Be Myself! - 27. My Prince Wears a Skirt

On Tuesday, Oli and I left school with Charlie and Luce. Our plan was to talk to their families about coming out to Oli’s parents. To get to their houses, though, we had to travel on a train for half an hour. They lived further from the school than any other student I knew. In Scotland, children are usually assigned to the schools closest to their homes, since most of them are free and funded by the government. The idea behind it was precisely to keep children from having to suffer through long daily journeys, but Luce and Charlie’s case was exceptional. To be able to attend our school, they had to convince the local council that the move would create a safer environment than the school they previously attended.

“I would never dare to come out in my previous school,” Luce told us as we passed an area of the city filled with half-decadent houses that my parents immediately associated with lazy benefit cheats. “It was full of intimidating arseholes and other scumbags.”

“You think they would hurt you?” Oli asked. The carriage was packed; we were standing near the door surrounded by so many people we could barely breathe. I was anxious that someone would hear us talking so openly about trans stuff, but Luce and Charlie did not seem concerned.

“They were mean to Charlie whenever he put on a skirt, so yeah, they would probably beat me up.”

“That’s horrible!” Oli shivered. “So Charlie was out at school and you weren’t?”

Oli and I twisted our necks to look expectantly at Charlie. Thankfully my new friend and I were about the same height, so it was not much of a big deal for me, though Oli’s posture looked definitely uncomfortable. Charlie was wearing trousers that day, which generally meant he was feeling more on the masculine side. I had realised a while ago that I felt more comfortable when my friend was like this than when he was wearing a skirt, thanks to the part of my brain that had been indoctrinated to believe men have to be masculine and absolutely cannot wear women’s clothes. I had met Charlie as a ‘guy’ first, so not even my most potent mental gymnastics had yet been capable of erasing the feeling that he was a ‘guy’, not the fluid person he actually was. By now I knew that this failure to come to terms with my friend’s identity came from years of being force-fed the belief that humans can be only male or female, and that once you are labelled as one or the other according to your privates, there is no going back. I had even learned that there were words used to describe those concepts: ‘gender binary’, referring to the strict two-gender system, and ‘cissexism’, the erasure of transgender people and their identities. And because I knew all this, I hated the fact that my subconscious self was still so cissexist and bound to the gender binary.

Lost in my thoughts about Charlie’s gender, I almost missed his answer. “Yeah, though the only reason they let me wear what I wanted there was because I told them I was intersex.”

“You’re intersex?!” Oli and I asked at the same time. It was safe to say that, having experienced Charlie’s public coming out at school and then hearing Luce’s story, we were not expecting another sort of coming out thrown so casually at us.

“Yes. I have hypospadias. I don’t usually tell people, though, because if they know I’m genderqueer and intersex they’ll think that one led to the other, or that only intersex people can be genderqueer or some such.”

“And this obviously isn’t the case,” Luce immediately added, nodding eagerly. “Charlie’s gender identity has nothing to do with the parts he was born with.”

“Actually, it made it easier for me to see that there was a way out of the binary, but I’m not genderqueer because I’m intersex. I don’t want anyone thinking that all intersex people must be genderqueer by default. There are tons of intersex conditions, tons of different intersex people, and plenty of them are more than happy to identify within the gender binary. And then, of course, there’s the fact that lots of people born without any intersex conditions turn out to be genderqueer as well.” The train stopped, and a few people got off. Many more got in, making our already crumpled space even more body-crushing. It became impossible to keep the conversation going.

Though after yet another mind-blowing lesson on the flexibility and variety of gender identity and gender expression, I did not feel like talking anymore, and thankfully neither did my friends. We did not speak again until we got off the train a couple of stops later. In this welcoming silence, I tried to process Charlie’s new coming out, but the more I thought about it, the more I agreed that he had been right in not revealing the intersex stuff straight away. Had he touched on the subject when I was still oblivious to the world beyond the gender binary, I would definitely associate intersex with genderqueer, and think they were one and same. At least now I could rationally understand that one thing does not inevitably lead to the other, even if I was still having subconscious issues with the basic concepts.

(...)

Charlie and Luce lived in an area that had lots of identical houses separated by thin garden areas and fences. Each building actually contained two houses, one in the front, and one facing the back. The door to the back house was on the side of the building, while the entrance to the front house looked like the entrance to any other single-unit house.

