Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian (14 page)

As I walked inside the clubhouse, Bruce Jenner was walking out. He was wearing golf clothes—red golf shirt, khaki pants—and
he had long, shaggy hair and a big smile on his face. He looked adorable.

“You must be Kris,” said Bruce.

“And you must be Bruce,” I replied.

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed, and he came running over and he threw his arms around me and picked me up into this big bear hug.

“Finally, I’m in the arms of a real woman!” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“You have four kids, I have four kids. This is amazing!” he said.

It was
way
forward, but I had to admit: he was so cute. He was an adult. After dating somebody ten years younger than I was, it was nice to see an adult who was happy and really thrilled that I had a brood of kids and that I was a mom and a family girl.

“Come on, let’s go inside and find Steve and Candace,” he said after putting me down.

I turned around, looked at Tracy, and tossed her my car keys.

“Bye, Tracy, see you later,” I said.

We went inside. It was really strange, because I knew so many people there. Everybody was like, “
Hi, Kris. Hi, Kris
. What are you doing here?”

“Everybody knows who you are,” Bruce said.

We had a lovely thirty minutes in the clubhouse, having a drink at the cocktail party after the golf tournament. Then Bruce, Candace, Steve, and I drove in two separate cars to Ivy at the Shore for dinner. Me and Bruce went in one car, talking all the way. At the restaurant, I ordered swordfish and Bruce ordered meat loaf. (Now, every time we go to Ivy at the Shore, we have to order the same things. Sweet, right?)

After dinner, we went to Candace’s house. I was going to spend the night there so nobody would have to drive me home. The last thing I wanted was for Bruce to drive me home. I just didn’t want any awkwardness between us. I still felt very vulnerable. So Bruce
drove me back to Candace’s house and we sat and talked for the longest time there. We had one thing in common: we had both gone off track with our lives. We talked about me and we talked about him, especially about how his life had derailed after his huge success in the Olympics, with two divorces and various disappointments in starting his business career. I couldn’t help but feel compassion for him. I also found myself thinking that I might want to be the person to help Bruce find his way again.

“I had the best time tonight,” he told me before he left. “I’d love to see you again. I’m leaving town tomorrow, but can I call you when I get home?”

“Sure,” I said. “Call me when you get home.”

He called the next morning. “I have to go to Florida,” he said. “Do you want to meet me there if I send you a ticket?”

“What for?” I asked.

“I’m in this boat race, and then I have a golf tournament, and I’m giving a speech, and I have three or four days in Florida,” he said. “Would you like to visit me there? No hanky-panky. I’ll get you your own room.”

It took me a second to say, “Sure.”

We had a great time. Bruce was such an exciting guy. He never seemed to sit still. On our first morning in Florida, he hopped into a Cigarette speedboat, racing at 100-plus miles an hour in a professional boat for a major sponsor. It was intense and dangerous. The next day he jumped into a race car at a NASCAR race, again at 100-plus miles an hour. A day or two after that, he was playing professional golf in a major tournament. I kept thinking,
WOW! This is someone who grabs life by the tail with such an incredible level of energy.
Like me, he got out of bed running, going a million miles an hour with an agenda that would frighten most people. I had finally met my match.

From then on, Bruce and I became inseparable.

T
he first time Bruce ever picked me up for a date when my children were home, a couple of weeks after our trip to Florida, he was taking me to a private cocktail party for Ronald and Nancy Reagan. He was wearing a jacket that was as old as he was, with a huge hole in the shoulder. I thought,
Oh, boy, this guy needs a little help! He needs someone to love on him a little bit and get him back in the game
. He had been living alone too long, and he was depressed and didn’t care about his appearance.

At the same time, Bruce was absolutely endearing. I loved how honest and sincere he was, and we had something huge in common: we both loved our children more than anything else. Before we went to the cocktail party for the Reagans that night, Bruce went straight upstairs to where my son, Rob, was going to bed. All the kids were in Rob’s room, hanging all over the bunk beds and watching Bruce say good night to Rob.

