A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

Stand tall; stand proud!

  Voices that care are crying out loud

  And when you close your eyes tonight

  Feel in your heart how our love burns bright

  LYRIC: LINDA THOMPSON

  Chapter Twenty

  No Hallmark Memories

  In 1990, Bruce had shared with me that he’d started dating Kris Kardashian, soon to be divorced from her husband, attorney Robert Kardashian, who a few years later would be one of O. J. Simpson’s defense lawyers in the famous murder trial. They quickly began spending a great deal of time together, and he told me that he really liked her. I had been with David for almost five years at this point, and was thrilled that Bruce might have also found someone new to care about. I knew it had been painful for Bruce that I’d moved on so quickly after our breakup, especially because the complicated situation he was in made it much more difficult for him to date. And it was clear that he was in a delicate emotional state that left him feeling isolated and confused, and he really could have used the support of a loving, devoted partner. I’d done the best I could to be there for him as a friend, but given all that I was dealing with in my own life, I knew Bruce was feeling the loss of our marriage, maybe even more than I.

  The years since my divorce from Bruce hadn’t been easy for him. Rather than presenting the triumphant demeanor of someone prepared to live his true life in the open, as Caitlyn now does, he often appeared to be worried, distraught, and distracted. I think he was usually eager to hurry back to his home, where he felt safe to be himself in private. Bruce and I had always communicated well, and this continued to be true, even if we had less chance to do so. I watched his subtle transmutation from the muscular jock to a more feminized version of the Bruce I had known and fallen in love with. He was undergoing painful electrolysis, hormone injections, and feminizing surgeries, and morphing before my eyes into someone I no longer recognized. He was struggling with presenting Bruce Jenner to the public while undergoing physical changes toward becoming who he felt she authentically was.

  During his weekly or biweekly visits with the boys, he gave me updates on his personal life, and we sometimes spoke at length on the phone when I called to invite him to holidays and birthdays. Although he was not directly involved in day-to-day care for the boys, I tried to involve him in their lives without making him feel any more pressure than he had already.

  Bruce always told me when he was seeing someone and he dated several women, even though he had begun his transition and showed visible signs of it. He had no facial hair, no chest hair, but he did have boobs, and he had gotten a nose job, a facelift, and trimmed his Adam’s apple. When Bruce had his most complex surgery, a facelift, I offered to come over and take care of him, but as usual, he said he was fine and could manage on his own. As Bruce struggled with his back-and-forth commitment to transition, in the not so understanding or forgiving 1980s, I felt the pain of his conflicted mind right along with him. It seemed to me like he was still confused as to how completely he was ready to commit to transitioning, and it was causing him a great deal of frustration, anger, and deep distress. I imagined that he was experiencing an ongoing inner monologue along the lines of: If do this, can I get away with it? How will the public react? Will I be accepted? Will I ever work again? I’ve got two ex-wives and four kids, and I’d like to find a new partner. How am I going to pull this off? What if I can’t?

  Bruce may not have told me all that he was feeling at the time, but I was one of the few confidants who knew the extent of his secret, and he did share stories of his dating life with me. One of the women he’d dated, we can call her Jenny, was lovely, and Bruce clearly liked her a great deal. As he revealed to me after they had dated for a few weeks, he felt close enough to her to tell her about his transition process. She was so stunned she began slapping her own face, hard.

  “Why does this have to happen to me?!” she yelled again and again.

  Bruce also went out socially with a prominent entertainment reporter and seemed to enjoy her company. Again, he decided to tell her everything about what he was going through. Bruce also confided in a few of his close friends. To their credit, all of these people kept Bruce’s secret and let him be the first to reveal it publicly.

  All of this made me very nervous for him, though. I knew he was still going to sessions with Trudy, as there was a law that he had to complete a certain amount of therapy before he could transition. I was glad he had that support in his life, but his perspective sometimes seemed to be less than completely clear. I was concerned about what would happen if he was outed before he was ready to reveal his true self to the world.

  “I’m not telling anybody what you’re going through,” I said to him. “I think you should keep this to yourself until you’ve actually made your transition. Unless you’re getting married or something, you don’t need to tell every woman you’re dating.”

  “No, I want to be honest right off the bat because I feel bad that I wasn’t honest with you,” he said. “I feel like I caused you a lot of pain.”

  I couldn’t argue with that line of reasoning. I appreciated knowing that Bruce was still the nice person he’d always been, that he felt accountable for not having told me his secret and for having upset my life the way he had.

  Bruce seemed to think I was overreacting, and I hoped he was right. I was extremely discreet, determined to keep Bruce’s secret until he was ready to share his true self with the world. I didn’t even tell my best friend.

  Even though Bruce had struggled for the five years since we’d separated, he still tried to be present for his sons. Brandon and Brody clearly loved their daddy, and I think they still felt a connection with him and looked up to him. Admittedly, Bruce was painfully self-involved and could only muster a weekly visit or an outing for a movie or ice cream. But he was still a presence in their lives, even if his participation was limited.

