I Was Convinced Myself to Be a Homosexual Woman - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Discover the Actual Situation

In 2011, a few years prior to the acclaimed David Bowie display opened at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I came out as a gay woman. Up to that point, I had only been with men, including one I had wed. After a couple of years, I found myself nearing forty-five, a recently separated parent to four children, living in the America.

During this period, I had started questioning both my personal gender and sexual orientation, seeking out answers.

My birthplace was England during the beginning of the seventies - prior to digital connectivity. During our youth, my peers and I lacked access to social platforms or YouTube to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; instead, we turned toward celebrity musicians, and in that decade, musicians were experimenting with gender norms.

Annie Lennox sported boys' clothes, The flamboyant singer adopted girls' clothes, and bands such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were publicly out.

I wanted his slender frame and sharp haircut, his defined jawline and flat chest. I aimed to personify the Bowie's Berlin period

In that decade, I lived driving a bike and adopting masculine styles, but I reverted back to traditional womanhood when I opted for marriage. My husband moved our family to the United States in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an undeniable attraction back towards the male identity I had once given up.

Considering that no artist challenged norms to the extent of David Bowie, I chose to use some leisure time during a seasonal visit back to the UK at the museum, hoping that possibly he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know precisely what I was seeking when I stepped inside the show - maybe I thought that by losing myself in the opulence of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, consequently, encounter a clue to my true nature.

Before long I was standing in front of a small television screen where the visual presentation for "Boys Keep Swinging" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the foreground, looking sharp in a dark grey suit, while positioned laterally three supporting vocalists wearing women's clothing crowded round a microphone.

Differing from the performers I had witnessed firsthand, these ladies failed to move around the stage with the poise of born divas; rather they looked disinterested and irritated. Relegated to the background, they were chewing and showed impatience at the monotony of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, seemingly unaware to their diminished energy. I felt a momentary pang of empathy for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, awkward hairpieces and constricting garments.

They seemed to experience as ill-at-ease as I did in female clothing - annoyed and restless, as if they were hoping for it all to end. Just as I recognized my alignment with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them tore off her wig, removed the cosmetics from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Naturally, there were further David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I wanted to shed all constraints and emulate the artist. I wanted his lean physique and his precise cut, his angular jaw and his masculine torso; I wanted to embody the slender-shaped, artist's Berlin phase. Nevertheless I found myself incapable, because to authentically transform into Bowie, first I would have to become a man.

Announcing my identity as gay was a different challenge, but gender transition was a considerably more daunting outlook.

It took me additional years before I was willing. In the meantime, I tried my hardest to embrace manhood: I abandoned beauty products and threw away all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and started wearing masculine outfits.

I altered how I sat, modified my gait, and adopted new identifiers, but I paused at surgical procedures - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had left me paralysed with fear.

After the David Bowie exhibition completed its global journey with a engagement in the American metropolis, after half a decade, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the identical footage in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the problem wasn't about my clothing, it was my biological self. I wasn't simply a tomboy; I was a feminine man who'd been wearing drag all his life. I wanted to transform myself into the man in the sharp suit, dancing in the spotlight, and at that moment I understood that I was able to.

I made arrangements to see a physician soon after. It took another few years before my personal journey finished, but not a single concern I feared occurred.

I still have many of my feminine mannerisms, so individuals frequently misidentify me for a queer man, but I'm OK with that. I wanted the freedom to play with gender as Bowie had - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I can.