“I live in the front, Luce lives in the back,” Charlie told us when we arrived. He had a nice front garden; most of it was taken over by grass, flowers, and a small fountain. A well-kept stone path led to the front door, and under the first floor windows there was a small sitting area. There was no sign of a car, even though all other houses in the area seemed to have at least two.

“Our family moved here when I was eleven,” Luce explained. “Charlie and I quickly became the bestest friends ever and spent our days at his house because his parents didn’t say anything when I put on dresses and became a princess.”

“When did Charlie come out to you?” Oli asked. We were still standing in Charlie’s garden. A group of children were walking home from school on the other side of the street, and the neighbour to the left was tending to her wilting begonias. Birds sang somewhere nearby, and the whole scene would have been perfectly idyllic if not fort the kind of discussion we were having.

“I think it was the middle of week two,” Charlie answered. “When I first saw Luce, I presented as a guy because I thought this way we would become friends quicker. But then after a week together I was feeling really girly and I couldn’t bear the thought of hiding it.”

“So she took me to her room and we played dress-up in princess costumes. That was the first time I put on a dress, and it was the best feeling in the world!” Luce looked like she was about to sprout wings from her back and fly to heavens in delight. I smiled instinctively.

“I think we spent months playing princess dress-up after that,” Charlie added. He smiled fondly at his friend.

“And then you changed to a prince in a skirt when you decided you had enough of being a girl! And I tried to be a princess in pants, but I liked the skirts too much to really do it!”

Luce and Charlie would probably have carried on reliving their childhood memories if a young man had not appeared from the back garden. He was slightly shorter than Luce, but had the same long blond hair and expressive eyes. His body was well-toned, the type that had been worked on at the gym every other day, but his smile was gentle and, I dare say, charming.

“Hey, sis, you brought friends over? Hi, Charlie!” The young man greeted us as he approached the group. Luce kissed him on the cheek and Charlie waved animatedly.

“Hi, Lucius! These are my friends from school, Oliver and Oscar! We’re going to Charlie’s for a bit, but later we’ll come over when mum and dad get back home.”

“Cool. I’ll try to clean things up, then. Nice to meet you, guys! Play nice and be cool with my little sister!” Lucius smiled at us, bowed rather comically and returned to the back garden. Charlie and Luce laughed, but Oli just stood there, still as a statue with his jaw on the ground and face once again matching the shade of his hair.

“Are you ok?” I asked him.

“You told him my name was Oliver and he didn’t say anything.” Oli looked at Luce as if she was some kind of ghost.

“My brother knows better than to question people’s identities, Oli. Our families have had years to get used to the stuff you and Oscar are just figuring out, so while you’re here nobody will misgender you or question your masculinity because of the way you look.” The relief and happiness in Oli’s face was almost palpable. He looked like he wanted to squeeze-hug Luce until her eyes popped out or some other gory comparison. Luce realised this, and got close enough to him to ruffle his hair. They hugged briefly, and Charlie suggested we go inside. His parents were waiting for us, after all.

(...)

“Please, take a seat. Would you like some tea and biscuits?” Charlie’s father asked once we were properly introduced. Gladwin Higgs was tall like Charlie, though a bit more muscular. He also bore a respectable beard and moustache. We were taken to the living room and asked to get comfortable on the three-seater couch. Charlie and Luce sat on armchairs on either side of us. Charlie’s mother had gone to the office upstairs to grab extra chairs for her and her husband.

“Sure, thank you,” Oli replied shyly.

“Ok. I’ll be back shortly. Please make yourselves at home.” Charlie’s father left towards the kitchen. His mother appeared soon afterwards.

“Thank you for coming over. Charlie has been very enthusiastic about his new friends,” she told us, arranging the office chairs so that she and her husband would be facing Oli and I. Charlie’s mum was small and skinny, but she must have been quite strong to be able to carry two big swivelling chairs down the stairs without breaking a sweat. Her name was Cassandra, and when she was introduced to us, she said that her mother had chosen that name in hopes that she would have some kind of supernatural power, though she quickly reassured us that those hopes had never materialised.

“Thank you for having us.” Oli took over the conversation again. I was surprised that he could speak so freely despite the nerve wreck I knew him to be just then. Maybe it was because of Luce’s reassurance that he would not be misgendered, or just because this was such an important thing for him that he could not afford to be shy. Either way, it made me see a new kind of strength coming from my boyfriend, and I was proud of it. “I hope it’s ok to ask some questions…”

“Of course it is. You can ask anything you want here. Gladwin and I spent Charlie’s early childhood answering all sorts of questions about intersex babies and why genital mutilation surgeries in new-borns who are not at risk is a horrible human rights violation. I think by now we’ve had enough training to be able to help you out.”

