Going Off Caitlyn Jenner

Usually the first thing I do in the morning (after getting out of bed, of course!) is to have a light breakfast — three eggs, any style, bacon, sausages, hash browns, muffins, choice of melon, juice, coffee — and then look on line for the latest news about Caitlyn Jenner, the transgendered Republican who has proved that even in his and her mid-60s, one can look really hot if he and she has many thousands of dollars to spend on a variety of elective surgical procedures and professional makeup artists and hair stylists. I actually find Caitlyn quite sexy — until she opens her mouth and that ghastly abrasive bray rushes out as though pursued by furious creditors.  I wonder if I am as fascinated by her as I understand many others to be, such as those who buy magazines at the checkout stands of supermarkets.

I actually knew Caitlyn’s male predecessor, Bruce, having been assigned by a magazine whose name I won’t mention to compose a “profile” of him for the September issue, which was actually “put to bed” (a publishing term) in mid-July of the year before he won the World Cup, or whatever it was he won. He was every inch the jock, glaring at me contemptuously as I posed my questions, and making no great effort to conceal his disdain as he answered in a ghastly abrasive bray.

In my view, Jenner should have hired the voice coach from the 1958 Dustin Hoffman vehicle Tootsie, if he or she is still with us, to help her achieve a lovely timbre — maybe a husky Jessica Rabbit purr, or, more entertainingly, the late Marilyn Monroe’s fellatio-promising breathlessness.

Where did this come from? My understanding is that she’s from Mt. Kisko, NY, the native speech patterns of which I am able to assure you are very different from Jenner’s. The typical Kiskoite’s speech is softly Italianate, evoking pizzerias with red and white check plastic tablecloths and proprietors named Luigi, soft summer evenings in the shadow of Il Duomo in Milan, that sort of thing. Lately, my greatest regret has been that so few have been able to savor my zesty wit by reason of ignorance thereof. The Internet turns out to be very much less than it’s cracked up to be when helping someone try to establish him or herself as a brand. I felt sure that by now some very rich, very obnoxious producer would have contacted me and said, “Here’s a couple of million bucks, Johnny. Do something creative with it, something that will make me laugh.” Could you have turned down an offer like that? I sure couldn’t!

But back to the Jenners, old and new, and in this case mostly new. I am simply unable to muster any sympathy for one who’s comfortable being thought of as a Republican. To me, one might as well confess to having unusually ugly genitalia, or pungent urine without having eaten asparagus. Speaking of which, do you know that at one time I was in negotiations to write songs for and produce Britney Spears’ very talented younger brother Asparagus? I’ve been working on that one for years, and now it’s here!  

I think I might enjoy Caitlyn's changing the spelling of her surname, since she's already changed everything else in sight, to Jender. Don't pretend you don't agree that would be almost unbearably cute.

I thought that a big deep-pocketed magazine, maybe one of those nearly overwhelming with perfume samples, would probably hire me to write about Caitlyn on the strength of my having written so movingly about Bruce all those decades before. But of course my entire career except for the first three or four years has been characterized by my expecting very much more than has actually materialized. The celebrated pedophile Woody Allen, also of Mt. Kisko, has glibly noted that a large part of success in the arts is to do with simply showing up, and I have always not only shown up, but on time, but to no avail, which, when you think about it, sounds sort of geographical, does it not? In London, there is a neck of the woods called Maida Vale, and who’s to say that neighbo(u)ring Aldershot couldn’t rebrand itself as Noah Vale?