Next Generation

Sag Harbor ends on an portentous note, with Benji wondering if this is the end of an era. Of all the summers he has spent and all the memories he has made there, he can’t ignore that a change has taken place -- the bonfire isn’t as energetic as it once was, and slowly his peers have returned to the city. Soon he will be back in New York with the summer far behind him.

When Benji attempts to find “Little” doppelgangers in the midst of the community’s annual foot race (a tradition he and his friends have now outgrown) he immediately recognizes himself in a clumsy but sanguine little boy with an unfortunate afro. But when he tries to pick out his future self in the crowd, the results are much less transparent and promising. With this uncertainty, the possibility of him becoming one of “Those Who Didn’t Come Out Anymore” is just as likely as him raising his own family and returning to Sag every summer. Benji has long condemned the selling of one’s Sag Harbor property as the ultimate offense, but what does that mean for people like his sister, who were once just like him before permanently relocating to the outside world? Will he and his friends even come out next summer? Only time will tell. And if they don’t, who will take their place?

In its final pages, the novel hints at this potential, describing a new generation of Sag Harbor “aborigines” as they stake their ground. One young boy in particular, towering over the other kids in both stature and guts, quickly makes a strong first impression. It’s natural to expect him to mirror one of the characters mentioned previously in the novel, but I think it’s important that he doesn’t. As Benji contemplates the fate of his generation, this random kid, whom no one can seem to place, literally destroys pieces of Sag Harbor while his young peers cheer him on -- one boy even discards the once coveted race medal in spirit. Benji and his friends are helpless as they passively discourage the destruction before turning their backs to it. Just as he felt the disconnect with his parents’ and grandparents’ generations despite their failed efforts to incorporate him, there is a distance between him and this new breed. They will figuratively and literally tear down his generation’s legacy and carve out their own, starting their own traditions and making their own memories.

As I watched this year’s seniors tearfully embrace one another in their matching class shirts today, I couldn’t help but sense the same prophetic change taking place. Within months of their graduation, an entirely new flock of subbies will be ushered in to fill in the empty lockers. Throughout the years I’ve commented on how each crop of subbies manages to be so distinct from the previous yet still renew the youthful energy. And while we may occasionally see fragments of ourselves in their optimistic faces, the school will never be the same. These students will talk about their fancy new laptops and legitimate science teacher, but they will never have had the opportunity to meet Sue Kovacs or reminisce about playing Smash in the lounge. I have a rough idea of what Little Athena was like, but the future of Big Athena is hard to picture. A year from now, my class will probably be experiencing the same apocalyptic rush of emotions the seniors must be feeling right now. It is my hope that amidst their necessary trampling and incineration of our legacy, the future subfreshmen will spare the lasting reminder that we were once here.

My first kiss went a little like this...

“It seemed impossible not to remember something like that. The first time a girl put her lips on yours. What kind of chump forgot being a five-year-old mack? I would’ve coasted on that for years if I’d known. But I did know. I was there. What put it out of my mind? I looked at Melanie’s profile, the coast of her nose and mouth and chin. She was one of us. A Sag Harbor Baby.”

Most of us remember our first kiss. An innocent peck on the playground in pre-K or a hormone-pumped make out session in middle school -- they all count. So how could Benji, a self conscious teenage boy eager to have the ultimate summer experience, completely forget his precocious rite of passage? Melanie, as she called herself, was a long-lost descendant of first generation Sag Harbor beachgoers whose family had done the unthinkable and sold their Cuffee Drive property a decade before. Upon her homecoming, Melanie immediately proves herself as a well-versed local -- not to be confused with a townie -- and becomes involved with NP, so when she confesses to Benji that she had been his secret admirer all those years ago, he is completely caught off guard. It is interesting to note that during this pivotal scene, instead of focusing on the adrenaline, Benji keeps talking about the house, his “long lost love”. This seems to contribute to the fact that his first kiss is completely wiped from his memory as well as the resulting scene at the end of the chapter where Melanie acts as if their second kiss hadn’t happened either. The common denominator seems to be the destination, Sag Harbor, where memories are made and sometimes kept, the essence of them ultimately overshadowing the details. When Benji reflects on his summer, it’s not really Melanie he remembers, but the coming of age experience she shared with him that he would carry to his back-to-school setting, much like how Jason’s first kiss seemed to be a precursor for his adolescence. Before we are quick to scold him for his forgetfulness, imagine if Benji had remembered his childhood fling. Would he have used that experience and built on that reputation? More importantly, would he have been the same narrator?

Reign of Terror

In “To Prevent Flare-ups”, Colson Whitehead finally provides some insight about Benji’s homelife. He begins by comparing the Coopers to the Huxtables -- a doctor father, a lawyer mother, and an overall a well-mannered bunch adored by black audiences and white audiences alike -- each embodies the ideal successful African American family. What tips the scale is how the Coopers conduct themselves behind the scenes. For some reason, Mr. Cooper has an insatiable appetite for asserting dominance in front of his family. We see glimpses of this when Benji describes how he is coached to have a zero-tolerance policy for even the slightest throwings of shade and to react with violence when his racial identity is even suggestively disparaged, but until now, the implications of his father’s moral character have remained chiefly speculative.

What makes The Cosby Show significant is the fact that it is the first mainstream non-“coon” show to depict a picture-perfect family the Coopers can finally identify with and take pride in doing so. However, the sitcom aspect as well as the overtone that Cooper family dynamics are not as they seem further cements Mr. Mitchell’s statement that family itself is a performance. Just as boys tend to pick fights in public when they know they have an audience, families usually want just the opposite to avoid making a scene. What’s interesting is that Mr. Cooper doesn't seem as concerned as he maybe should be in terms of who can can see their dirty laundry. It’s Benji who closes all the windows so the neighbors don’t hear his parents arguing and Gail -- a woman who argues for a living -- who has to back away into the living room so that her friends don’t hear her husband debase her. Meanwhile, Mr. Cooper himself is perfectly content with being seen as the chipper dad who can make a killer barbecue, implying perhaps that he believes as long as he can preserve his outwardly innocuous reputation he can somehow remain immune to the consequences of his personal infractions.

It’s impossible not to draw some parallels between Mr. Cooper and the other dads we've met, in particular those of Stephen and Jason. All three have a history of alcohol abuse, a device that often reveals facets of their true nature. For the previous two dads, drinking is used to fill the space left by impotence and to compensate for the increasing lack of control they have in their downward spiraling lives. It takes on a completely different form in Mr. Cooper, who not only appears to be very successful in his industry, but also has no problem staying in control in his household, despite being absent 24/5. In fact, all of his family members are scared of him. And who can blame them -- Reggie gets two C-’s and immediately becomes “Shithead”, for Gail, every paper plate purchase is a gamble, and who knows why we never see Elena? In this regime founded on fear, the only coping mechanism has been total submission; you either agree to everything he says or suffer the consequences. If you displease him, your your options are limited; you can either to completely avoid him by booking extra shifts at Burger King or write a bullet-pointed list of his abusive practices.

So far, Mr. Cooper has attempted to teach his son how crucial it is to assert dominance. Apparently this means you have to scream at your wife in front of all her friends, lest you take the fall for dropping some macaroni salad. He has hammered it into Benji’s head that no one should be able to get away with snubbing his race unless it’s with a black eye. But to Benji, the only message received was that “No one can hurt you more than I can.” Is it really the same end result, psychologically? I think it’s important to realize that the only way a dictator like Mr. Cooper can continue to maintain a reign of terror is if people are actually scared. In “To Prevent Flare-Ups”, Whitehead reveals that at least in Benji’s eyes, his time may be up.