A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  “I thought so,” I said. “I definitely thought he was being kind of rude.”

  Thinking back to these moments now, and knowing what he’d revealed to me, I can comprehend the root of this lashing out. These behaviors were not Bruce. I surmised that he was actually jealous of me and that I was living in the body he felt he was meant to have. His emotions had magnified and reached fruition when I was pregnant with our second son, Brody. Here I was—fully embodying all of my powers and my life-giving fullness as a woman—an experience that he would never get to have because nature had made a mistake, in his estimation, by placing him in the wrong body. Because he felt unable to confide in me about any of this, his deep resentment had surfaced in some small moments of frustration and pique.

  Although Bruce and I were not living as husband and wife anymore, I still considered him family and my best friend. My mother and daddy loved Bruce, and he visited them in Memphis with me several times during the period when we were figuring out what to do with our marriage. His familiar presence was a comfort to me, as my mother had been diagnosed with emphysema in 1983 and was now gravely ill and had been given six months to live. The room that Bruce and I shared was across the hall from the room in which my mother was bedridden. One day she called me into her room, where she was lying on the bed, wasting away.

  “Let me ask you something,” she said, through her oxygen tube.

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “Is Bruce queer?” she asked.

  “What, Mom?” I said.

  “Is Bruce queer?”

  “You mean is he gay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would you ask me that, Mama?” I asked, feeling anxious.

  “Well, my door was open, and he left the door to your bedroom open a crack,” she said. “I saw him preening and posing in front of the mirror. He just had his underwear on, and he took his genitals, and he tucked them behind, so that he was flat in the front. And then he was posing with his genitals tucked behind.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mama,” I said. “He’s been working out. Maybe he’s just full of himself. Or who knows. Maybe he was just being silly.”

  My mother always used to say that she could have been a detective. Even when she was lying there, dying, she was able to observe Bruce’s secret, even if she didn’t understand its full implications. I decided not to confide the truth in her before she died because I didn’t want to burden her with that information, or the worry it might have caused her on my behalf. And so she passed on never knowing the truth about Bruce.

  For about six months in the aftermath of Bruce’s revelation, we struggled, going to see Trudy weekly the whole time. Finally, one day in therapy, it was time for me to articulate a decision.

  “You have a choice,” Trudy said. “Bruce wants to stay married, so you could allow him to go through the transition and stay married to him. Some women do this, and they live together, sometimes just as friends, sometimes as lesbians, but they raise their kids together. That’s his first choice. You can also divorce him, and that’s your choice, too, because I know you didn’t bargain for this. You can either stay married, or you can get a divorce.”

  “Listen, I love you,” I said to Bruce. “I’m so sorry that you feel like this is the hand that nature has dealt you. I would do anything in the world to help you, but I cannot stay married to you. I married a man. Trudy’s right, I didn’t bargain for this.”

  I could immediately tell from the expression on Bruce’s face that my decision was deeply upsetting. He really wanted to stay married. He wanted to keep his family intact. I did, too, but not under these circumstances. Tears streamed down his face, but he nodded his head as if he understood what I had said and why, and he accepted my choice. I began to cry, too. This was really happening. We were really getting a divorce. We were really breaking up our family.

  With a great deal of sadness, Bruce and I separated. Being married to a woman was not what I had envisioned for my life.

  I was so heartbroken after this that day and night I would get in my car and aimlessly drive up and down Pacific Coast Highway, crying. I mourned the death of my marriage, my husband, and my dream of enjoying a lifetime of family togetherness. I was also empathetic to the pain that Bruce, who was still my best friend, had experienced every day of his life. As earth-shattering as his confession had been for me, pulling the proverbial rug out from under my entire world, Bruce’s struggle seemed to make mine pale in comparison. I now had to “man up,” support Bruce and his decisions regarding his own body, take care of my sons, and move on with my life.

