By 1976, a year after “Fame” topped the charts in the United States, David Bowie was becoming, well, famous. No longer well known just in the United Kingdom, where he’d already had hits in “Spaceman” and the Ziggy Stardust-era “Starman,” Bowie was becoming a global phenomenon. So he up and…moved to Berlin? The reason why is at the center of not only Bowie’s identity as an artist but his influence on culture in general. According to a retrospective on Bowie’s life produced by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, at least one reason for Bowie moving to Berlin was Romy Haag — a transgender nightclub owner. Bowie and Haag were lovers , and Haag has been called Bowie’s muse . Bowie created three albums while in Berlin and Haag’s influence supposedly can be seen, for instance, in “Boys Keep Swinging,” a song plainly about male privilege with jabs at heteronormativity (“When you’re a boy, other boys check you out.”); the video featured a suit-clad Bowie with three female backup dancers who were played by Bowie in drag.Let’s face it, David Bowie might have been the world’s first transgender ally — before we had words like “transgender” or even “ally” in our vernacular. He was also one of the first famous gay allies. Bowie “came out” as gay in a 1972 interview long before the likes of Freddie Mercury or Elton John had even hinted at coming out of the closet. Later, Bowie said he was bisexual — in 1970 he married his first wife, a model named Angie, after they met because they were sleeping with the same man. Much later, Bowie said that saying he was bisexual was “the biggest mistake I ever made” because he didn’t feel like a “real bisexual.” “I’ve always been a closet heterosexual,” Bowie said. But even in his own searching, Bowie was illustrating a fluidity of sexuality that many still have trouble grasping.