They loved Lucie
At the center of a tabloid-style news story was a daughter and friend.
David Koon
Updated: 8/13/2009
http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=a85bcac1-4a99-4514-bc35-1c79204a6d8bThere are some things we need to get out of the way, up front.
First: When she died on July 11, Lucie Hamilton was a woman, but not in the biological sense.
A little over twenty years ago, she was born as a little boy named David. At age 10 or 11, David came out to his mother as gay. Sometime between junior and senior high school, he told her that he believed he was transgender — essentially a girl trapped in a boy's skin — and that he wanted to live his life someday as a woman.
In talking with Lucie's mother and friends, there is an odd moment when their pronouns flip; when they stop talking about "him" and start talking about "her." Even for them, it can get a bit tangled. For a straight person with no transgender friends, hearing them talk like that — trying to wrap your mind around the idea that gender might be more than XX or XY — can make you feel like your brain has done a slow and deliberate barrel roll inside your skull.
