Be too much – a message to my younger self. By Alan Samons

Over the course of my lifetime, I heard the slur “moffie” as often as I heard my name.

I’d made myself a pair of paper fairy wings and was literally flapping around all over the garden. My father, with whom I never got along called out a slur and said that I was being “too much”. I immediately became quiet and introverted. It happened overnight. My joy was murdered.

At school I always sat at the back of the class. I never raised my hand. The only closet in which I fit were the closets of silence and invisibility. And when I started wearing glasses at age eight, that was it – the bullies (kids and teachers) crawled out from beneath the rocks they were hiding and made my life a living hell.

I went through life timid, scared and fearful of my safety. I was a scrawny kid and only in later years became larger. My voice never broke like most boys’ did and I had a “gay voice” all my life until I learnt how to modulate my speech lower, so I was fair game till the end of Matric. School was hell. When I visited my parents (I’d been sent off to boarding school age ten) because my father had became physically aggressive to add to the emotional abuse and my mum wanted to keep me safe. I never went home again, but spent the last three years of my schooling living with a friend’s family who treated me with nothing but love, kindness and respect. What a change to my own home and Gray College! My years there were indescribably lonely. It was an awful school, and the teachers delighted in punishing me for even the smallest of infringements. Luckily, I was a good student, and an excellent chess player, so they never went too far. We were allowed three weekends at home during term (the Free State had three terms then), but my father refused, and I only went home during school holidays when we all had to vacate the premises. My father then made my life hell for the tree weeks I was home. I was depressed, nervous, and suicidal. Those were the worst years of my life.

The only good thing I can say about my childhood it that it finally ended.

Luckily my friend, Lourens, whom I lived with – and whom I’d met on day one in primary school – and I remained friends till he unalived himself at age forty-nine. He was my brother from another mother, and it just so happened he was also gay. We even went through a drag phase together, which, in the late eighties, was incredibly fun. Remember, it was still illegal to be gay in those days and being caught in women’s clothes or undergarments…now that would have had serious consequences.

My mum and I had a great relationship all our lives, till she passed at ninety. I miss her still. But as a little preschooler, I had to play the support role as she ventilated and cried and became angry at my father “working late” every night, or not coming home at all. It taught me to be strong, but you don’t do that to a small child.

My father refused to pay for my schooling past standard eight, or university, so my mum finally divorced him when I matriculated, and I went on to study fashion design with a bursary. What a change! Suddenly I met people my age who were weird, creative, and more than anything, unapologetically themselves. I think it saved my life.

Now, in my mid-fifties, I can look back on a life well lived, though I miss out on a lot. But we have a handy little device now. A phone. My particular favourite app is Instagram even though it is owned by a man-child with highly questionable values. If he even has any.

There are few accounts I follow. There are the stylish people of New York who said “fuck it” to ageing gracefully and demurely and have become living, breathing artworks – Advance Style.

There’s a Hispanic dude who sketches and paints everyday people who present themselves differently. The man has mad skills and asks his sitters questions about their lives which I find fascinating. Not because of the (only sometimes) weird answers they give, but their humanity. They ARE us! No difference. Zilch!

But, my beauties, I have saved the best for last. A gay couple from New Mexico, Orren and Robert, live their lives to the max. They are both walking artworks. Their home is cluttered with objects from travels, gifts, things they’ve collected through their life together. Do follow them.

And then there is the impeccably-dressed Jordan Roth – a Broadway producer and couture addict – whose personal warmth is only just eclipsed by his sense of style. And yes, he wars female couture and even walks some of the shows.

Where were these people as role models when I grew up? How much fuller, richer and colourful all our lives would have been had society not kept us from view? How many “strange” boys and girls and non-binary kids could have been saved from self-death? What a splendidly beautiful world we could have inhabited if religion had never existed?

I try to incorporate even small measures of what I call “fuck the patriarchy” in my daily routine. I paint my nails. I (hesitantly) shop in the ladies’ department. I love jewellery and have gotten adventurous (I’m not trying to impress anyone, nor am I looking for a mate) and have become bolder in how I present myself to the world since lockdown. A major shift happened when I went to Thailand in 2024 and ended up spending a month travelling alone in the Kingdom. There I got to know myself a whole lot better and I’ve learnt not to give a flying fuck what other people think of me. I’m happy in myself. I might not be overly over-the-top, but I’m having fun.

My advice to the younger, shy, bespectacled little skinny nerd I was in my early school days: “Be too much. Wear what you want. Say the weird thing. Be fully, uncompromisingly YOU. And remember that if other people have an issue with you being you, it has nothing to do with you, but it has everything to do with them. It’s in their heads, not yours.”

“The world changes fast. Acceptance is growing. We have allies and besties and forever friends. Life is tough, but with your posse by your side, you are invincible.”

“Now go out there and slay motherfucker!”