Jenner Caitlyn - The Secrets of My Life, The A History

Biology loves variation. Biology loves differences. Society hates it.

M ILTON D IAMOND

I am at the Marriott Hotel in Orlando giving The Speech to the sales force at Merck.

Six in a row one after the other, the same words and the same message and the same title and the same feigned enthusiasm just like the hundreds of other times I have given it forward and backward across the country. It is the 1990s. But it could be the 1980s or the early 2000s. They have all merged together.

I know why people are here in the audience. They are coming to listen to the Bruce Jenner who won the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and became dubbed, as is the tradition, the worlds greatest athlete. They are coming to listen to the Bruce Jenner who saved the United States Olympic Team from terrible disappointment at the hands of the Soviet Union and East Germany during our nations bicentennial year. The Bruce Jenner who literally overnight became an American hero. The Bruce Jenner who is the essence of virility and is the ultimate conquistador of women. The Bruce Jenner who gets anything he wants. The Bruce Jenner who looks at himself in the mirror and sees a stud among studs.

They dont know that when I look into the mirror I see something entirely different, a body that I fundamentally loathe: a beard that is always noticeable no matter how close the shave, a penis that is useless except for pissing in the woods, a chest that should have breasts, a face with a jawline too sharp and a forehead too high. They dont know that contrary to what they imagine, I have slept with roughly five women in my life, and I was married to three of them.

They only know what they see, which is the image I have carefully cultivated over those decades, which in turn is the image the media has bought into because its the irresistible story they want to tell: the Olympian who rose out of nowhere and was the son of a tree surgeon and went to a tiny college in the middle of nowhere and married his college sweetheart and spent almost half his life to win the gold medal. In doing so I have also come to represent, perhaps more than any other athlete of modern times, the America of hard work and realizing your dreams in which we all believe. The America I believe in no matter how unbelievable I have become to myself.

They know what they want to hear, a life defined by those two days at the Olympic stadium in Montreal, July 29 and 30, 1976, when I broke the world record and ran around the oval of the track afterward waving a small American flag handed to me by an adoring fan.

I was happy then, incredibly happy, proud of my country and myself. And it took less than twenty-four hours for me to realize that the greatest diversion in my life, the Grand Diversion, the day-in-and-day-out training of the previous twelve years, was finished. Which raised the terrifying question any day and every day: what the hell am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do with my life? How much longer can I keep this up? How much longer can I hide and lie to those who still admire me and those I love?

I go to bed with frustration and shame. I wake up with frustration and shame.

They dont know that underneath the dark blue business suit I am wearing panties and a bra and pantyhose. They dont know that I am not Bruce Jenner but a woman I will come to call Caitlyn, who still has to be Bruce except for stolen moments here and there, twenty minutes or an hour or maybe two where I can feel what it is like to be my authentic self.

Imagine denying your core and soul. Then add to it the almost impossible expectations that people have for you because you are the personification of the American male athlete. You cant imagine it.

I am glad you cant. Because it is unimaginable. Except to me. Because I am living it. Or trying to live it. Because you dont really live. You just try to get by, pray that the conflict inside will, well, not go away completely, because you tried that already and it wont, but maybe take a breather, move to the background of your mind instead of the foreground.

Those in the audience dont know that despite my outgoing nature and a natural gift for small talkbecause I do like peopleI am always uncomfortable.

All they know is what they want to know. And all I know is to tell them what they want to know.

The speech I give to the Merck sales force is called Finding the Champion Within. I have no need for notes. I know it by heart:

I can recover from failure and go on with life and life will be good.

We have to take fear and control it

You know when youre going down that road in life and that road comes to a fork and you gotta go one way or another for some reason I always kept taking the right direction to go.

There was a time I believed those words, particularly in the aftermath of the Olympics, when I was preoccupied with the bounty of success. But now a certain word comes to mind:

Bullshit.

All bullshit.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Bruce Jenner!