  Bruce went to see a doctor and began injecting female hormones. Thirty years ago the only hair removal that was permanent was electrolysis. There were no laser hair removal places then, as far as I know. Poor Bruce began the process of having electrolysis performed on his heavily bearded face. He then began having the hair on his chest removed, one single hair at a time. I was horrified at the thought of how excruciating those procedures must have been. I truly hurt for him. But his conviction and determination were more powerful than the torture he was willing to go through to achieve his final goal. Bruce began to grow breasts as a result of the female hormones he was injecting.

  My whole life, my psyche, my femininity, my sexuality, my sanity was in a state of upheaval. I panicked about what I would ever tell my two innocent little boys about their former Olympian father, and how I would raise them alone. And then I would experience waves of crippling sorrow, not only for myself, and my sons, but for Bruce as well.

  It wasn’t that I felt stupid or duped; Bruce had fooled not just me but the whole world. And besides, I’ve always had a strong enough sense of self to know that it really wasn’t incumbent upon me to discover all the truths about everybody else. As openhearted, generous-minded humans, I think we want to take people at face value, and we want to believe they are who they say they are. I’m comfortable with having lived my life this way. Through my experience with Elvis, I’d also learned that it’s conceivable to love someone as much as it’s humanly possible to love, and yet still not gain access to every corner of their being. Really, such autonomy between partners is beneficial for the health of each person, and for the couple they form. My time with Elvis had given me a greater emotional maturity and broad-mindedness, which served me well with everything I would face in my life with Bruce. Still, I felt devastated that this wonderful man would be no more, at least not in a form that would be recognizable to me, or to his sons.

  During this time, my faith was extremely comforting to me. And by this, I mean my belief that we all possess, if we can tap into it, inner strength, self-knowledge, and equanimity within us. There are still waters deeply embedded in my soul, a place I can go to find peace and comfort during my most trying experiences. Some call this our God Self. It doesn’t matter what we call it, as long as we know it’s there for us. I’ve always been able to take a deep breath and go to this place.

  Whatever’s happening on the outside that’s beyond our control, we can only work on controlling our perception and reaction. This is a lesson I’ve attempted to impart to my kids. “Your perspective on life is your own gift to yourself,” I’d tell them. “It’s as simple as viewing life as either a challenge or a struggle. Glass half empty or half full. Look for the silver lining.” Of course, I’m still very human, and sometimes I lost sight of my inner stillness, collapsing into Oh no, what am I going to do?! I’m not infallible and my faith wasn’t an infallible source of strength, but it was, and is, a constant one.

  This sense of being a part of something larger than myself, and acknowledging that we are all different versions of the human experience, also gave me more empathy for Bruce. I think it’s why I also hurt for him, instead of just hurting for myself and my boys. It’s a mixed blessing to be overly empathetic and sympathetic, because then you feel so much in your life.

  Around Brody’s second birthday, in August 1985, Bruce moved out. He rented a house in Malibu that was locat
ed on six acres, up a long driveway. It was very private, so he could transition and dress as a woman without having to worry about any prying eyes bearing witness to his newly emerging femininity. During this time, he made a confession to me about his behavior during our marriage. Apparently, when I’d taken the kids with me to Nashville to film Hee Haw, leaving him home alone, he’d dressed up as a woman and even gone into Beverly Hills and walked around the park.

  I felt myself thinking back—suddenly there was an explanation for the time I’d found my favorite silk blouse stretched out and smeared with makeup. I’d been so trusting of the Bruce I knew and loved that I didn’t think he was cheating. And, of course, it never would have occurred to me that he’d worn the blouse himself. I’d concluded that maybe my housekeeper had tried it on, but I wasn’t concerned enough about the mystery to ever mention it to anyone.

