Remembering LuLu, the gay burlesque performer and football player who brought life to every room
LuLu was a bright light in every room he entered, bringing his athletic prowess and burlesque performance everywhere he went.
Mark
If you are LGBTQ and considering suicide, contact The Trevor Project hotline at 866-488-7386. It is a FREE hotline, and someone is there to help.
Too often, death meets us in ways we don’t see coming, bringing into focus the lives of people we didn’t expect.
That’s LuLu. The high school football player turned burlesque performer has died. On Monday, he shared on Instagram a post that has haunted some of his friends since. That was the last we’ll hear from this lovely man.
When I first met LuLu, he was a former high school football player who had turned to the risque performance art of burlesque.
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To me, and to so many people, LuLu taking his own life makes no sense. Of course, he was clearly struggling in a way I did not know.
I wish I had.
He’d been to my home numerous times — even spending a weekend in Palm Springs — always smiling, always flaunting his stuff and who he was.
Every time I saw him, he brought life to the room.
He seemed to me — and this was clearly from a distance — to be loving his gay life in Los Angeles, having moved from Phoenix in the last couple years.
Obviously, something within him was a struggle I did not know.
LuLu had played football at his Arizona high school, then finding crew for a limited time. He found his way to burlesque. It was something he seemed from the outside to gravitate to naturally.
Yet obviously something was building within him that led this young man to take his own life.
“His roommates broke down his door and called paramedics but unfortunately it was far too late to resuscitate him,” a friend wrote on LuLu’s post sharing his intention. “Lulu has sadly passed away and I’m so truly sorry to anyone that knew him.”
In the aftermath of LuLu’s death, his dear friend Jeci Would shared a beautiful tribute to LuLu.
“I truly hope that I can continue on in a way that would make him proud again,” Would wrote on Instagram. “I treasure the things I learned from him, more than he may have had the chance to realize.”
For me, this is a tough one.
The people left behind are always second-guessing. That includes me. Did I not welcome him enough? Did I not affirm him? What more could I have done?
These are the questions that so many people who knew LuLu will ask themselves for days, weeks and months ahead.
But for now, I’m remembering the man who lit up my life so many times, who embraced me every time we saw one another.
Goodbye LuLu. You are loved, and you will be missed.
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