I Thought I Was a Gay Woman - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Realize the Reality

During 2011, several years before the celebrated David Bowie display launched at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in England, I came out as a homosexual woman. Until that moment, I had solely pursued relationships with men, including one I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself nearing forty-five, a newly single parent to four children, making my home in the United States.

At that time, I had started questioning both my gender identity and romantic inclinations, searching for answers.

I entered the world in England during the dawn of the seventies era - pre-world wide web. As teenagers, my friends and I lacked access to online forums or video sharing sites to turn to when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we turned toward celebrity musicians, and in that decade, musicians were challenging gender norms.

Annie Lennox wore boys' clothes, Boy George embraced girls' clothes, and musical acts such as well-known groups featured performers who were publicly out.

I wanted his lean physique and sharp haircut, his strong features and male chest. I wanted to embody the Berlin-era Bowie

During the nineties, I lived driving a bike and wearing androgynous clothing, but I went back to femininity when I decided to wed. My husband relocated us to the United States in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an powerful draw returning to the manhood I had earlier relinquished.

Considering that no artist experimented with identity to the extent of David Bowie, I chose to devote an open day during a warm-weather journey returning to England at the museum, with the expectation that possibly he could provide clarity.

I was uncertain exactly what I was looking for when I walked into the show - maybe I thought that by submerging my consciousness in the extravagance of Bowie's identity exploration, I might, consequently, stumble across a clue to my personal self.

I soon found myself positioned before a compact monitor where the film clip for "that track" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was moving with assurance in the foreground, looking sharp in a slate-colored ensemble, while off to one side three accompanying performers dressed in drag clustered near a microphone.

Differing from the drag queens I had seen personally, these characters weren't sashaying around the stage with the self-assurance of born divas; rather they looked bored and annoyed. Positioned as supporting acts, they chewed gum and showed impatience at the boredom of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, apparently oblivious to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a momentary pang of understanding for the supporting artists, with their thick cosmetics, awkward hairpieces and too-tight dresses.

They seemed to experience as awkward as I did in women's clothes - annoyed and restless, as if they were hoping for it all to be over. Just as I understood I connected with three men dressed in drag, one of them ripped off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Revelation. (Naturally, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I aimed to remove everything and emulate the artist. I desired his narrow hips and his sharp haircut, his angular jaw and his male chest; I aimed to personify the slender-shaped, Bowie's German period. Nevertheless I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would have to become a man.

Announcing my identity as queer was one thing, but gender transition was a considerably more daunting prospect.

I required further time before I was prepared. During that period, I tried my hardest to embrace manhood: I abandoned beauty products and eliminated all my feminine garments, shortened my locks and commenced using men's clothes.

I sat differently, walked differently, and changed my name and pronouns, but I paused at medical intervention - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had rendered me immobile with anxiety.

After the David Bowie exhibition finished its world tour with a stint in Brooklyn, New York, following that period, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be something I was not.

Facing the identical footage in 2018, I became completely convinced that the challenge wasn't my clothes, it was my physical form. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been in costume all his life. I wanted to transform myself into the individual in the stylish outfit, performing under lights, and then I comprehended that I had the capacity to.

I booked myself in to see a doctor soon after. The process required another few years before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I feared materialized.

I maintain many of my traditional womanly traits, so others regularly misinterpret me for a gay man, but I accept this. I sought the ability to explore expression as Bowie had - and now that I'm comfortable in my body, I have that capacity.