  One night when Bruce had been out of the house for a few months, I was organizing our TV room when I came across a VHS tape I couldn’t identify. I was focused completely on my task, which I’d been absorbed in for several hours. We had taken lots of videos of the boys when they were young, and so when I came across an unlabeled tape, I assumed it was another birthday party or Christmas morning. I was prepared to label it, file it, and then move on. I put it into the VCR, and as the image came into focus on the screen, I gasped.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  Bruce had set up the video camera in our bedroom while I was out of town doing Hee Haw, and he’d filmed himself having a fashion show for the camera. I guess he must have had his own wardrobe hidden somewhere in the house, maybe in the attic of the guesthouse. As I watched, I felt such sadness for him. And then I got angry that he’d left such concrete evidence of his secret around the house, where the boys might have found it and required an explanation. But, mostly, I was just stunned.

  In the video, which lasted for a few minutes, he was wearing a variety of wigs, full makeup, and a glamorous wardrobe of women’s clothes and shoes. He was also wearing my silk blouse that I’d found stretched and smeared. He was thirty-five at the time, and he actually pulled off the cross-dressing convincingly and looked quite pretty. I never would have been capable of such an impartial assessment of his appearance when I first saw him dressed as a woman in our hotel room in New York City. Too much was at stake in that moment—our marriage, our family, our entire future together—and I had been too shell-shocked to do more than sob.

  By now, though, I’d accepted the fact that the Bruce who was transitioning was the real person for me to know. And that the masculine jock I’d married had been the costume, rather than the other way around. Maybe it was even constructive for me to see such irrevocable proof with my own eyes, because it suggested to me that there really had been no way for us to suppress this truth and move on as the couple we’d been. This was our reality now, and I simply had to do my best to adjust, as I was in the process of doing. Poor Bruce, I thought. The real person Bruce is has to live in the shadows, hiding the secret self she believes herself to be. That nightmare is worse than the one I’m faced with.

  Still, it was shocking to me, even after I knew his secret and had seen him dressed this way before. He—or perhaps here I should use she—was preening, posing, and smiling for the camera, and it was heartbreaking to see her so desperate to be in another visage. Watching the video was almost like reading someone’s diary. It occurred to me that Bruce’s secret didn’t only exist in relation to our marriage. It was his personal struggle, and I was just one part of that journey. I had made a series of decisions that meant I no longer thought of him as my husband, and no longer relied on him for the emotional support of a spouse. But it was a profound loss to my life and my future. As the best friend I was now trying to be for him, I could understand that this video was just one of the many steps he would need to take on his path toward defining his new life in ways that were still revealing themselves.

  Now, having the truth confirmed, I was horrified about one thing, though. Not that he dressed like a woman, but that he’d started taking a tremendous risk by dressing as a woman and parading around the park in Beverly Hills.

  Again, this was thirty years ago, and simply coming out as gay was often difficult. And I was fairly confident that Bruce Jenner would be met by more than skepticism if he revealed herself too soon and in a haphazard fashion.

  Whenever I worried about Bruce, as I often did, my thoughts immediately went to Trudy’s figure that 25 percent of transgender people committed suicide. And from there, my thoughts leapt to our little boys. They would be scarred by any of these potentially devastating events should they happen to their father, and should the boys inadvertently be exposed to them in the press. I simply wanted to keep all of us safe.

  “Please be careful,” I said to Bruce after he told me about walking in the park in Beverly Hills, dressed as a woman. “You’re Bruce Jenner. People are going to see you.”

  “No, I look great,” he said. “When I dress up, you can’t tell that I’m Bruce Jenner. I’m a woman.”

  “You’re six two and you wear a size-twelve shoe,” I said. “It might be obvious to a couple of people.”

  In fact, I received a call that summer from our former neighbor Jeff, whom we’d lived next door to in the beachfront apartment we’d rented before we were married.

  “Hey, I ran into Bruce a few nights ago,” he said. “He was driving down the street, and he was dressed like a woman. So I said, ‘Hey, Bruce what’re you doing?’ He looked kind of shocked to see me, and he told me that he was going to a Halloween party. I thought, That’s weird, a Halloween party in July? Okay, whatever.”

