I Was Convinced That I Identified As a Lesbian - David Bowie Enabled Me to Uncover the Actual Situation

During 2011, a few years before the acclaimed David Bowie exhibition debuted at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I came out as a gay woman. Until that moment, I had solely pursued relationships with men, one of whom I had married. By 2013, I found myself nearing forty-five, a freshly divorced mother of four, living in the United States.

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

Born in England during the early 1970s - before the internet. As teenagers, my companions and myself were without Reddit or digital content to consult when we had inquiries regarding sexuality; rather, we looked to pop stars, and throughout the eighties, everyone was challenging gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer donned boys' clothes, Boy George adopted girls' clothes, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured members who were publicly out.

I wanted his lean physique and precise cut, his angular jaw and flat chest. I aimed to personify the Bowie's Berlin period

Throughout the 90s, I spent my time operating a motorcycle and dressing like a tomboy, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I opted for marriage. My spouse transferred our home to the US in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an powerful draw revisiting the male identity I had earlier relinquished.

Since nobody experimented with identity as dramatically as David Bowie, I opted to use some leisure time during a summer trip visiting Britain at the gallery, with the expectation that perhaps he could help me figure it out.

I lacked clarity specifically what I was seeking when I stepped inside the display - perhaps I hoped that by immersing myself in the opulence of Bowie's identity exploration, I might, as a result, stumble across a insight into my true nature.

I soon found myself standing in front of a modest display where the music video for "the iconic song" was continuously looping. Bowie was performing confidently in the primary position, looking sharp in a dark grey suit, while off to one side three backing singers dressed in drag gathered around a microphone.

Differing from the drag queens I had encountered in real life, these ladies didn't glide around the stage with the confidence of born divas; rather they looked bored and annoyed. Placed in secondary positions, they had gum in their mouths and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"Those words, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, apparently oblivious to their reduced excitement. I felt a fleeting feeling of understanding for the accompanying performers, with their thick cosmetics, uncomfortable wigs and too-tight dresses.

They seemed to experience as awkward as I did in feminine attire - irritated and impatient, as if they were longing for it all to be over. Just as I recognized my alignment with three individuals presenting as female, one of them ripped off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and revealed herself to be ... Bowie! Revelation. (Understandably, there were further David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I became completely convinced that I desired to shed all constraints and become Bowie too. I desired his narrow hips and his precise cut, his strong features and his male chest; I aimed to personify the lean-figured, Berlin-era Bowie. However I was unable to, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Announcing my identity as homosexual was one thing, but gender transition was a considerably more daunting outlook.

It took me additional years before I was willing. In the meantime, I made every effort to embrace manhood: I stopped wearing makeup and threw away all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and commenced using men's clothes.

I altered how I sat, walked differently, and adopted new identifiers, but I paused at 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 returned. I had arrived at a crisis. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the identical footage in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the challenge didn't involve my attire, it was my body. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a male with feminine qualities who'd been wearing drag since birth. I wanted to transform myself into the man in the sharp suit, dancing in the spotlight, and now I realized that I could.

I scheduled an appointment to see a doctor not long after. I needed another few years before my personal journey finished, but none of the things I feared materialized.

I still have many of my female characteristics, so people often mistake me for a queer man, but I'm OK with that. I desired the liberty to explore expression following Bowie's example - and given that I'm at peace with myself, I have that capacity.