I Thought That I Identified As a Gay Woman - The Legendary Artist Made Me Realize the Truth

In 2011, several years before the celebrated David Bowie display launched at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in England, I came out as a gay woman. Previously, I had exclusively dated men, one of whom I had wed. After a couple of years, I found myself approaching middle age, a newly single caregiver to four kids, residing in the US.

Throughout this phase, I had commenced examining both my gender identity and romantic inclinations, searching for clarity.

I entered the world in England during the dawn of the seventies era - prior to digital connectivity. As teenagers, my friends and I were without Reddit or YouTube to turn to when we had curiosities about intimacy; instead, we looked to celebrity musicians, and in that decade, musicians were challenging gender norms.

The iconic vocalist wore masculine attire, The flamboyant singer wore feminine outfits, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were proudly homosexual.

I wanted his lean physique and defined hairstyle, his angular jaw and masculine torso. I aimed to personify the artist's German phase

During the nineties, I passed my days riding a motorbike and adopting masculine styles, but I returned to femininity when I chose to get married. My husband transferred our home to the US in 2007, but when the union collapsed I felt an irresistible pull revisiting the manhood I had previously abandoned.

Since nobody experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I opted to spend a free afternoon during a seasonal visit back to the UK at the gallery, hoping that maybe he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know precisely what I was searching for when I walked into the display - perhaps I hoped that by losing myself in the richness of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, consequently, stumble across a clue to my own identity.

Before long I was standing in front of a modest display where the film clip for "Boys Keep Swinging" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the foreground, looking polished in a charcoal outfit, while off to one side three backing singers in feminine attire clustered near a microphone.

Unlike the entertainers I had encountered in real life, these ladies weren't sashaying around the stage with the self-assurance of inherent stars; instead they looked bored and annoyed. Placed in secondary positions, they had gum in their mouths and expressed annoyance at the tedium 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 empathy for the backing singers, with their thick cosmetics, awkward hairpieces and too-tight dresses.

They seemed to experience as uncomfortable as I did in female clothing - irritated and impatient, as if they were yearning for it all to conclude. At the moment when I realized I was identifying with three men dressed in drag, one of them tore off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Understandably, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I knew for certain that I wanted to shed all constraints and emulate the artist. I craved his lean physique and his sharp haircut, his defined jawline and his male chest; I wanted to embody the slender-shaped, Bowie's German period. Nevertheless I couldn't, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Declaring myself as queer was a different challenge, but gender transition was a much more frightening outlook.

I required further time before I was prepared. In the meantime, I did my best to embrace manhood: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my skirts and dresses, trimmed my tresses and started wearing male attire.

I altered how I sat, modified my gait, and changed my name and pronouns, but I stopped short of hormonal treatment - the chance of refusal and regret had rendered me immobile with anxiety.

After the David Bowie exhibition concluded its international run with a stint in Brooklyn, New York, after half a decade, I went back. I had experienced a turning point. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be something I was not.

Facing the identical footage in 2018, I knew for certain that the challenge wasn't about my clothing, it was my body. 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, dancing in the spotlight, and at that moment I understood that I could.

I scheduled an appointment to see a physician shortly afterwards. I needed another few years before my transition was complete, but none of the things I worried about occurred.

I still have many of my traditional womanly traits, so others regularly misinterpret me for a gay man, but I accept this. I wanted the freedom to experiment with identity following Bowie's example - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I can.