Thankfully Charlie’s father arrived right on time to save us from immediately asking awkward questions about babies and genital surgeries. I was grossed out by the topic, though unfortunately Oli seemed more curious than disgusted. As soon as he had sipped his tea and swallowed his first two chocolate biscuits, the questions started. And obviously they involved the oh-so-not-embarrassing-word ‘genital’.

“They do genital mutilation on babies?”

“They do on intersex babies whose genitals don’t look clearly like a penis or a vulva. The most common rule of thumb seems to be that if there are no visible testicles they’ll make a vulva of whatever is there, but if they can see and touch two tiny testies and some sort of penis-like structure, they’ll call it a penile malformation and try to correct it without even daring to acknowledge that the baby is intersex. At least that’s what we figured out after talking to lots of parents whose children were born like Charlie.”

I was already weirded out and freaked out by the mention of the word ‘genital’, but as soon as my brain started to picture what Charlie’s mum was talking about, I became effectively nauseous. Against my better judgement, I drank some of my tea to try hiding my discomfort.

“So Charlie was born with some kind of tiny penis? I mean, I shouldn’t be asking those things because you don’t like to speak about it…” Oli said, looking at his own knees due to embarrassment.

“I don’t like to talk about my genitals near Jean and people who don’t get what I’m saying. I think it’s ok for you to know now. As a general rule we shouldn’t ask people about their genitals unless they touch on the subject first,” Charlie answered, and Oli managed to face him again. “I was born with testicles and a thing that could have been a penis, but it was a bit small and curved at the tip, like a really big clitoris. My urethra comes out from the base of that penis-clit thing, and there’s a hole under it that pretty much resembles a vagina, though it’s shallow and doesn’t lead anywhere. When I was about ten, they found by accident a kind of tiny uterus-to-be structure in my pelvis too. Isn’t that cool?”

Actually, it was more scary than cool for me, but I was not going to tell Charlie that. I could not even imagine what he was saying. How could someone have a penis-that-was-not-a-penis, a vagina, testicles and a uterus and still talk about it like it was the coolest thing in the world? Never mind the squeak of thinking about ‘vaginas’ and ‘uterus’ and ‘testicles’ and ‘genitals’ all at once. This whole thing was quite scary.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool!” Oli agreed, sounding fascinated with the whole subject. Good for him. I knew I should not be feeling so badly, but there was just too much internalised shame about the subject for me. I guess I envied Oli a little, under all the squeamish feelings. “The doctors didn’t touch you, then?”

“They tried,” Charlie’s mother answered. “God knows how much they tried. They weren’t going to let me see my baby when he was born, they took him aside and said there was a tiny complication they needed to sort out before we could have her.”

“But I was there too, and I saw Charlie being born and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. I forced the doctor to explain exactly what he was going to do to our baby and we refused to let him do it,” Charlie’s father continued. “Without our consent he couldn’t do anything.”

“He tried to convince us that not doing anything would mean Charlie would be shamed in changing rooms because of her small penis and would have lots of psychological problems because he would be so different from everyone else,” the mother said. The way the couple completed each other’s story seemed like they had told the same thing over and over again, to the point it had become part of their subconscious. “Though as we confirmed later, if Charlie had had a surgery, he would still feel different because of the scars and would still be shamed in locker rooms because of said scars. And then there was the risk of the surgeries destroying any possibility of a sexual life, or from getting pleasure from sex.”

I desperately drank more of my tea. First genitals, now sex. I had been prepared to talk about coming out to Oli’s family and school, not to receive a complete Intersex 101 course. Though once I put my personal issues aside, I did feel terrible for the children who had to go through this kind of thing, and felt lucky I was not one of them.

I think deep down I knew that my parents would not hesitate to let the doctors do whatever it took to make me more ‘like a man’. So if I had been one of them…

“Are you ok, Oscar? You look awfully pale…” Oli asked me, putting a hand on my forehead.

“No, I’m fine. It’s just… This is horrible.” My father would not think twice before mutilating my body if it meant he could have the perfect son he dreamed of. “I can’t believe people do this…” He would do this. And he would never feel guilty.

