I Thought That I Identified As a Lesbian - The Music Icon Made Me Uncover the Truth

Back in 2011, a couple of years before the celebrated David Bowie display launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in England, I publicly announced a homosexual 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 approaching middle age, a recently separated caregiver to four kids, making my home in the United States.

Throughout this phase, I had started questioning both my gender identity and romantic inclinations, seeking out clarity.

My birthplace was England during the early 1970s - pre-world wide web. As teenagers, my companions and myself lacked access to online forums or video sharing sites to consult when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we sought guidance from celebrity musicians, and during the 80s, everyone was playing with gender norms.

Annie Lennox wore boys' clothes, The Culture Club frontman wore women's fashion, and pop groups such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were publicly out.

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

In that decade, I passed my days riding a motorbike and wearing androgynous clothing, but I reverted back to traditional womanhood when I opted for marriage. My spouse transferred our home to the America in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an irresistible pull back towards the manhood I had once given up.

Given that no one experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I chose to use some leisure time during a seasonal visit returning to England at the V&A, with the expectation that perhaps he could provide clarity.

I lacked clarity exactly what I was searching for when I walked into the exhibition - perhaps I hoped that by losing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, consequently, stumble across a hint about my true nature.

I soon found myself facing a small television screen where the music video for "Boys Keep Swinging" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was performing confidently in the front, looking sharp in a slate-colored ensemble, while off to one side three accompanying performers wearing women's clothing crowded round a microphone.

Differing from the drag queens I had witnessed firsthand, these ladies weren't sashaying around the stage with the self-assurance of natural performers; conversely they looked disinterested and irritated. Relegated to the background, they chewed gum and showed impatience at the tedium of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, seemingly unaware to their diminished energy. I felt a momentary pang of understanding for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, ill-fitting wigs and too-tight dresses.

They gave the impression of 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 recognized my alignment with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them tore off her wig, removed the cosmetics from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Surprise. (Understandably, there were two other David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I became completely convinced that I wanted to rip it all off and become Bowie too. I desired his lean physique and his precise cut, his angular jaw and his flat chest; I sought to become the slim-silhouetted, artist's Berlin phase. And yet I found myself incapable, because to truly become Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Announcing my identity as gay was a different challenge, but transitioning was a significantly scarier outlook.

I needed several more years before I was ready. Meanwhile, I tried my hardest to adopt male characteristics: I ceased using cosmetics and threw away all my feminine garments, trimmed my tresses and began donning male attire.

I altered how I sat, walked differently, and adopted new identifiers, but I halted before surgical procedures - the possibility of rejection and regret had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

After the David Bowie show concluded its international run with a presentation in Brooklyn, New York, following that period, I returned. I had arrived at a crisis. I was unable to continue acting to be something I was not.

Positioned before the same video in 2018, I became completely convinced 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 presenting artificially all his life. I wanted to transform myself into the man in the sharp suit, dancing in the spotlight, and now I realized that I could.

I booked myself in to see a physician shortly afterwards. It took another few years before my personal journey finished, but none of the fears I feared came true.

I still have many of my traditional womanly traits, so others regularly misinterpret me for a queer man, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I desired the liberty to experiment with identity following Bowie's example - and now that I'm comfortable in my body, I am able to.