  As much as I’d encouraged him to be actively involved in the boys’ lives, I’d always given him a lot of leeway to take care of himself first, simply trying to make him feel welcome, so he’d at least continue his somewhat regular visits with the boys. My primary goal was for them to have as much of a relationship with their father as possible for as long as he was around to do so.

  Because Bruce was so optimistic about things with Kris, I also approached his new relationship with a great deal of positivity and respect, hoping it would prove to be healing and helpful to the person I still cared for so deeply.

  In early 1991, Bruce came to me one day.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Well, I remember how our last ‘We need to talk’ session turned out,” I said.

  He gave me a rueful smile, and we both laughed a little, acknowledging all that we’d been through together and separately in these past years.

  “I am getting married,” Bruce informed me.

  I was over the moon with delight. I had watched Bruce struggle and suffer for the past five years. I had read the discomfort and fear on his face. I had listened to him confide in me about how difficult it had been for him to find a woman to spend time with, let alone share his life with. And in those five long years, he had not been able to bring himself to take the final step and complete his transition.

  I’d been fully prepared to back Bruce completely, no matter what he chose to do, and even welcome him back into the boys’ lives as their female relative, or whoever he wished to present himself as, if that’s how he decided to live. But my support was in no way the same thing as having a truly educated understanding of what it meant for him to be transgender. When he decided not to complete his transition, I was relieved, thinking that this decision to remain a man would result in his being much happier and better off. I didn’t want him to endure prejudice, rejection, or unkindness. I was afraid that his secret would be revealed in the press in a sensational way. Because of our therapy sessions with Trudy, I knew Bruce would always feel like a woman inside, but I assumed he would be okay with this compromise, as
he had lived this way for so long, so successfully.

  Though his decision to remain Bruce would eventually take a huge toll on his psyche and well-being, I assumed he was making the right choice. As far as I could tell, he had found a woman with whom he felt ready to take the next step in his life. Most important to me, his decision meant he was going to be around to be a father to his children. Kris had four children of her own with Robert Kardashian, so I assumed she would be a good partner for Bruce, and a woman who understood the important role of parenting.

  Bruce told me that he was stopping the hormones and that Kris was okay with everything. Keep in mind that Bruce had no hair left on his face, neck, or chest, and no hope of ever growing hair there again due to the painful electrolysis he had undergone. In addition, he had already had “feminizing” surgeries to his face, and as a result of the female hormones he had been taking for five years, he had substantial breasts, noticeable even to his four-and six-year-old sons. The point is that he would have had a tough time hiding his partial transition from someone with whom he had become intimate. But it was heartening to know Bruce had found someone with whom to share his life. I was elated that perhaps now he finally had found some resolve in his painful predicament.

  I did not in any way think that he was choosing to live in the closet or deny himself true happiness. He had created the space in his life to become a woman, at the cost of our marriage, and yet he had not gone ahead and done so. Because he did not express any conflicted emotions or confusion to me about his decision to remarry, I had no reason to be anything but happy for him.

  Before they were married, I met Kris once or twice, only briefly, and I thought she was pleasant. She was polite, and I was cordial. When they were married in April 1991, I had high hopes for the blended family we were building and I saw the possibility for ongoing love and support for all of our children. And since we parents can only be as happy as our least content child is, I hoped for some happiness for us adults, too.

  With Bruce taking his trip down the aisle, and nicely settled in his new life, as I surmised, I began to consider with more seriousness the possibility of married life with David. I knew it was time for us to take our relationship to the next level. Once Bruce was remarried and I knew he was going to be okay, I started to feel like it was time for me to remarry, too. It was as if I’d wanted to wait until Bruce went on with his life before I did the same. That’s how much I cared about him and still felt partially responsible for him. I always wanted to be there for him, much to David’s chagrin.

  By most definitions, David and I practically were married. I was certainly in love with and committed to him and our relationship. David had been living in my home with my children and me for five years. His kids came over most weekends, and we did many things as a family already. We worked together at times and had all the same friends. Our lives were as entangled as two people’s can be without saying “I do.” And yet in many ways that was the problem. Although he was temperamental, and I came with my own unique baggage, we were in deep together. There was still a part of me that thought: Oh, I’ve got to make this work. I’m deeply entrenched in this relationship. My kids and his kids are in this with us now. They’ve already gone through the pain of divorce. There are too many people involved for us not to make this work.

  Looking back, I think we were both kind of dragging our heels because we were still recovering from divorces. Our baby steps, our one forward, two back, were all done in increments, as much because of my hesitancy as David’s.

  For their part, the boys really wanted us to get married. Both my sons considered David their true father and loved him. They still do. He was a constant presence in their lives, serving as their paternal figure. Brandon, being our resident little Gandhi, even developed a ritual. Every time we went somewhere, whether it was the Trevi Fountain in Rome or a little fountain in Victoria where people tossed in coins, Brandon always made the same wish.

  “You know what I wish, Mommy and David?” Brandon said. “I wish that you would get married.”