“Doctors are very good at making parents scared,” Charlie’s father explained. “They say without surgery their child will never be normal, and make them believe that they would be horrible parents for not wanting their child to have a chance to be normal. Doctors are horrified by the idea that some medical conditions don’t need treatment.”

“Or that it’s possible to be happy the way Charlie is happy.” This time, it was Luce who spoke. “It’s all in about how the people around you treat you. Like, if people call you a freak, you’ll think you’re a freak. If people tell you it’s ok to be that way, even if you’re different from the others, then you’ll think it’s ok.”

“When I was a child mum and dad taught me that being different was a great thing, that I was free to be who I really was, and that’s what I did.”

“That’s so cool!” Oli looked from Charlie to his parents with almost worshipping, teary eyes. “My parents kind of say this to me to, but… But they don’t mean the same thing you do.”

“How do you know that?” Ms Higgs asked.

“Mum is very keen on saying that girls can be the same as boys. She always said those things to me to make me feel better about being not-girly and not liking the same things as the other girls did.”

“Well, she’s right,” Luce said.

“She could be saying things that way because she thinks you are a girl, and is trying her best to make that girl feel better,” Mr Higgs suggested. “Maybe once she learns who you really are, she’ll say the same thing, but using different words.”

“But what if she tells me I have to be a girl because just liking guy things doesn’t make me a guy?” Oli was getting nervous. He slumped against me, and I caressed his hair to show I was there for him.

“Well, liking guy things doesn’t actually make you one.” This time it was Charlie who answered. “If she says that, we can say that she’s absolutely right, because what makes you a guy is that you feel from deep inside you that you are one. I don’t think she can argue with that.”

“And if she does, you can come to us again and we’ll help her understand things better,” Ms Higgs promised.

“Thank you.” Oli was not completely reassured, but he let himself be distracted by stories of Charlie’s childhood and the Higgs’ family activism. Ms and Mr Higgs were both lawyers who, before Charlie came along, specialised in race-motivated hate crimes. They still occasionally worked on these areas, but since Charlie’s birth they had effectively become full-time intersex rights advocates. Charlie sometimes worked with his parents, and had plenty of experience with telling his story to rooms full of people. Their family unity and motivation fascinated me, and more than once during our conversation I caught angry, jealous sparks coming from the depths of my mind.

My parents had been activists too. When I was younger, they did all they could to fight against racism and to create a better world for their dark-skinned child. I used to be grateful and proud of them for it, but now… Charlie’s parents had fought racism too (and had suffered it much more than my white German father), but they also took on the fight for other groups. They supported Charlie and learned everything they could to help their child. They fought against racism and for intersex rights, and they fought specifically for the rights of intersex people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Whereas my father thought he was the greatest human being on Earth because he dared be a white straight man fighting against the people who picked on his wife. He was really not so great after all…

(...)

“Oh, I think I see my parents!” Luce exclaimed mid-tea sipping. She managed to avoid a huge spillage as she ran to the window and waved at the two people coming to the front of the house. “Mum, dad, we’ll be over soon!” Her parents smiled and nodded before making their way to their front door.

“I guess we should get going, then…?” Charlie asked his friend.

“Yeah, by the time we reach the living room, they’ll be ready. I think Lucius has taken care of most of it anyway.” Luce motioned for Oli and I to get up. We only had time to say a quick good-bye to Charlie’s parents before they took us upstairs.

“Aren’t we going to Luce’s house?” Oli asked as Luce dragged him up the stairs with far too much enthusiasm. We were in a long corridor extending to the left with three doors facing us. Charlie walked us right to the end of the corridor and opened a door coloured half blue, half pink.

“Yes, we are, but we’re going to use our special entrance,” Charlie announced, inviting us inside his room. “The best thing of having Luce for a neighbour is that we can visit each other any time we like, and we don’t even need to bother our parents about it.”

Charlie’s room was decorated with lots of plush toys, posters from bands I had very little knowledge of, and ‘activist’ posters with slogans and images about LGBTI rights. Most of those were actually about minority ethnic LGBTI people, which I found strangely comforting. There was a reasonably big closet with one door half-open, which allowed me to see that it contained at least a couple of random costumes. To our left there was an area of the wall covered by a thick velvet blue curtain, and it was where Charlie led us. He pushed the curtains aside to reveal another door; this one was adorned by princess stickers and childish drawings of castles and ponies.

