A couple weeks ago, I decided to do what pretty much all the rest of America was doing: I watched the Diane Sawyer interview with Bruce Jenner.
For the record, I don’t usually seem to be on the same wavelength with whatever it is that America deems worth watching. I have never seen a single episode of NCIS, The Voice, Empire, or The Walking Dead. Add to that list any episodes of Madame Secretary, Blue Bloods, Scorpion, or Criminal Minds.
Never seen an episode of Game of Thrones.
Never watched any of the Godfather movies from beginning to end.
And I had no idea who the Kardashians were until I asked my daughter about them a couple years ago.
“They’re the ones with that TV show about their lives,” she said.
“Well, yeah, I’ve heard of it. But what do they do? I mean, why do they have a show? Why are they famous?”
She shrugged. “They’re famous for being famous.”
Such is life in America’s TV land, I guess. Reason enough not to watch.
And then, about a year ago, I learned that Bruce Jenner is somehow tied up with the Kardashian show. Married into the family, or something like that.
Now, Bruce Jenner is a guy I’ve heard of. In fact, flash back almost 40 years to the 1976 Olympic Games, and you could say that I was as tuned in as any American could possibly be to his bid to become the world’s greatest athlete by winning the decathlon. In fact, by setting a new decathlon record, you could argue that he had become the greatest athlete of all time—at least up until then. His was the kind of fame that is earned through epic effort and devotion, not just the whimsy of a fickle viewing audience.
And I idolized him. He was about my age, and I daydreamed of what it must be like to be Bruce Jenner, a young man with not only astounding athletic ability, but with intelligence, impossibly good looks, and a physique that any man would trade for his own. He was manliness incarnate, it seemed to me.
In short, like all American men in 1976, I wanted to be Bruce Jenner.
Except that there was one American man in 1976 who didn’t want to be Bruce Jenner, I learned from that interview. And that man was Bruce Jenner himself.
As I said, I’m not usually on the same wavelength with what most of America is watching, so I was a bit shocked at his appearance when I saw him chatting with Diane Sawyer during their interview. Oh, the old Jenner good looks were still there, but softened somehow by the many procedures he had obviously undergone to transform his identity into that of a woman.
But through it all—through the tears and the tissues and the catch in the throat, through the clips of smarmy wisecracks by wags like Conan O’Brien—I had to admire the courage and determination of a man striving to do the impossible once again.
But most of all, I was struck by the impossible irony of it all.
On one level the irony is obvious. After all, for at least twenty years after that epic Olympics performance, if you were to ask any American man my age to think of the “manliest man” imaginable, a good number of us would have come up with the name of Bruce Jenner—a man who ironically always wished to be a woman.
But beyond that obvious irony, what makes the Bruce Jenner story ironic on a tragic scale is that he cannot follow his dream of living as a woman quietly, as almost any other American man could do if he so desired.
Because by winning the decathlon and becoming the manliest man in the world at the 1976 Olympic Games, he guaranteed that anything that he would ever do for the rest of his life would have to be done under the glare of global scrutiny.
Any of the rest of us could simply undergo the feminizing procedures, change our wardrobe, names, and addresses and move to a new city where nobody knew what we looked like 40 years ago.
And then live out our lives quietly as the tall, attractive older lady next door.
But not Bruce Jenner. By becoming the manliest man on the planet in his youth, he built a prison cell of deception around himself with only one way out: He could stay hidden in his cell of lies and pretend that he was exactly what all American men wished they were—or he could open the door of truth and walk out to face public ridicule and abuse on a global scale.
And I wondered, as I watched my youthful manly idol weep womanly tears on a sofa in front of Diane Sawyer, if Bruce Jenner ever dreamed about living a quiet, unscrutinized life like the rest of us.
Even as I daydreamed of being him, did he daydream of being me?
As the interview came to an end, I was impressed with Jenner’s courage in the face of yet another impossible challenge even more daunting than the quest to become the manliest man on the planet.
And as Jenner faces a transformative future, I wish nothing but quiet peace and happiness for her.
