I Thought I Was a Lesbian - The Music Icon Helped Me Realize the Truth

In 2011, a few years prior to the celebrated David Bowie show launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I publicly announced a homosexual woman. Until that moment, I had solely pursued relationships with men, including one I had married. After a couple of years, I found myself approaching middle age, a freshly divorced caregiver to four kids, living in the America.

Throughout this phase, I had begun to doubt both my personal gender and romantic inclinations, seeking out clarity.

Born in England during the dawn of the seventies era - pre-world wide web. During our youth, my friends and I lacked access to social platforms or YouTube to reference when we had inquiries regarding sexuality; instead, we turned toward music icons, and in that decade, musicians were experimenting with gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer sported masculine attire, The flamboyant singer adopted feminine outfits, and bands such as popular ensembles featured artists who were publicly out.

I craved his slender frame and precise cut, his strong features and masculine torso. I aimed to personify the artist's German phase

In that decade, I lived driving a bike and adopting masculine styles, but I returned to traditional womanhood when I chose to get married. My spouse moved our family to the America in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an irresistible pull back towards the male identity I had previously abandoned.

Considering that no artist challenged norms as dramatically as David Bowie, I opted to spend a free afternoon during a warm-weather journey returning to England at the museum, hoping that perhaps he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know precisely what I was searching for when I entered the exhibition - perhaps I hoped that by immersing myself in the opulence of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, consequently, discover a clue to my true nature.

I soon found myself facing a compact monitor where the visual presentation for "the iconic song" was playing on repeat. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the foreground, looking stylish in a dark grey suit, while off to one side three accompanying performers wearing women's clothing crowded round a microphone.

In contrast to the performers I had encountered in real life, these ladies didn't glide around the stage with the confidence of natural performers; rather they looked bored and annoyed. Relegated to the background, they had gum in their mouths and showed impatience at the tedium of it all.

"Those words, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, apparently oblivious to their diminished energy. I felt a fleeting feeling of understanding for the accompanying performers, with their heavy makeup, uncomfortable wigs and constricting garments.

They seemed to experience as awkward as I did in women's clothes - irritated and impatient, as if they were hoping for it all to be over. Precisely when I recognized my alignment with three men dressed in drag, one of them removed her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Naturally, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

At that moment, I was absolutely sure that I aimed to remove everything and become Bowie too. I craved his lean physique and his precise cut, his strong features and his flat chest; I aimed to personify the slender-shaped, artist's Berlin phase. And yet I found myself incapable, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Declaring myself as gay was a separate matter, but transitioning was a significantly scarier outlook.

I needed several more years before I was prepared. During that period, I made every effort to become more masculine: I abandoned beauty products and eliminated all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and started wearing masculine outfits.

I changed my seating posture, changed my stride, and adopted new identifiers, but I paused at medical intervention - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had left me paralysed with fear.

After the David Bowie show finished its world tour with a stint in New York City, five years later, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be a person I wasn't.

Standing in front of the familiar clip in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the issue wasn't my clothes, it was my biological self. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a feminine man who'd been in costume since birth. I desired to change into the person in the polished attire, dancing in the spotlight, and at that moment I understood that I could.

I booked myself in to see a medical professional not long after. I needed another few years before my personal journey finished, but not a single concern I worried about came true.

I still have many of my traditional womanly traits, so others regularly misinterpret me for a queer man, but I accept this. I desired the liberty to explore expression as Bowie had - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I have that capacity.