“We put this door here when we were twelve,” Luce explained. “I wanted an easy way to sneak in Charlie’s room to play princess dress-up, but what we told my parents back then was that I wanted a friend who was always within reach. Only Charlie and I have the keys to this door, so my family would not be able to spy on me.” As she said it, Luce opened the door and we caught the first glimpse of her bedroom. It was mostly covered in pastel pink and white, though she had a few of the same LGBTI posters that Charlie had, including the ones about minority ethnic LGBTI people. I felt weirdly safe in their rooms, like the posters were somehow reassuring me that I was not going to be treated badly, despite being surrounded by pink and girly things.

“After Luce came out we kept using the door, but it became much less secretive.”

“How was your coming out?” Oli asked Luce. He seemed a bit subdued by the excess girlyness in the room, but not necessarily uncomfortable. I guess he just did not like pink.

“I could tell you all about it now, but I think my parents want to have the pleasure. Shall we go downstairs to meet them?” Oli seemed eager to get out of Luce’s room, so we all made our way downstairs again. Luce’s living room also doubled as a kitchen, with the cooker, the fridge, counters, and microwave against the wall linked to Charlie’s house, and a dining table towards the back of the room. A big corner couch that seated five was positioned in the middle of the room facing both a large screen TV and the window to the back garden. The walls were decorated by family portraits of all shapes and sizes, but the biggest and most impressive one was of a slightly younger Luce in a beautiful blue dress. She looked like a princess.

“Hello, everyone, it is nice to meet you,” Luce’s mother said, focusing on Oli and me. “I saw you were just having tea and biscuits over at Cassandra’s, but if you want more, just let us know.”

“I think we’re fine now, but thanks,” Oli said, once again making the effort to speak first. We sat on the couch, and Luce’s parents took chairs from the dining table to join us.

“Oli here wants to know the story of my coming out,” Luce stated rather bluntly as a way to start the conversation. “He wants to come out to his own family soon, and hopes we can help him.”

“I see. Well, sit tight, lad, ‘cause it’s a hell of a story!” Luce’s father answered, laughing wholeheartedly. He and his wife soon began to tell their stories. Luce and Charlie made comments every now and then, but the narrative was mostly Mr Hanson’s doing. He was a very good story-teller, and we were soon completely absorbed in it, as if we were listening to a fairy tale.

(...)

Back then we called our daughter ‘Luke’. Those were strange times, when I think about them now. ‘Luke’ seemed like a reasonably happy lad; ‘he’ was just a bit shy. We thought it was because ‘he’ was the youngest of three brothers and felt Lucius and Lugh overshadowed ‘him’. Then we moved here, and ‘Luke’ met Charlie. We all thought Charlie was just like other boys when he first met him. It tells you how we suck at reading people!

But we were glad ‘Luke’ had found a friend so fast, and right at our doorstep! We let ‘him’ play over at Charlie’s as much as ‘he’ wanted; Charlie was also better at school than ‘Luke’, so he could only be a good influence for our child. At least that we got right!

Luce was fourteen when she told us. That means she spent three years developing her true self and building the courage to own it. That day, she came home with Charlie, Cassandra and Gladwin, and told us she wanted to talk. She had chosen that day because Lucius would be on a break from university, and so would be staying with us for a while. We all sat in this very same living room, with Luce hanging on to Charlie for dear life. Luvinia and I were completely clueless about what was causing our baby so much pain, and so we got scared.

Luce started crying before she could say anything. She couldn’t face us and form the words she wanted to say, because she was so scared. She had never been more scared in her life, and it was making us just as scared too.

In the end, it was Charlie who brought up the subject. We already knew she liked to wear girl’s things every now and then, so she used this topic to start the conversation.

“One day when we were playing dress-up, Luke decided to put on a dress to see what it was like,” Charlie told us. Our own child could not face us. She buried her head in Charlie’s shoulder, and in return Charlie caressed her hair. It was painful to watch our child suffer and not be able to do anything. By that point I had already guessed that Luce’s pain was somehow related to us, and it was one of the worst feelings imaginable. “Luke really liked the dress, and the make-up, and all the girly things I have. The more we played with them, the more Luke realised something…” Charlie tried to goad our child into talking to us then, but Luce only cried harder. For a moment Charlie did not seem sure of what to do, if he should continue and be the one to out Luce, or wait until our daughter was ready to do so herself. So his parents acted on his behalf.

“As you can see, your child is going through a very difficult moment right now,” Cassandra told us. “Luke is afraid you will not love him any more. There’s something your child wants to tell you, but can’t do so because of the fear of losing you.”

