I Was Convinced Myself to Be a Gay Woman - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Discover the Truth

In 2011, several years ahead of the renowned David Bowie exhibition launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I declared myself a lesbian. Until that moment, I had only been with 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.

During this period, I had started questioning both my gender identity and romantic inclinations, looking to find answers.

Born in England during the early 1970s - before the internet. During our youth, my peers and I didn't have Reddit or YouTube to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; conversely, we turned toward celebrity musicians, and during the 80s, everyone was playing with gender norms.

Annie Lennox sported boys' clothes, The Culture Club frontman embraced feminine outfits, and bands such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured members who were openly gay.

I craved his slender frame and precise cut, his defined jawline and male chest. I aimed to personify the Bowie's Berlin period

Throughout the 90s, I lived operating a motorcycle and dressing like a tomboy, but I reverted back to conventional female presentation when I opted for marriage. My partner relocated us to the America in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an undeniable attraction returning to the male identity I had previously abandoned.

Since nobody played with gender quite like David Bowie, I chose to use some leisure time during a summer trip visiting Britain at the museum, with the expectation that maybe he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know precisely what I was searching for when I entered the exhibition - maybe I thought that by submerging my consciousness in the extravagance of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, consequently, discover a hint about my own identity.

I soon found myself positioned before a modest display where the music video for "that track" was continuously looping. Bowie was moving with assurance in the primary position, looking polished in a dark grey suit, while to the side three supporting vocalists dressed in drag clustered near a microphone.

Differing from the drag queens I had encountered in real life, these female-presenting individuals didn't glide around the stage with the poise of natural performers; instead they looked disinterested and irritated. Relegated to the background, they had gum in their mouths and rolled their eyes at the tedium of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie voiced happily, seemingly unaware to their reduced excitement. I felt a momentary pang of empathy for the accompanying performers, with their thick cosmetics, awkward hairpieces and constricting garments.

They seemed to experience as awkward as I did in feminine attire - irritated and impatient, as if they were longing for it all to be over. At the moment when I realized I was identifying with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them removed her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Surprise. (Naturally, there were two other David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I was absolutely sure that I desired to shed all constraints and become Bowie too. I desired his narrow hips and his defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and his masculine torso; I aimed to personify the lean-figured, Bowie's German period. However I couldn't, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Coming out as homosexual was a different challenge, but gender transition was a much more frightening possibility.

It took me several more years before I was ready. In the meantime, I did my best to adopt male characteristics: I abandoned beauty products and eliminated all my skirts and dresses, trimmed my tresses and commenced using male attire.

I changed my seating posture, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I stopped short of surgical procedures - the potential for denial and remorse had left me paralysed with fear.

When the David Bowie display concluded its international run with a presentation in New York City, following that period, I returned. I had experienced a turning point. I was unable to continue acting to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the same video in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the challenge wasn't about my clothing, it was my physical form. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been presenting artificially since birth. I aimed to transition into the person in the polished attire, moving in the illumination, and then I comprehended that I had the capacity to.

I made arrangements to see a medical professional not long after. The process required another few years before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I anticipated came true.

I continue to possess many of my feminine mannerisms, so people often mistake me for a gay man, but I accept this. I sought the ability to play with gender as Bowie had - and since I'm at peace with myself, I can.