  I laughed nervously and changed the subject. I relaxed a bit as I realized that Jeff wasn’t overly concerned by what he’d seen. Bruce was so masculine that his explanation had seemed logical, even if it meant a Halloween party in the middle of the summer. This was Bruce Jenner, after all, and so he must have been telling the truth. He was clearly a man, through and through, and an Olympic American hero at that.

  “Pray for Peace”

  When you close your eyes to sleep

  Pray for peace

  And for the ones who’ve given up

  Pray for love

  Pray each life will lead the way with kindness

  Pray that truth and beauty remain timeless

  Pray for dreams

  To fly high on shattered wings

  Pray for hearts—broken, strong or weak

  Let us think before we speak

  And pray for peace

  To forgive and then forget

  Pray for that

  That no one must walk alone

  Pray for hope

  Pray for time—let music play forever

  In a song that brings the world together

  For our children can’t we please

  Pray for peace

  Reach for my hand

  And open heart

  No need for us

  To stand so far apart

  The universe

  Hears every word

  And every mother’s child

  Holds the same worth

  Now I close my eyes to sleep

  And pray for peace

  For the souls trapped by the night

  Pray for light

  And choosing love to conquer hate

  Pray for faith

  May we feel compassion as one heart now

  Unholy wars must end before they start now

  Pray for trust

  To embrace life is a must

  And pray to heal—hurting broken wills

  Pray for smiles on every child

  And pray for peace

  LYRIC: LINDA THOMPSON

  Chapter Sixteen

  Music and Lyrics by Us

  It was time to pick up the pieces and move on. I was faced with so many decisions about how to best do so, not only for myself, but also for my family. When kids are this young, how can I even begin to talk to them about an issue th
is complex? I wondered.

  After much reflection, I decided it was best for the time being not to even try. In fact, I didn’t explicitly tell the boys their father had moved out. He traveled so much for work that they weren’t accustomed to having him around anyway. I waited for them to ask questions, and didn’t burden them with too much information about our very adult situations. I truly think that is a mistake too many parents make when they split up. They drag their children through the mire, and make the divorce about them as well. There is no need to impose that kind of weight on a child.

  At any rate, Brandon and Brody didn’t seem to notice anything had changed in our lives. Bruce came to visit us sometimes, and they never asked me where he was when he wasn’t with us. As I came to understand how little the boys registered his absence around the house, I finally realized just how far apart Bruce and I had already become without any conscious awareness on my part. I now saw how much he had already distanced himself from our family, maybe because he was preparing for what came next, or was just too consumed by his own personal challenges to give us his full presence and attention. I realized I had been the boys’ primary parent all along.

  Brandon was the first to notice that Bruce wasn’t living in the house anymore. Since he’s older than Brody, he has more of a memory of our life together with his father. Even at that, he only has one memory of Bruce walking down the hall in our home while he lived there. That’s it. That’s the only thing he can recall about the time when Bruce was living with us. I’ve noticed that Brandon has always tried to maintain a connection with Bruce.

  “Mom, how come Daddy never sleeps here anymore?” Brandon finally asked me after a few months. “Daddy doesn’t live here anymore?”

  “Well, you know Daddy travels a lot,” I said. “And then, Mommy goes to Nashville a couple of times a year. It’s just easier for Daddy to have his own place. We love each other. He is still your daddy. I’m still your mom. But he’s going to live in his other house now.”

  This explanation was enough for the boys. They never questioned me further or created any drama about the separation. If anyone seemed angry at times, it was Bruce. I think he was frustrated by his circumstances, that he had to be alone because of his decision to transition. He sometimes seemed to take his bitterness out on me, as if he thought I should have gone through this life change with him. I was sympathetic to his point of view, but I knew I’d done what was right. I’d followed my heart, as much as he had when he made his confession to me, and I knew that was all any of us can do in this lifetime. I did my best not to react when he was short with me; I would remind myself of everything he was going through and focus on trying to be the best friend to him that I could.