Leo Preziosi started Live Out Loud 25 years ago after reading about two students who had both committed suicide. He asked himself, “How could this still be happening? Isn’t anyone doing anything about it? And he also asked himself, “What are YOU doing to prevent this?
That’s where his journey in helping LGBTQ+ youth started.
Live Out Loud is a New York-based nonprofit that provides mentorship, scholarships and community programming for LGBTQ+ youth across New York City and beyond. One program of the organization is the Homecoming Project, a program that invites LGBTQ+ adults to return to the high school they graduated from to talk to the students who currently attend the school.
“We’re kind of like this gentle interruption,” Preziosi said. “If we could just say, I get where you’re at, but there’s life outside these walls.”
The people who go back aren’t celebrities or “noteable” figures, but rather anybody that has overcome adversity and wants to give back to LGBTQ+ youth by telling their stories and giving them hope for life.
“High school is tough enough, but add another layer of queerness on it, and it’s a little bit more challenging,” Preziosi said. “When someone does go back [to speak to the students] they can really say, ‘Listen, I know what the culture is like here, I know the challenges, and I got through it.’”
Mark Schall, a New York-based executive coach who sings with the Gay Men’s Chorus, has gone back to his New Jersey high school several times over the last decade to tell his story. He said that his experience there in the early 80s was rough and spoke to stereotypical bullying tactics he suffered including wedgies in the locker room, threats after class and even getting jumped with a pair of gym shorts pulled over his head so he couldn’t see who was hitting him.
Despite these experiences, Schall still considers himself one of the lucky ones because of the support of loved ones, teachers and friends.
“I had a core group of friends who loved me and supported me…I knew I had people in my corner, so I didn’t feel isolated and abused like a lot of gay kids do, where they have nobody to cling to,” he said. “So I’m glad that I had that counterbalance, because I might have been a statistic otherwise.”
Schall said the Homecoming Project is also a cathartic experience for him because he gets to go back to his high school and say everything that happened to him out loud.
“It was a very uplifting time when I went there, that first time, and very strange walking through those hallways and being like, it looks so much smaller than I remember,” he said.
When he went back the second time, there were over 200 students in the auditorium and to open his speech, he played a slideshow of names and ages of LGBTQ+ youth who had died by suicide, including Tyler Clementi. Clementi was an 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman who jumped from the George Washington Bridge in 2010. His death became a landmark event in the conversation around LGBTQ+ suicide and bullying. The final slide read: “I only wish you stuck around long enough to know that it gets better.”
After Schall played the slideshow, he went out on the stage and spoke for 45 minutes while keeping his eyes peeled for kids who he deemed especially important in the audience.
“I remember there was one kid sitting in the back. He was very slight, very effeminate, very quiet, and he would barely make eye contact with me,” Schall said. When the other students were leaving and coming up to shake Schall’s hand, the kid walked past and made “a very deliberate moment of eye contact with a slight nod and then looked away and walked away.”
Schall pulled aside the faculty coordinator afterward and informed them that a trusted faculty member needs to reach out to the student and look after him.
“That was 10 years ago, so the kid was probably 16, so he’s 26 now. I wonder what he’s doing and I wonder who he is, and I hope he’s OK,” Schall said.
The Homecoming program also brought Schall face to face with his own past in ways he didn’t expect. At his 25 year high school reunion he tracked down one of his old bullies and told him directly of his impact on him and society as a whole in regards to LGBTQ+ suicide.
“You need to know that that’s the fire you were fucking with back then,” Schall told him.
His former bully’s response was one of regret and reflection on now having an 11-year-old daughter.
“If she was to say or do just one of the many things that I said and did to you and to other kids that I perceived as gay, I would believe that I failed as a father and I would be terribly ashamed,” he said.
This experience of Schall’s is part of the point of the homecoming program, Preziosi said. Adults who go back often describe it as healing, saying those years stop having a hold on them and it inspires LGBTQ+ youth to speak up about their own experiences.
“If they’re not sharing, if they stuff it down, it turns into depression, missing school, bad grades and a host of other things—substance abuse and suicidal ideation,” he said. “Sometimes it just takes, you know, one person, it just takes one story to build confidence.”
Schall ends every talk the same way.
“Your high school right now is not the world,” he tells the students. “When you get out of here and you get into the world, you have so much more choice and freedom and you deserve it.”
Live Out Loud has sent around 180 LGBTQ+ adults back to schools in 26 states, and Preziosi is working to increase the number of participants and states. If you want to participate or connect Live Out Loud with a school in your area, visit liveoutloud.info.
