Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian

by Jenner, Kris

  We would often go to Palm Springs for the weekend, where Robert’s parents, Helen and Arthur, had a house. I remember being in Palm Springs and being with Robert watching a movie called The Thorn Birds, the famously romantic TV miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward. It turned out to be a monumental movie for me. At the end of the movie I just broke down and cried because it was so passionate and sexy and so all these things that you’re supposed to feel when you’re really in love. We all have cold-water or “Aha!” moments in our lives. For me, it was watching The Thorn Birds and feeling like: Wow. That’s how I want to feel about somebody. That’s how I want to be for the rest of my life. That passionate, that romantic . . . All of those feelings that I didn’t have with Robert anymore.

  As my feelings toward Robert began to rapidly decline, I think O.J. and Nicole could sense what was happening. We were spending a lot of time together. Every year on my birthday, November 5, Robert, O.J., Nicole, and I would go back to New York City. O.J. was working for NBC and he and Nicole bought a beautiful apartment right on Central Park, where the four of us would stay together.

  The weekend of the New York Marathon of 1989 was significant for a couple of reasons. Number one, it was the year that I noticed a tremendous change in O.J. and Nicole, or at least in Nicole. O.J. remained the same, always. But Nicole really started to change. She became more withdrawn and private and seemed anxious. She was biting her fingernails down to the quick and just seemed to be on edge all the time.

  Second, there was my deepening sense of distance from Robert. On our first night in New York, I had a really hard time being intimate with him. I just wasn’t feeling it. It was just like somebody had turned off a switch. I knew on that trip that it was going to be difficult for me to continue in the marriage. I wanted so much more . . . passion! I had four kids, but I was only thirty, and I was craving passion. Looking back on it now, I was only just coming into my own sexuality. I felt like I was married to my best friend, who, like any friend, I was happy to see and spend time with some days, but other days too much was too much. I’d had these four kids and had been a good wife, and I was feeling, It’s my turn. I need to have somebody be there for me. I wanted to be madly, passionately in love with somebody. Again, I was really young . . . and really bored. Not with my life, because I had a lot going on, but it had become monotonous. Of course, I didn’t breathe a word about any of this to Robert, who didn’t seem to notice that my feelings toward him had changed. Or at least he didn’t tell me he noticed anything.

  While I was struggling with my relationship with Robert in New York that weekend, Nicole was struggling with her relationship with O.J. One day she asked me to join her for a long walk through Central Park, which was filled with runners training for the marathon. We must have walked for two hours. All the while, she talked about how she was really struggling with O.J. and her stepson, Jason. Jason and Arnelle were O.J.’s kids with Marguerite, and Nicole and Jason were having a really hard time getting along.

  What Nicole was really struggling with, though, was that she had discovered O.J.’s infidelities. She was also having a hard time with the way O.J. treated her, and she told me about him getting physical and roughing her up. She didn’t go into much detail, but she was just really having a hard time. She never came out and said “I’m being abused by O.J.” I so wish I would have asked her for specifics. But I didn’t want to cross a line if she didn’t want to talk about something, which would become one of my biggest regrets. All she told me on our walk was “I want to leave him, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can stay. He’s really hard to live with.”

  She told me about four incidents on four different occasions. Here is one of them: She was going through one of O.J.’s underwear drawers, and she found a jewelry box with gorgeous diamond earrings and a diamond necklace inside. She didn’t say anything to him because she thought she had found a surprise gift meant for her. Months passed. She had an anniversary and a birthday. No jewelry. When she went back to look again, the jewelry box was gone. Then she saw a picture of an actress—I won’t mention her name—in a magazine and the actress was wearing the jewelry. Nicole was devastated and said she needed to talk about it.

  The next day was my birthday. Nicole and I got up early, had breakfast at the apartment, and then went shopping at Bloomingdale’s. We were on a mission: Nicole wanted to buy O.J. a pair of leather gloves. No occasion: she just wanted to bring him home a present and thought a pair of gloves would be the perfect gift. We went to the glove counter and she picked out a pair of beautiful leather gloves, bought them, and had them wrapped. I’ve often wondered: Were these the same leather gloves found bloodied at the crime scene after Nicole was murdered years later?

  After she bought the gloves, Nicole told me, “Go off and do some shopping and let’s meet up a little later on the first floor.” She went to the lingerie department and bought me this entire beautiful Christian Dior lingerie extravaganza. She was so beautiful and sweet, thinking that this would spice up my sex life with Robert because I’d given her this whole “I don’t feel sexy” sob story. I still have that lingerie to this day. I don’t have the heart to ever put any of it on, but it was just so special that I saved it. It was just who Nicole was. She was always thinking about everybody else.

  Nicole looked so beautiful that day. After we finished shopping, O.J., Nicole, Robert, and I went out for lunch. Then we returned to the apartment for a quick nap before going out that night. We had big plans: a fabulous new restaurant for my birthday, then out dancing at a nightclub. We were so excited. Nicole had even bought a new dress.

  That evening, when I was all ready and dressed, I walked out into the living room. O.J. came out of the bedroom and shut the bedroom door behind him.