“Hey, kids,” he said. “I’m Bruce, and I’m here to get your mom for a date. Is it okay if I borrow her and take her out for a little while?”

Except for Kourtney, who stood off to the side and gave Bruce a skeptical look, they all started giggling with delight. It was very endearing.

He was so into the kids and how they felt about him. I thought that was amazing.
Here’s a guy who’s sensitive to what is going on here,
I thought. I had such a great love for him just for that, and I loved the fact that he had four kids too. This was definitely a fabulous, serious, real kind of love, different from the secret, shady relationship I had just been through with Ryan. We just loved each other from the start. I loved everything about Bruce. I loved his sense of adventure, his spirit, and his love of kids, especially
my
kids. I loved that he loved me, and he let me be me.

The courtship was fast and furious. Bruce and I were having
so
much fun, and it was so unexpected. As I mentioned before, I had given up guys. Right? Forever. Right? Until this big surprise named Bruce Jenner came along. After the Reagan event, Bruce was called out of town, and each time he went somewhere he invited me to go with him. Sometimes I went; sometimes I didn’t.

After he left on one trip, I told Bruce I was having a tenth birthday party for Kim at the Tower Lane house. He was playing in a golf tournament in which O.J. Simpson was also playing, but he made a point to fly home for Kimberly’s birthday party, which really meant a lot to me. There was more to it than that: his coming home for my daughter’s birthday was a milestone. I realized this guy was serious. I wasn’t dating a twenty-year-old; I was dating an adult. He made me feel special, and he made sure that I knew that my kids mattered to him.

That was October 1990. The holidays were approaching, in a fast and furious rollout: first Kim’s birthday, then Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, my favorite of all seasons. As always, we had the most amazing Christmas. Bruce got so caught up in it that he got the Ninja Turtles dressed up as Santas to come over and entertain the kids. Bruce was as excited to have me in his life as I was to have him in mine.

After New Year’s, we were invited on a celebrity ski trip with Candace and Steve Garvey. All of our kids—four on each side—went along, and it was a true test of our relationship. It’s a big deal to take eight kids skiing, especially when half of them aren’t even ten yet. From the moment we arrived at the airport, I realized this was going to be a blast, because the kids had so much fun and Bruce was so great with them. He took everybody under his wing, teaching all of them—even Rob, then only three—how to ski. I just knew that this guy was a great dad.

I also knew I was falling in love with him. I had only known
him a few months, but I was in love with him. It was magnetic. Physically, sexually, emotionally. He was the best friend, best lover, best dad, best pal. Bruce was
everything
to me and we started doing everything together. If I went shopping or went to get my nails done, Bruce would go with me. All of a sudden I had a shadow. It was fun. I never wanted to be apart from Bruce. We just loved each other.

I had been lacking the self-esteem to just really be myself, in my own skin, in my own home. Bruce had been lacking his own version of the same thing. It was as if we were meant to meet exactly when we did. I just felt really free with Bruce. I felt like he gave me new breath. I felt like I was safe again. I felt like I was where I belonged.

Everything in my life has been God’s plan. I really do believe that. My faith is strong, and it always remained strong through my entire life. Through all these ups and downs and horrible things, I always kept a strong connection to God. I would pray about the things that were going on in my life, as wrong or as right as they were. I can’t tell you how many times I prayed for forgiveness for the whole Ryan thing. I regretted that so much, and I will always love Robert Kardashian, but I knew I had met Bruce for a reason. We had that same sense of adventure and the same sense of what we wanted out of life. Like me, Bruce had been through some emotionally draining relationships. He had been through a couple of divorces. So he had some experience in that department, and he obviously knew I was going through a divorce, and I was struggling. He was very patient with me and really understood that I was having a hard time ending my relationship with Robert. Still, our relationship moved very, very fast. He would bring his own kids over, and his kids and my kids all got along, and everything was
so
good.

I don’t know if I deserved it, but I do know that God is a loving
and compassionate God, and that he is a forgiving God. And God answered my prayers by sending me Bruce Jenner.

Then something horrible happened: Ryan resurfaced.

