pioneered in the 1980s and 1990s by San Francisco plastic surgeon Douglas Ousterhout, facial feminization surgery involves hairline correction, forehead contouring, and jaw and chin contouring. I will also have a procedure to augment my breasts.

  For me, and speaking only for me, the feeling is that if I’m going to do it, then I might as well do it. Every trans woman or man has her or his definition of authenticity. I want to look as physically a woman as I possibly can, based on my own image. I will never feel like a woman if I don’t have the surgery. I also have the luxury of being able to afford such an extensive procedure.

  It is not something I suddenly thought I should have. One way or another I have thought about altering my appearance for almost fifty years.

  I have chosen the facial plastic surgeon Harrison Lee, who has offices in Beverly Hills and New York and is one of the best surgeons of this type in the country. The actual procedure will be in the Beverly Hills offices of Gary Alter, who has equally impeccable credentials and will do the breast augmentation.

  The Los Angeles Marathon is being held on the same day. So we carefully map out the route to avoid street closures. We arrive at five a.m., before the sun is even up, another component of the cat-and-mouse game that is my life: always try to get there when it’s still dark out. By prearrangement we drive into an alley behind the clinic where the surgery will take place. A nurse is there to meet us, and it’s only a matter of three or four steps before I am in the office. I now have three security officers scanning every nook and cranny.

  Lee has thoroughly gone over all the steps of the procedure well beforehand. I think it will take maybe five hours. It takes around ten, not that I remember anything since I am out cold from anesthesia. I hate surgeries. I hate going under the knife. I hate getting knocked out. I hate waking up groggy and disoriented and dizzy.

  I am under for about twelve hours before I wake up at roughly seven p.m. Security personnel are now roaming the halls of the office looking for paparazzi. They help me through the back door into a waiting black van. My head is spinning during the entirety of t
he hour-and-a-half ride back to Malibu. I am lying down in a corner of the van, dozing in and out, and it seems like it is taking forever when all I want to do is get home. My face is fully bandaged, so I can barely see. My breasts are bandaged as well. In normal circumstances I would spend the night in the hospital in case of complications. But these are not normal circumstances, and the risk of discovery too great, since hospitals are notorious celebrity cesspools for leaks. So Dr. Lee comes home with me and so does a nurse. They spend the night along with Ronda.

  It becomes perhaps the most difficult night of my life.

  I want to fully wake up but I can’t because I was out for so long. I keep trying to get my senses about me.

  Wake up!

  That’s all I keep thinking.

  Wake up!

  But when I close my eyes my head is still spinning and I can feel the drugs coursing through my body and this is now several hours after the surgery. I shut my eyes and I finally think I am getting some sleep. Then I open them and look at the clock next to my bed and only two minutes have gone by.

  I try again.

  Two minutes.

  Again.

  Two minutes.

  Again.

  This time it’s not even close to two minutes. My eyes shoot open. My heartbeat becomes so loud I can hear it. Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump. My adrenal glands are pumping.

  This has never happened to me before. I am always in control of my emotions, but not tonight. Get a grip. Just get a grip. Try to take a deep breath. In. Out. Another. In. Out.

  It’s not working.

  I am having a panic attack.

  Every question that I had before the surgery hits me again, only this time like a stream of bullets. Without embellishing—and I swear I am not embellishing—it is like I am convulsing inside.

  What the fuck did you just do?

  What the fuck did you just do?!

  Stop it. Just stop it!

  I can’t.

  What the fuck did you just do?!!

  Louder inside my head.