  And Brandon certainly had company. Many of our friends were intent on seeing us get married, too. We were in Philadelphia for a Philadelphia Flyers game with the hockey team’s owner, Ed Snider, and his then wife, Martha Snider, as well as our dear friends Ashley and John Lewis and Jelinda and Barry De Vorzon. When we were relaxing in our hotel suite, they began putting the pressure on us.

  “Well, when are you guys getting married?” someone said.

  “You’ve been living together, fighting together, raising kids together for four and a half years now,” someone else chimed in. “When are you going to get married?”

  “Well, first you have to get engaged,” someone added.

  “Fine, we’ll get engaged then,” we said.

  Ed, Martha, David and I went to a jeweler in Philadelphia and found a beautiful six-carat yellow diamond. Of course, it had to be a yellow stone because that’s my favorite color; it’s so happy, like sunshine. It wasn’t a perfect stone, but it was beautiful, and we bought it on the spot. That was our first step toward matrimony.

  “Okay, we’ve got the stone now,” we said. “That means we’re on the right path.”

  We all celebrated, toasting and drinking champagne in our hotel suite.

  When we returned to Los Angeles, David and I went to XIV Karats in Beverly Hills. We brought in the stone and told them the kind of setting we wanted. After XIV Karats put the ring together, David picked it up and unceremoniously placed it on my finger. We had already made the determination we would go ahead, so we were engaged now, but we didn’t set a date. I wore the ring and we went out to dinner to celebrate our engagement. There was never even an “on one knee” traditional proposal.

  David and I were married that June 22. Our dear friends Essam and Layla Khashoggi invited us to have the ceremony on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at their fifty-acre estate in Hope Ranch. Layla and Essam, along with all our other friends, wanted us to get married so badly that they offered to plan and pay for the wedding, and do everything to ensure it actually happened.

  There was just one caveat. Essam turned to David, a twinkle in his eye.

  “If you ever get divorced, I’m going to know it’s your fault, and you’re going to owe me the money back,” Essam said.

  He never did reclaim the cost of our wedding, of course, but we’ve made many jokes about it over the years.

  David and I were married in a beautiful ceremony at six o’clock in the evening in front of around 150 guests, including our families and dearest friends, Barbra Streisand and Richard Baskin, Kenny and Marianne Rogers, and many of our friends from the Malibu Racquet Club. My daddy walked me down the aisle to the incredibly romantic “St. Elmo’s Fire Theme Song,” which David had written. Kenny sang “Lady” and “You Decorated My Life” for us at the reception. David wrote a song for me expressly for our wedding, “The Color of My Love,” which Celine Dion eventually recorded. It was the kind of moment when David really did shine. We honestly did have a great love affair, tempestuous as the best ones so often are. Reference Taylor and Burton, Tracy and Hepburn, and even, sometimes, Edith and Archie. Think the heroes and heroines in the film soundtrack songs we penned together. I felt like I was finally able to exhale. We had all made it to the other side of what had been an extremely tumultuous and emotional time in our lives. I had a partner, and my boys had a father, and together with David’s daughters and Bruce’s new family, we could all form one big, loving collective.

  Unfortunately, the vision I’d had of our happy, blended family was not what came to pass. After Bruce and Kris married, things definitely changed in his relationship with the boys. Having put a great deal of love and thought and energy into trying to build a blended family with David, I had just hoped that we would have some realistic version of this same experience with Bruce’s new family. In the immediate aftermath of their wedding, I assumed his distance was just due to the fact that he was busy. And then I tried
to tell myself that he was caught up in his newfound happiness after so many years of loneliness.

  However, in truth, the union marked a turning point during which periods of several years would go by without Bruce attempting to contact or visit his sons. No birthday cards, or phone calls, no “Merry Christmas,” no “Everything okay?” after several Malibu wildfires threatened our home and safety. Having been present at almost all of the birthday parties and holidays in the five years between our separation and his marriage to Kris, with his trusty video recorder in hand, Bruce was a noticeable absence now. At first, when we planned a party, the boys asked if their dad was coming. And when he didn’t show up, they asked why he hadn’t been there. Their excitement at the possibility of seeing their father on these special occasions, and the disappointment in their sweet little faces when he let them down, broke my heart even more than our divorce had. But after a few years, when they seemed quietly resigned to the fact he was not coming, and they stopped asking, that broke my heart even more.

  Bruce quickly assumed an angry attitude toward me, and to this day I do not understand why. I had been his ally, his friend, and genuinely loved him as my forever family. He suddenly became bitter toward me and seemed to perceive me as the enemy, which was extremely painful for me. Maybe he was trying to prove to his new wife how devoted he was to her and their family by essentially discarding his prior relationships. Maybe he’d been bitter all along, but he’d hidden his true feelings because he’d needed my friendship as some form of a sanctuary. I could intellectualize his actions, but there was no reasoning away the pain I felt at this change in his behavior toward me, and even more important, toward his sons. Even when he’d begun transitioning into a woman, he’d still remained the person I loved deeply and was my best friend. I had been eviscerated by the loss of our marriage and the dissolution of our idealized family life, so this closeness had meant a great deal to me. I had been extremely grateful that Bruce had felt able to confide in me as much as he had, and that we were able to remain best friends, if not husband and wife.