I Was Convinced That I Identified As a Gay Woman - The Music Icon Helped Me Discover the Actual Situation

During 2011, several years before the acclaimed David Bowie exhibition launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I came out as a gay woman. Until that moment, I had exclusively dated men, with one partner I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself in my early 40s, a newly single caregiver to four kids, making my home in the United States.

Throughout this phase, I had begun to doubt both my gender identity and attraction preferences, searching for answers.

Born in England during the dawn of the seventies era - prior to digital connectivity. When we were young, my friends and I didn't have online forums or YouTube to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we turned toward music icons, and in that decade, musicians were experimenting with gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer sported boys' clothes, The Culture Club frontman embraced girls' clothes, and bands such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured members who were openly gay.

I wanted his lean physique and defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and masculine torso. I wanted to embody the Berlin-era Bowie

During the nineties, I passed my days driving a bike and wearing androgynous clothing, but I went back to conventional female presentation when I decided to wed. My partner relocated us to the United States in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an undeniable attraction revisiting the masculinity I had earlier relinquished.

Given that no one experimented with identity to the extent of David Bowie, I opted to devote an open day during a summer trip returning to England at the V&A, with the expectation that perhaps he could provide clarity.

I was uncertain exactly what I was searching for when I entered the exhibition - possibly I anticipated that by immersing myself in the opulence of Bowie's identity exploration, I might, as a result, encounter a clue to my true nature.

Before long I was positioned before a modest display where the music video for "Boys Keep Swinging" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the foreground, looking polished in a slate-colored ensemble, while off to one side three backing singers in feminine attire gathered around a microphone.

Differing from the drag queens I had witnessed firsthand, these ladies failed to move around the stage with the poise of inherent stars; rather they looked bored and annoyed. Placed in secondary positions, they chewed gum and showed impatience at the monotony of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, seemingly unaware to their diminished energy. I felt a brief sensation of understanding for the supporting artists, with their thick cosmetics, ill-fitting wigs and restrictive outfits.

They gave the impression of as awkward as I did in female clothing - irritated and impatient, as if they were yearning for it all to end. Just as I realized I was identifying with three men dressed in drag, one of them tore off her wig, removed the cosmetics from her face, and revealed herself to be ... Bowie! Revelation. (Naturally, there were further David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I became completely convinced that I aimed to rip it all off and transform like Bowie. I craved his narrow hips and his sharp haircut, his strong features and his flat chest; I aimed to personify the slim-silhouetted, artist's Berlin phase. And yet I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would have to become a man.

Coming out as gay was a different challenge, but transitioning was a significantly scarier prospect.

I needed additional years before I was prepared. Meanwhile, I did my best to become more masculine: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my skirts and dresses, trimmed my tresses and commenced using men's clothes.

I changed my seating posture, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I stopped short of surgical procedures - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

After the David Bowie display concluded its international run with a stint in Brooklyn, New York, five years later, I revisited. I had arrived at a crisis. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be an identity that didn't fit.

Facing the identical footage in 2018, I became completely convinced that the challenge wasn't my clothes, it was my physical form. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a feminine man who'd been wearing drag since birth. I aimed to transition into the individual in the stylish outfit, performing under lights, and then I comprehended that I was able to.

I booked myself in to see a doctor not long after. It took additional years before my personal journey finished, but none of the fears I worried about came true.

I still have many of my female characteristics, so people often mistake me for a gay man, but I'm OK with that. I desired the liberty to explore expression as Bowie had - and since I'm comfortable in my body, I have that capacity.