  “Nicole’s not feeling well,” he said. “She’s got the flu. She’s not going.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “She’s not going,” he repeated. “Let’s just go.”

  “Well, let me go in and see how she’s doing,” I said. “Maybe she needs some soup or something.”

  I turned and started toward the bedroom, but O.J. stopped me in my tracks.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no!” he said. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  He was so adamant. At that time, I couldn’t figure out why. O.J. and I had been friends forever, and Robert had known him even longer. Now, suddenly, he was acting very private. It wouldn’t dawn on me until several years later that Nicole had been threatened or abused by him. In hindsight, I should have gone into that room to find out what was going on. But you don’t imagine in a million years that your friend is in danger or trouble. Not like that. Not back then.

  It was 1988, and that was one of the first signs, a sign I should have noticed.

  Six years later, Nicole would be dead.

  Later, she told me that she and O.J. had had a terrible fight. But she didn’t say that he had hit her. I guess she wasn’t ready or willing to tell me that. Not yet. Apparently, they had been arguing a lot at that point, which was why she had wanted to go on that long walk with me in Central Park. Every time she tried to leave O.J., he wouldn’t let her go. That same year, on New Year’s Eve, she had the pictures taken with the bruises on her neck and face, pictures that would be circulated far and wide. But we wouldn’t know anything about it then, and we wouldn’t see them until it was too late.

  About a month after that trip to New York, O.J. beat the shit out of Nicole, and she finally had the nerve to call the police. The problem was that most of the policemen who patrolled O.J.’s neighborhood were O.J.’s friends.

  It was a strange dynamic: even though Nicole and I were extraordinarily close, she was ashamed or embarrassed to tell me what was really going on. Thinking back on it now, I realize that there were so many signs. I was with her once at my son Robert’s first birthday, in March of 1988, at a kids’ gym in Santa Monica. When she walked in, I looked past her and saw a brand-new white convertible Ferrari. “What
is that parked out front?!” I said. “Oh my God!”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “That just means O.J. slept with God-knows-who this time. That’s my ‘I’m sorry’ present.”

  “Wow!” I said, focusing on the Ferrari and not the heartache behind it.

  There was no more joy in the fun foursome we had once had.

  When couples start going through these funky things, it really causes a lot of separation issues. All of us went off into our own corners. We had all tried to do the same things we had always done, but it just wasn’t the same. Around this time, the end of 1989, Nicole had started to think about a real separation from O.J.

  At the same time, I was still feeling one of the most destructive of emotions with Robert Kardashian: boredom.

  One day I told Robert, “I think we should be separated.”

  “What?!” he said. I believe this came as a shock to him.

  “You know and I know that things have been different between us,” I said. “I’m not feeling the same way I used to feel. I’m confused, and I think a separation could be great for us. You love to go to Palm Springs . . .”

  He had been going to Palm Springs often and staying at his parents’ house. He loved to go down there.

  “Why don’t you just take a minute,” I said. “Let’s take a breath. Give me a break. I just need to figure out why I am having these feelings. I don’t think it is fair to you for me to feel like this.”

  “Feel like what?” he asked.

  “Just different,” I said, trying to hold in my emotions and not hurt him with the whole truth.

  I was really asking him to buy some time, for permission to breathe. I knew Robert was used to controlling me—in a nice way, but he was always the boss of everything—because he was twelve years older than I was. We married when I was very, very young. He had been the only man in my life since I was eighteen, and now I was thirty. I had been on this journey with him. We had four kids together, and I just needed a break for a second. I needed him to just give me time to figure myself out. I don’t know why I was having a midlife crisis at thirty, but I was. I knew that my marriage had not been okay for a while. I knew I had not been okay for a long time. I knew I needed help. I didn’t even realize how much help I needed at the time.

  “Armenians don’t get separated,” Robert said. “It’s either marriage or divorce.”

  I think he was trying to scare me, but it didn’t work. It just made me mad.

  “Well, this is what I need to do,” I said. “I need a separation.”

  Finally, he faltered. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you a break.”

  He left that night for Palm Springs. For two days I felt relief that he was gone. I needed my independence. I had gone from being a teenager to being the mother of four children. I now had my fourth baby. I had lost the pregnancy weight, I had had a boob job, and I was finally feeling good about myself again. I wanted to have some fun. Just a little. I had never really dated. I certainly never went out to bars or clubs at night, ever. I wasn’t the girl who hung out with her friends and partied. I finally realized that for some reason I wanted some of that. And Robert was not going to give it to me. It was very clear that the guy was not going to leave me alone, especially when, unexpectedly and unannounced, he drove back through the gates of our home two days after he left for Palm Springs.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “I decided I don’t want a separation,” he said.

  I believe today that if Robert had let me have a break and left me alone to get through whatever I was going through—if he had given me the break I’d asked for—I probably would have been over it in a week and back on track. But because he fought me so hard and would not let me have the time to myself to figure it out, I felt trapped.

  What happened next was really odd. A good girl was about to go bad, really bad. I felt on some level like Satan had just taken over my body and said, “You’re mine.”

