My so-called famous classmate

An exclusive excerpt from former Salon editor Chris Colin's acclaimed new book on being young in the '90s, "What Really Happened to the Class of '93: Start-ups, Dropouts, and Other Navigations Through an Untidy Decade."

Jun 1, 2004 | Editor's note:In the year and a half leading up to his 10-year reunion, journalist Chris Colin (a former Salon editor) tracked down former classmates from his northern Virginia public high school and asked them to pull back the curtains on their lives. Sometimes what he discovered was a full swath of American history -- the last decade's great and awful milestones as experienced by ordinary and once-teenage people. Other times he stumbled upon something more intimate in scale: frank and arresting accounts of how people fall in and out of love, or steady their nerves on hills in Kosovo, or fall on their knees before God, or find that biology had handed them the wrong gender, or give up on life altogether.

Each profile in the book begins with the subject in question describing his or her persona in high school; this is followed by other classmates' recollections, and then by the story itself. The book is full of characters recognizable to any former adolescent --- the teen mom, the discipline case, the first love, etc. --- but the one below, as the school's own minor celebrity, is recognizable by name alone.
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June 1, 2004 |

Chris Sununu: "There was a period where every time I'd go to school, [the media] were just outside the driveway with telescopic lenses."

Wes Black: "We had kind of a similar background, having grown up around politics. My dad [longtime Republican strategist Charlie Black] knew his dad. We were friends, but we weren't super tight. The first time I met him, freshman year, I was like, 'Hey, my dad knows your dad.' And he had his guard up -- he goes, 'You're full of shit!'

"Friends of ours would come up to him and spread their arms like an airplane, make airplane noises. He'd get pissed off. He was probably a little embarrassed about the whole [scandal involving his father]. I think that hurt him. He was a good person."

Rebecca (Gray) Lamey: "I went head-to-head with Chris constantly. Usually what ended up happening was, he always had all the guys on his side, and I always had all the girls on my side. Something about him -- there were a lot of guys laughing and applauding him that wouldn't have normally. One argument I remember was about the differences between the sexes. He and I ended up getting pretty heated. He was going on about how if he took a woman to prom, and rented a limo, and bought her dinner, he'd better get reimbursed for it at the end of the night. I said, 'You'd expect her to put out just because you spent money on her?' And he said, 'Yes, definitely.'

"He was one of those people actively speaking out against the change in the handbook [forbidding harassment of fellow students because of sexual orientation]. I heard him saying something about how that [clause] was stupid ... I always thought he was a rich, preppie, snotty asshole. It never occurred to him that things could be any way other than the way he thought. When we'd argue, he'd never concede a single thing."

Wayne Steward: "He was your typical straight guy's guy. Our lockers were near each other. We disagreed on stuff, but at no point did I ever have a really nasty interaction with him. At no point did he ever come up to me and say something overtly prejudiced. Then again, I was already out, you know? What, you're going to walk down the hall and call me faggot? I'd just turn around and say, 'I know!'"

Vanya (Seaman) Wright: "Freshman year I went to Karen Taggart's birthday party -- everyone was invited. It was at a mall, and we were trying to get seated at a restaurant there and we couldn't get in. We walked around and around for 45 minutes. Then Chris mumbled, 'I never have to wait for a table when I'm with my dad.' We went back and changed the name to Sununu and got right in -- though maybe they were going to let us in then anyway."

John Helmantoler: "I really liked Chris. He was a great guy. He was friendly. At the same time, I wouldn't say he was closed off, but he definitely had a core, smaller set of friends. The one time I ever saw him cut loose, it was the end of the night at this party at Wes'. Sununu and I were the last men standing -- everyone else was passed out -- and we were on the back porch smoking cigars. We were like, 'Ooh, let's break shit!' We grabbed a bunch of bottles and ran through the neighborhood smashing them. It was a good connection.

"Politically, his reputation was that of a Rush Limbaugh/Fox News type. That was definitely an accurate portrayal of him. He was definitely of that 'intolerant' camp -- I suppose I was, too -- though it's a bad word. He was of that party line -- 'What the hell's going on? We're making these people heroes and martyrs for coming out of the closet!' In our defense, we hadn't seen this before. It's usually not until college that you start seeing this stuff, and for us it was happening in high school.

"One other thing: He was very loyal. I remember running into him on a ski trip and he was with his girlfriend, who was not a world-class skier. [My friends and I] went down the easy slopes a few times with them, but then we tried to get him to ditch the girl for a while and do the black diamonds. But he wouldn't even consider it. He was a nice, nice guy."

Next Page: Yes, Chris' dad is that Sununu

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