I Thought Myself to Be a Gay Woman - David Bowie Enabled Me to Realize the Truth

During 2011, a couple of years prior to the acclaimed David Bowie show launched at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I declared myself a homosexual woman. Previously, I had exclusively dated men, including one I had wed. By 2013, I found myself in my early 40s, a recently separated mother of four, making my home in the United States.

During this period, I had begun to doubt both my gender identity and attraction preferences, looking to find answers.

My birthplace was England during the dawn of the seventies era - before the internet. As teenagers, my companions and myself were without social platforms or YouTube to consult when we had questions about sex; conversely, we looked to pop stars, and throughout the eighties, artists were experimenting with gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer donned masculine attire, The flamboyant singer adopted women's fashion, and bands such as well-known groups featured performers who were publicly out.

I wanted his lean physique and sharp haircut, his defined jawline and flat chest. I wanted to embody the Bowie's Berlin period

During the nineties, I passed my days driving a bike and dressing like a tomboy, but I went back to conventional female presentation when I decided to wed. My spouse moved our family to the United States in 2007, but when the union collapsed I felt an powerful draw back towards the male identity I had earlier relinquished.

Given that no one experimented with identity to the extent of David Bowie, I chose to devote an open day during a warm-weather journey visiting Britain at the museum, anticipating that maybe he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know precisely what I was looking for when I entered the exhibition - possibly I anticipated that by immersing myself in the richness of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, as a result, stumble across a clue to my personal self.

Before long I was positioned before a small television screen where the visual presentation for "the iconic song" was playing on repeat. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the front, looking stylish in a dark grey suit, while positioned laterally three supporting vocalists in feminine attire clustered near a microphone.

In contrast to the entertainers I had encountered in real life, these ladies didn't glide around the stage with the self-assurance of natural performers; conversely they looked disinterested and irritated. Relegated to the background, they were chewing and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie voiced happily, apparently oblivious to their reduced excitement. I felt a brief sensation of empathy for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, ill-fitting wigs and too-tight dresses.

They appeared to feel as ill-at-ease as I did in women's clothes - irritated and impatient, as if they were hoping for it all to be over. Just as I recognized my alignment with three men dressed in drag, one of them ripped off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Shocker. (Naturally, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I knew for certain that I wanted to remove everything and become Bowie too. I desired his slender frame and his defined hairstyle, his strong features and his flat chest; I wanted to embody the lean-figured, Berlin-era Bowie. However I found myself incapable, because to authentically transform into Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Coming out as homosexual was a separate matter, but transitioning was a significantly scarier outlook.

It took me further time before I was prepared. In the meantime, I did my best to embrace manhood: I ceased using cosmetics and threw away all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and commenced using male attire.

I changed my seating posture, walked differently, and adopted new identifiers, but I halted before hormonal treatment - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had rendered me immobile with anxiety.

After the David Bowie show concluded its international run with a presentation in New York City, following that period, I revisited. I had reached a breaking point. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the identical footage in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the challenge wasn't my clothes, it was my physical form. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a feminine man who'd been wearing drag throughout his existence. I wanted to transform myself into the person in the polished attire, moving in the illumination, and then I comprehended that I could.

I scheduled an appointment to see a physician shortly afterwards. It took another few years before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I feared occurred.

I maintain many of my female characteristics, so others regularly misinterpret me for a queer man, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I sought the ability to experiment with identity as Bowie had - and since I'm content with my physical form, I can.