I Believed Myself to Be a Gay Woman - The Legendary Artist Helped Me Uncover the Actual Situation

In 2011, a couple of years prior to the renowned David Bowie show launched at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in England, I declared myself a homosexual woman. Until that moment, I had solely pursued relationships with men, one of whom I had wed. Two years later, I found myself in my early 40s, a recently separated parent to four children, living in the United States.

Throughout this phase, I had begun to doubt both my sense of self and attraction preferences, searching for understanding.

I entered the world in England during the early 1970s - before the internet. When we were young, my friends and I didn't have social platforms or YouTube to consult when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we turned toward pop stars, and throughout the eighties, musicians were challenging gender norms.

Annie Lennox wore boys' clothes, Boy George wore girls' clothes, and pop groups such as popular ensembles featured artists who were proudly homosexual.

I craved his slender frame and precise cut, his angular jaw and masculine torso. I wanted to embody the Berlin-era Bowie

During the nineties, I lived operating a motorcycle and adopting masculine styles, but I went back to conventional female presentation when I decided to wed. My partner moved our family to the United States in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an powerful draw revisiting the manhood I had earlier relinquished.

Considering that no artist played with gender to the extent of David Bowie, I opted to use some leisure time during a warm-weather journey visiting Britain at the gallery, with the expectation that maybe he could provide clarity.

I was uncertain precisely what I was looking for when I walked into the show - perhaps I hoped that by immersing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, consequently, stumble across a insight into my true nature.

Quickly I discovered myself positioned before a compact monitor where the music video for "the iconic song" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was performing confidently in the front, looking polished in a charcoal outfit, while positioned laterally three accompanying performers dressed in drag gathered around a microphone.

Unlike the drag queens I had encountered in real life, these ladies failed to move around the stage with the confidence of natural performers; instead they looked bored and annoyed. Positioned as supporting acts, they were chewing and showed impatience at the monotony of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie voiced happily, apparently oblivious to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a fleeting feeling of connection for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, awkward hairpieces and too-tight dresses.

They appeared to feel as uncomfortable as I did in female clothing - annoyed and restless, as if they were hoping for it all to end. At the moment when I understood I connected with three men dressed in drag, one of them tore off her wig, removed the cosmetics from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Shocker. (Understandably, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I became completely convinced that I aimed to shed all constraints and transform like Bowie. I desired his narrow hips and his precise cut, his defined jawline and his masculine torso; I aimed to personify the slim-silhouetted, Bowie's German period. Nevertheless I was unable to, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Declaring myself as homosexual was one thing, but gender transition was a much more frightening possibility.

It took me several more years before I was prepared. Meanwhile, I made every effort to become more masculine: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and started wearing men's clothes.

I sat differently, modified my gait, and adopted new identifiers, but I halted before hormonal treatment - the possibility of rejection and regret had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

Once the David Bowie display finished its world tour with a engagement in Brooklyn, New York, five years later, I returned. I had reached a breaking point. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be an identity that didn't fit.

Standing in front of the identical footage in 2018, I knew for certain that the challenge wasn't about my clothing, it was my body. I wasn't simply a tomboy; I was a male with feminine qualities who'd been in costume since birth. I wanted to transform myself into the individual in the stylish outfit, moving in the illumination, and at that moment I understood that I had the capacity to.

I booked myself in to see a physician soon after. It took another few years before my personal journey finished, but none of the fears I feared materialized.

I continue to possess many of my traditional womanly traits, so individuals frequently misidentify me for a homosexual male, but I'm OK with that. I desired the liberty to experiment with identity as Bowie had - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I can.