I Thought I Was a Homosexual Woman - The Legendary Artist Made Me Uncover the Actual Situation

During 2011, several years ahead of the celebrated David Bowie exhibition opened at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I declared myself a gay woman. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, with one partner I had married. Two years later, I found myself approaching middle age, a freshly divorced mother of four, making my home in the United States.

During this period, I had begun to doubt both my sense of self and attraction preferences, searching for clarity.

I entered the world in England during the dawn of the seventies era - pre-world wide web. During our youth, my friends and I were without online forums or YouTube to reference when we had questions about sex; rather, we sought guidance from celebrity musicians, and during the 80s, everyone was playing with gender norms.

Annie Lennox sported male clothing, The Culture Club frontman adopted girls' clothes, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured members who were openly gay.

I desired his slender frame and defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and masculine torso. I wanted to embody the Berlin-era Bowie

Throughout the 90s, I lived riding a motorbike and adopting masculine styles, but I returned to conventional female presentation when I opted for marriage. My spouse relocated us to the America in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an irresistible pull revisiting the manhood I had previously abandoned.

Since nobody experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I chose to devote an open day during a warm-weather journey back to the UK at the V&A, hoping that possibly he could guide my understanding.

I didn't know exactly what I was seeking when I stepped inside the show - perhaps I hoped that by submerging my consciousness in the opulence of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, in turn, stumble across a insight into my true nature.

Before long I was facing a compact monitor where the visual presentation for "Boys Keep Swinging" was continuously looping. Bowie was moving with assurance in the primary position, looking polished in a slate-colored ensemble, while positioned laterally three supporting vocalists in feminine attire gathered around a microphone.

In contrast to the entertainers I had encountered in real life, these characters failed to move around the stage with the self-assurance of born divas; instead they looked bored and annoyed. Relegated to the background, they had gum in their mouths and rolled their eyes at the boredom of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie sang cheerfully, seemingly unaware to their diminished energy. I felt a brief sensation of empathy for the supporting artists, with their thick cosmetics, awkward hairpieces and constricting garments.

They appeared to feel as ill-at-ease as I did in women's clothes - irritated and impatient, as if they were longing for it all to conclude. Precisely when I realized I was identifying with three individuals presenting as female, one of them removed her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Understandably, there were further David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I became completely convinced that I wanted to rip it all off and transform like Bowie. I craved his slender frame and his precise cut, his strong features and his male chest; I wanted to embody the slim-silhouetted, artist's Berlin phase. However I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Declaring myself as queer was a different challenge, but gender transition was a much more frightening outlook.

It took me several more years before I was ready. Meanwhile, I did my best to become more masculine: I stopped wearing makeup and discarded all my women's clothing, trimmed my tresses and began donning male attire.

I altered how I sat, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I stopped short of medical intervention - the potential for denial and regret had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

Once the David Bowie display concluded its international run with a engagement in the American metropolis, following that period, I returned. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the same video in 2018, I became completely convinced that the problem didn't involve my attire, it was my biological self. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a male with feminine qualities who'd been in costume throughout his existence. I wanted to transform myself into the person in the polished attire, performing under lights, and then I comprehended that I had the capacity to.

I made arrangements to see a doctor soon after. I needed further time before my transition was complete, but none of the fears I worried about came true.

I continue to possess many of my traditional womanly traits, so others regularly misinterpret me for a queer man, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I wanted the freedom to play with gender following Bowie's example - and given that I'm at peace with myself, I can.