There were pictures of Bruce and me in some of the weekly magazines, just reporting that we were dating. One night when, thankfully, Bruce was not spending the night at my house, who came ringing my bell? Ryan. On a wild and drunken binge, screaming at the top of his lungs outside of the house. I wouldn’t let him in, so he climbed over my wall and started banging on my door. My kids were asleep, so I let him in before he woke them up.

“Bruce Jenner!” he screamed. “Fucking Bruce Jenner???! This is horrible. I want you back!”

“No, no, no,” I said. “You have to go home, Ryan. You have to sober up and calm down.”

I calmed him down and sent him home. He called me a few times after that when Bruce was in the car with me. Nothing ever threatened Bruce, but he quickly had enough of the calls.

“Let me talk to that asshole,” he demanded, grabbing the phone.

“You’re dating my girl,” Ryan told him.

I thought,
Now you are going to fight for me, dude? After cheating on me?!

Bruce grabbed the phone. “This is Bruce Jenner,” he said in a calm, even, controlled tone. “I’m going out with Kris. I would appreciate it if you would never dial this number again. You got that? Good.” And he hung up.

That was the end of it. Finally, I was able to close the door forever on Ryan. When Bruce did that, it gave me the power to move forward in peace.

A
fter a couple of weeks of our relationship moving fast and furiously, Bruce said, “I would like to go to dinner with Robert. How do you feel about that?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “What are you going to talk about?”

“I think that if you and I are going to end up together, I want him to know that I can certainly take care of you,” he said. “We don’t need his money, and you are fighting over things that shouldn’t be fought over. Why don’t we just start over?”

I was so raw that year, and it sounded like a good idea. My joke with Robert had always been that I came into the marriage with only one thing to my name—an antique desk—and that I would leave the marriage with only the desk. We would laugh about it, like,
Oh my God, if I ever leave, I’ll take my desk and run,
you know? Now it was about to really happen.

“You know what? I came into that marriage with nothing, I’ll leave with nothing,” I told Bruce.

Lo and behold, Bruce calls Robert and says, “Let’s go to dinner.” They went to dinner at Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard.

“I’m in love with Kris and I’d like to marry her,” Bruce told him. “We’d like your blessing.”

Bruce had not asked me to marry him yet, by the way.

“We don’t want to be in this nightmare of a divorce with you anymore, so let’s just call it off,” Bruce continued. “You take your house. We don’t want your money. Pay your child support, because that’s fair, and let’s call it a day.”

Of course, Robert said, “Okay.”

So the two of them, in one short dinner, worked out my whole divorce. The next day I called up Dennis Wasser and I said, “It’s all worked out. We’re going to give Robert the house—” He stopped me mid-sentence.
“But you would’ve gotten your house!”
he said.

“You know what? I’m done,” I said. “It’s emotionally too stressful for me. I’m about to lose my mind.”

The meetings with the attorneys, going to court, the incredible stress, along with my own sense of guilt over what I had done to Robert—it was all just too much for me to handle. I was the one who messed up the marriage. I felt like I should be the one to end it peacefully. It was the right thing to do. That Bruce was offering to take care of me and my whole family helped me in my decision, of course.

Bruce Jenner was not exactly rolling in dough. He was no Rockefeller. Bruce was renting a modest little house in Malibu at that time—barely better than the bachelor apartment where I had had my affair in Ryanville—which we determined was unacceptable for the six of us. I was obviously going to have to leave the house on Tower Lane. But we were able to negotiate a deal with Robert to let us stay in Tower Lane for six months before Robert would take it over. In the meantime, I was able to get organized.

One night Bruce had to give a speech to the Boy Scouts of America at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. I remember looking up at him as he gave his motivational speech. Each time he gave it, it brought me to tears. He had so much to offer as a human being, friend, and lover. I was really so in awe of him and attracted to him, and I thought,
This could really work.
After he was finished speaking, Bruce grabbed my hand and we walked across the room to the meet and greet. He introduced me to somebody saying, “This is my girlfriend, Kris Kardashian.” As we walked away, he said, “We’ve got to do something about changing that last name.”