My to-read list looks something like the paper queue for NYC’s elite prep schools. It’s the stuff of reams.
One of the books I most wanted to read last year was Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, a novel based on the author’s teenage years in the 1980s. Whitehead comes from an upwardly mobile black family in NYC that summered (yep, I’m using that as a verb all pretentious-like) at their beach house in the Hamptons.
And that’s the premise of Sag Harbor. The 15-year-old protagonist, Benji, and his brother, Reggie, are left to fend for themselves during the week. Their parents work in the city and join the boys on weekends.
So you’ve got teenage boys + the 1980s + no supervision. It makes for an easy story full of magical coming-of-age first times and potential drownings. The thing is, the book is really funny and intelligent and more sly than that.
Whitehead is the first to admit the book isn’t heavy on plot, but when you’re a kid, most summers aren’t either. You hope they’ll be, but they’re usually not.
What I loved most about Sag Harbor was the way Benji sets it up, giving us the dirt on his friends and even supplying a diagram for the most effective way to conjugate an insult among his posse.
Here’s how he introduced his friend NP:
We called him NP, for Nigger Please, because no matter what came out of his mouth, that was usually the most appropriate response. He was our best liar, a raconteur of baroque teenage shenanigans. Everything in his field of vision reminded him of some escapade he needed to share, or directed him to some escapade about to begin, as soon as all the witnesses departed. He was dependable for nonsense like, “Yo, last night, after you left, I went back to that party and got with that Queens girl. She told me she was raised strict, but I was all up in those titties! She paid me fifty dollars!”
Nigger, please…
Shortened to NP because the adults gave us trouble when they heard us using the word nigger. For understandable reasons. Like most authority figures, they had a hypocritical streak, as they used the word all the time, in its familiar comrade sense, but also to distinguish themselves from those of our race who possessed a certain temperament and circumstance. The kind of person that made the announcer on the evening news say, “We have an artist’s rendering of the suspect,” quickening your heart. There were no street niggers in Sag Harbor. No, no, no…
We thought we were being smart with his nickname until one day we were over at NP’s house and his mom started getting on his case for some chore or other than he had neglected. He began some elaborate explanation - meteorites had squashed his bike and he couldn’t make it home - when she lost her patience and cut with off with a sudden, shrill, “Nigger, please!” Mrs. Nichols’s hand shot to her mouth, but it was too late. His nickname had approval at the highest levels. For all we knew, she’d coined it in the first place.
And then there’s hapless Marcus who has the lowest rung on the totem pole:
Marcus was a key player in that he reassured us that there was someone more unfortunate that ourselves. He possessed three primary mutant powers; we had all seen them in action: 1. He was able to attract to his person all the free-floating derision in the vicinity through a strange magnetism. 2. He bent light waves, rendering the rest of us invisible to bullies… 3. Superior olfactory capability. We heard his bike from two miles away; he smelled barbecue from twice that distance, attaining such mastery that he could ascertain, with the faintest nostril quivering, if the stuff on the grill had just been thrown on or was about to come off, and acted accordingly…
We used to call Marcus “Arthur Ashe.” Two summers ago, Marcus had suffered a dry patch - actually, multiple dry patches, on his elbows, knees, in the webbing between his fingers and toes. “Why’d his mother let him out of the house like that,” we’d all wonder, but never say aloud, because talking about someone’s mother was, well, talking about someone’s mother. Talking about someone’s mother was talking about your own mother: it opened a door.
Obviously the nickname affected him deeply. Perhaps the sight of a tennis racket mortifying him, all those long months of the school year, or a chance encounter with someone dressed in crisp white clothing curdling his mood. All I know is the next summer Marcus returned so profoundly moisturized that there was nary a flake of ash to be seen on his skin. In fact his skin was so lubed up that he glistened mightily whenever the sun hit his flesh, and even when it didn’t. He had become, sadly, a living Jheri Curl.
The week I was reading Sag Harbor on the subway, I’d give vague progress reports to my friend Nate.
“Oh man, things took a sad turn in Sag,” I’d tell him. “It was heavy. I don’t wanna say anything, but…”
I sighed each time I made it to my stop.
Early on, I saw a resemblance between the fictional Benji and the real-life Nate. I knew it was ridiculous to say so, but I had to.
“Because I’m a black guy?” he asked.
“Not just that.” I said. “You’re also sensitive and wry and have this distinct way of speaking that’s all your own. Also, did your dad ever cut your Afro? Because Benji’s did!”
Read this book.
Read it soon.
You have to meet Benji.
