I Believed That I Identified As a Homosexual Woman - The Legendary Artist Enabled Me to Discover the Actual Situation

Back in 2011, a few years ahead of the acclaimed David Bowie exhibition launched at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I declared myself a gay woman. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, with one partner I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself nearing forty-five, a freshly divorced mother of four, making my home in the US.

Throughout this phase, I had commenced examining both my personal gender and romantic inclinations, searching for answers.

My birthplace was England during the dawn of the seventies era - before the internet. During our youth, my friends and I didn't have online forums or YouTube to turn to when we had curiosities about intimacy; conversely, we turned toward music icons, and throughout the eighties, artists were playing with gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer sported masculine attire, Boy George adopted women's fashion, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured members who were openly gay.

I craved his narrow hips and precise cut, his angular jaw and flat chest. I sought to become the artist's German phase

During the nineties, I passed my days operating a motorcycle and wearing androgynous clothing, but I went back to conventional female presentation when I decided to wed. My husband relocated us to the America in 2007, but when the union collapsed I felt an irresistible pull returning to the male identity I had earlier relinquished.

Since nobody experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I chose to use some leisure time during a seasonal visit back to the UK at the V&A, with the expectation that perhaps he could provide clarity.

I lacked clarity specifically what I was looking for when I entered the exhibition - perhaps I hoped that by losing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, consequently, encounter a hint about my own identity.

I soon found myself facing a modest display where the music video for "the iconic song" was playing on repeat. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the foreground, looking polished in a slate-colored ensemble, while positioned laterally three backing singers dressed in drag gathered around a microphone.

In contrast to the drag queens I had witnessed firsthand, these ladies weren't sashaying around the stage with the confidence of natural performers; instead they looked disinterested and irritated. Positioned as supporting acts, they had gum in their mouths and expressed annoyance at the boredom of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie voiced happily, seemingly unaware to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a momentary pang of empathy for the supporting artists, with their thick cosmetics, ill-fitting wigs and constricting garments.

They gave the impression of as uncomfortable as I did in women's clothes - annoyed and restless, as if they were longing for it all to be over. Precisely when I recognized my alignment with three individuals presenting as female, one of them ripped off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Revelation. (Of course, there were two other David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I desired to shed all constraints and become Bowie too. I craved his slender frame and his sharp haircut, his strong features and his male chest; I sought to become the slim-silhouetted, Bowie's German period. However I was unable to, because to authentically transform into Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Announcing my identity as gay was a different challenge, but personal transformation was a considerably more daunting possibility.

I required further time before I was ready. During that period, I made every effort to become more masculine: I abandoned beauty products and threw away all my feminine garments, trimmed my tresses and began donning masculine outfits.

I sat differently, changed my stride, and changed my name and pronouns, but I stopped short of medical intervention - the potential for denial and regret had left me paralysed with fear.

When the David Bowie exhibition concluded its international run with a engagement in Brooklyn, New York, five years later, I returned. I had arrived at a crisis. I was unable to continue acting to be a person I wasn't.

Positioned before the same video in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the issue wasn't my clothes, it was my physical form. I wasn't simply a tomboy; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been wearing drag all his life. I desired to change into the individual in the stylish outfit, performing under lights, and now I realized that I could.

I booked myself in to see a medical professional not long after. It took additional years before my transition was complete, but none of the fears I worried about materialized.

I continue to possess many of my feminine mannerisms, so people often mistake me for a gay man, but I accept this. I desired the liberty to explore expression following Bowie's example - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I am able to.