I Believed I Was a Gay Woman - David Bowie Made Me Realize the Actual Situation

During 2011, several years prior to the acclaimed David Bowie show debuted at the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I declared myself a homosexual woman. Until that moment, I had exclusively dated men, including one I had married. Two years later, I found myself in my early 40s, a newly single parent to four children, residing in the US.

Throughout this phase, I had begun to doubt both my sense of self and sexual orientation, looking to find answers.

I entered the world in England during the beginning of the seventies - before the internet. During our youth, my companions and myself were without Reddit or YouTube to consult when we had curiosities about intimacy; instead, we turned toward music icons, and in that decade, musicians were challenging gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer wore male clothing, The flamboyant singer adopted girls' clothes, and bands such as popular ensembles featured performers who were openly gay.

I wanted his narrow hips and precise cut, his strong features and masculine torso. I sought to become the Berlin-era Bowie

In that decade, I lived driving a bike and wearing androgynous clothing, but I went back to conventional female presentation when I decided to wed. My spouse transferred our home to the United States in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an powerful draw revisiting the masculinity I had previously abandoned.

Since nobody experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I chose to spend a free afternoon during a summer trip visiting Britain at the V&A, anticipating that maybe he could guide my understanding.

I didn't know exactly what I was searching for when I stepped inside the exhibition - perhaps I hoped that by submerging my consciousness in the opulence of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, in turn, stumble across a hint about my true nature.

Before long I was positioned before a small television screen where the music video for "the iconic song" was continuously looping. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the front, looking stylish in a dark grey suit, while positioned laterally three supporting vocalists dressed in drag clustered near a microphone.

Differing from the drag queens I had seen personally, these ladies failed to move around the stage with the poise of born divas; rather they looked disinterested and irritated. Relegated to the background, they chewed gum and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, appearing ignorant to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a brief sensation of connection for the backing singers, with their thick cosmetics, uncomfortable wigs and too-tight dresses.

They appeared to feel as awkward as I did in women's clothes - annoyed and restless, as if they were longing for it all to conclude. At the moment when I recognized my alignment with three men dressed in drag, one of them removed her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and revealed herself to be ... Bowie! Surprise. (Naturally, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I was absolutely sure that I desired to remove everything and emulate the artist. I desired his narrow hips and his defined hairstyle, his angular jaw and his flat chest; I wanted to embody the lean-figured, Berlin-era Bowie. Nevertheless I found myself incapable, 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 significantly scarier prospect.

I required several more years before I was willing. During that period, I did my best to adopt male characteristics: I stopped wearing makeup and threw away all my feminine garments, shortened my locks and started wearing masculine outfits.

I changed my seating posture, changed my stride, and changed my name and pronouns, but I halted before surgical procedures - the potential for denial and second thoughts had left me paralysed with fear.

Once the David Bowie show finished its world tour with a engagement in New York City, after half a decade, I returned. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be something I was not.

Facing the familiar clip in 2018, I became completely convinced that the problem didn't involve my attire, it was my physical form. I wasn't simply a tomboy; I was a male with feminine qualities who'd been wearing drag all his life. I wanted to transform myself into the individual in the stylish outfit, moving in the illumination, and at that moment I understood that I was able to.

I booked myself in to see a physician not long after. It took another few years before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I worried about materialized.

I still have many of my feminine mannerisms, so others regularly misinterpret me for a queer man, but I'm OK with that. I sought the ability to play with gender like Bowie did - and now that I'm at peace with myself, I can.