  I have a picture of me with a group of friends together at dinner at the Hillcrest Country Club. When I look at that picture today, I can remember exactly what I was thinking. I was trying to smile and look happy, to act like I was okay and that my marriage and my family—my most precious things—were going to be okay. But I wasn’t okay. I was going crazy inside. I remember thinking that night, How I am I going to get through the next minute without breaking down?

  Two weeks after that picture was taken, I stopped by a friend’s house on the way home from a dinner out. Our kids were with our live-in babysitter. Robert was on a boys’ ski vacation. All I could think was: Thank you, God, for giving me a couple of days to myself. I desperately needed breathing room.

  I walked into my friend’s house alone. There was a party in progress. I met a guy there. I had seen him around. He was part of a group of people who were always at this one friend’s house. He had been at all of the barbecues and parties, but I hadn’t paid him much attention. I actually had thought he was really arrogant, and I’m sure he knew I was married.

  When you’re married, you send out signals: Married, not interested, stay away. On the night I walked into my friend’s house, though, I must have been sending out an I’m single, searching, available, come closer signal, because this guy came on crazy strong. We had an instant attraction.

  His name was Ryan, and he was a producer. He looked like Rob Lowe. For a second, I thought he was Rob Lowe. He was so cute: young, dark hair, great body. We started talking. We talked and talked, laughed and laughed. Fun, fun, fun. No one had paid that much attention to me in forever. I remember my girlfriend asking me, “Hey, Kris, can you go upstairs and get me the music player from the hall closet?”

  I went running upstairs to get it, because I knew the house really well. Ryan followed, running right upstairs behind me. I turned around. “Oh, hey, Ryan,” I said, grabbing the music player. Then BOOM. He kissed me . . . and I kissed him back.

  What the fuck? I thought.

  That kiss was more than amazing; it was like a revival, a resuscitation, an awakening from some long, deep, unconscious sleep. I hadn’t been kissed like that in ten years. It made me feel young, attractive, sexy, and alive. Along with these feelings came a wave of nausea. I actually wanted to throw up at the same time. Because it dawned on me that I had not felt that way with Robert for years.

  I ran downstairs. Nothing else happened that night. But I started thinking about it. About him. I doubted myself. I didn’t want to cheat on anyone. I was a Christian girl who loved the Lord and had four beautiful children and a perfect husband and a perfect home and family. I had a lifestyle that nobody would ever dream of throwing away. More important, I was married to one of the best guys in the entire world.

  I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I had these feelings inside that had been brewing for a long time. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I felt like a fuckup because I couldn’t get my marriage together . . . and for absolutely no good reason. I wasn’t married to an ax murderer. I wasn’t married to a cheater. A lot of people had a lot of problems in their marriages, and I did not have a single one except for my own feelings of being unfulfilled.

  There wasn’t anyone I felt I could turn to; I didn’t think anyone would understand. I was too embarrassed to go to any of my friends and tell them what was going on. Instead, I lied to them, lied to my best friends in the whole world. I felt like a freak, like something had to be wrong with me. I didn’t think anybody would understand what I was feeling.

  Except maybe Ryan.

  It wasn’t long before he called me and I said I would see him. He had an apartment in Studio City. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, we were kissing again and not stopping this time. The next thing I knew I was in his bed with the sheets flying. As it had been with the first kiss, I felt like I was being awakened from a long and deep sleep. The difference between the kiss at the party and this one was that the next time I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a raging affair. Wild crazy sex
all the time, sex everywhere we could think of. We had sex in cars, sex on the tennis court, sex in the pool house, sex in the garage when we got home, sex up and down the stairs, sex everywhere, all the time. It was out of control, crazy, dangerous. Wild. Just like that movie with Diane Lane and Richard Gere and Olivier Martinez, Unfaithful.

  Or in my case, Unfulfilled.

  Until now.

  All I wanted to do was spend my time with Ryan.

  Again, it was as if I’d been abducted and thrust into another world. I had spent my entire life so proud, especially of having what I’ve always considered to be the best job in the world: being a mom. I was the Brownie leader, the soccer coach. I was the one who always had the pool parties, the everything parties. I couldn’t wait for Easter, when we would take all the kids down to Palm Springs and have a huge Easter egg hunt, the Christmas parties, the Snow White–themed birthday extravaganzas, and the endless trips to Disneyland. One time, I was the Brownie leader and instead of camping, I decided to take the whole troop of Brownies down to SeaWorld.

  I wanted my kids to have a fantasy childhood. It was just so much fun being their mom. I would spend way too much time shopping for my girls and making sure they had matching dresses with big bows in their hair. Every time a new show came to the Forum—Sesame Street On Ice or the Ice Capades—we would all go. I was always taking my kids to little kiddie places like Six Flags Magic Mountain or the zoo. We took countless trips to San Diego, and the famous zoo there, and to see my mom. Everything about me was all about family.

  Now it was all about sex. One minute I was making brownies for my friends and having a family barbecue, the next I was in the middle of an insanely intense affair. I would tell Robert I was going to lunch and I would end up at Ryan’s apartment having crazy, fabulous sex for hours in the middle of the day. I felt like I was in a movie, and I kept thinking it was so seductive; he was so seductive. He really was this artistic, passionate guy.