Guest Post: Henck Röling

 

Guest Post: Henck Röling
Always surrounded by flower

    Henck Röling is, according to his bio, an "artist, florist, gardener, singer, [&] rebel." He's by far the biggest name to have contributed to this little blog of mine so far, and I am very grateful for the words he has blessed us with.  Almost on a daily basis, I am privy to his amazing outfits, a few of which I have screen-grabbed and posted here.  You can find out more about him and his amazing art on his Instagram page or his website.  I really am appreciative of the story he has to tell, which is an inspiring one!  Read on...
 

    My name is Henck, I am 48 years old and was born and grew up in the Netherlands. We were a good Catholic family, there were six children and I was the Benjamin. We lived on an old farm, surrounded by meadows, cut up by the little canals that make Holland famous. That space gave us children freedom to play for hours. Classmates and friends always wanted to come to visit us, as it was a welcoming home.

    From early puberty I knew that I was different, gay, even though that was before I even understood the concept of what that meant. There was always a flamboyance in me, I liked to dress up in girls clothes. Or a superhero cape, that was sewn for me by my grandmother, out of one of her old dresses.

    As a young boy I always had to wear hand me downs from my older brothers. Only for very special occasions I was allowed to go to the shops with my mum to pick my own.
At thirteen years old I started a Saturday job at a local nursery. It was hot in the glass house and hard work. But at least I was making a little bit money that I could spend on what I wanted. In the meantime I grew very tall in puberty; I always stood out because of it. I don’t think I behaved very camp or effeminate, but the boys at school could see I was a bit different and teased me sometimes in the corridors or outside the school. One of my class mates, Miranda, used to take it up for me and told them boys ‘to leave me alone.’  For some reason the teasing never really got to me, and it never went into bullying; thankfully this was all pre-mobile and pre-social-media era. 

    I wrote teenage poetry, felt misunderstood, and in my poetry I had flirtations with suicide. But then I had a very good conversation with a friend of mine, during the night of a church camp I had helped organize for the younger kids. She finally made me say out loud, that I was gay. It felt scary and liberating at the same time. She told me it would get easier if I got to know other people that are gay, so I would feel less alone, and could share experiences.  

     I had one older brother that I knew was gay too, and I had heard from my friend my partners struggled with accepting him. Unfortunately my relationship with him was not good, or he could have been the one I talked to, got advise from. Instead, he told me that, if I had problems, I should go see a counselor or therapist.

    This made it so that I took longer to come out to my parents. One Sunday my father had to read mass in church, and the bottom line of the sermon was, every house has it’s cross to bear. That Sunday evening I sat my parents down, and told them about my cross, referencing the sermon from dad. It was very emotional, we all cried, even though dad didn’t say much.
After this night, we didn’t talk about it anymore, it felt a bit like it was a secret that had to be hidden. That didn’t fill me with confidence. I continued with my life though, wanting to break free from the mold set by my brothers, and I became more and more colorful. My older gay brother developed into quite a hardcore gay, leather, drugs etc. I felt different then that, but didn’t really have a role model or someone I could compare myself with. On television there was one openly gay actor/comedian, and he was so enormously camp I couldn’t identify with him neither.

    It took a few more years to pluck up the courage to explore the gay scene. It felt like a warm bath to meet other gay men that didn’t necessarily fill the gay stereo types.
After meeting my husband I moved to London. What a great city, eccentricity is celebrated, creativity appreciated. My style become more and more outrageous without me becoming overly camp. These days friends/colleagues ask me if I am feeling unwell if I’m wearing jeans and a shirt. 

    When my flower friend Yan asked me to join him on this audition for a new television show I thought why not. To our own surprise we made it into the show. And although our fellow contestants initially thought Yan and I were the entertainment, we did fairly well on the show and made it to the final of ’The Big Flower Fight.’ Since the exposure on the Netflix show, I have the feeling that I have become a role model myself. People from all over the world contact me on social media, telling me how they enjoyed the show and our fashions, and our creativity. Kudos to the production company to allow a slightly weird team on the show, to give the people that are different a voice. 

    Let’s hope in the future being gay, or being different in any other way is normalized. We are after all, all human.

-Henck