“Why would you be afraid of that?” Luvinia asked. My wife was almost crying too, she could not bear see our baby suffering so much. “Luke, my dear, there’s nothing you can do that will make us stop loving you. You’re our baby son, our most precious thing.”

Luce laughed a bit at that. We thought we had done a good job with our reassurance, but we had just missed on a great irony. “Actually, mum, I don’t think I’m really your son,” was what she told us.

“What do you mean? You think you are adopted?” This was the first thing that popped into our minds. If this was what Luce feared, we could show her all the pregnancy photos, the shots we took in the maternity ward with Lugh and Lucius holding their tiny sibling. We had many ideas of how to help our child with that.

But unfortunately, we had no idea about how to help her with the real problem.

“No, that’s not it.” Luce buried her face further into Charlie’s shoulder. We had to strain our ears to hear what she said next. “I think I’m your daughter.”

It felt like a bomb falling over my head. I cannot lie, my first reaction was not very positive. I had been really proud of my three boys, of the fact that I had three boys. Back then I did not know how problematic it was. I just had that pride, and it was suddenly shattered. A daughter did not seem to fit the image I had of our family.

But Luce was crying in front of me, afraid to look me in the eyes, and so the next thing I felt was fear. Would she ever be all right? Would she ever be safe? All I knew about trans women at that point was that they ended up dead with their picture all over the tabloids because they liked to trick men into having sex with them. Was my dear child going to be like that too? Would I see her bloody face in a tabloid head line in a couple of years?

“You can see how scared you child is right now,” Gladwin was reading my mind. Then, I did not know how much experience he had dealing with parents of transgender and intersex children. Of course he would know exactly what was going through my head. “Luke is afraid of rejection right now, not even thinking about the future and the people outside of this house. You might be scared now because you don’t know what is going on, or because you think your child has been doomed to a life of pain.”

“You have a transgender child,” Cassandra told us. “But it is not the end of the world. Before you say anything to Luke, I want you to forget everything you think you know about transgender people and focus on your child. If you are scared for Luke’s safety, remember that home should be the safest place of all, and that your child will have a much more difficult journey ahead if this safety is denied here.”

I took Cassandra’s words to heart. I was indeed scared for my child, worried that Luce faced an early death. But it was also true that it was up to me and Luvinia to make sure there was at least one place where my daughter would be safe. I could help protect Luce; I could help her get through a life I was still completely clueless about.

“Luke, I can’t say I’m not scared and worried…” I started. Gladwin and Cassandra shot me warning looks, but I smiled at them. I was not going to reject my child. “But I love you no matter what. You’re still my baby. I want you to be safe.”

“I love you too,” Luvinia said. “I’m not going to stop loving you for this.”

Luce finally looked at us. We smiled as much as we could, but a flood of tears blurred my vision and made my cheeks move on their own. We got up and pulled her for a hug, and Lugh and Lucius joined us. They said they would love their baby sister no matter what, and the whole family stood in this pool of love and tears for seemingly forever.

After that, Gladwin and Cassandra talked us through what kind of treatments Luce could get, and what we could do to help her feel better. The next day, Luvinia and I took her to the Gender Identity Clinic to ask for an appointment, and Lugh and Lucius repainted their sister’s room all in pink and white, with a princess theme. It took us a while to get used to her new name and pronouns, but we did our best, and soon it was no longer an issue.

Over the next couple of months, Luce was admitted to the Gender Identity Clinic. She was too young to start the proper hormone treatment, but she was given hormone blockers to stop her testosterone-driven puberty. Luce was soon transformed from a shy boy to an exuberant teenage girl, with a vibrant energy that contaminated those around her. Luvinia and I were so marvelled by her transformation that we did not have time to mourn the son we once though we lost.

But the truth is that we never really lost a son. We never had that son in the first place. What we witnessed with Luce’s coming out was our daughter finally being free to show who she really was, like a beautiful butterfly coming out of her cocoon.

The fear is not completely gone, though. Now that I am much more aware of the difficulties faced by people like my daughter, I cannot help but worry for her. The difference is that now I know I have helped Luce become a lot stronger and able to deal with problems as they come along, and I know that Luce will always come to her safest place if she ever needs help. Knowing that I can be such an important part of her life is why I wanted to be a parent in the first place. I have my children so I can love them and support them.

This is the story of Luce’s coming out, and how it made me a better parent and a better person.