Whitehead charts the parameters of the black enclave at Sag Harbor -- "the Rock, the Creek, the Point: the increments of our existence. Earth, solar system, galaxy" -- the places that subtly define and divide it from the white zone.
The local fauna on the beach is dried-out sand sharks and voracious horseflies. Benji projects the wildlife past the Point in the white section of town: "Who knew what kind of fauna lurked around the bend of Barcelona Neck? Pterodactyls wearing ascots and sipping gin and tonics, trust-find duck-billed platypuses complaining about 'the help.' It was all hoity-toity over there."
Self-definition in Sag Harbor: "Everybody had their brands, black kids, white kids. Sperry, Girbaud, and Benneton, Lee jeans and Le Tigre polos, according to the plumage theory of social commerce."
The cultural contradiction of "black boys with beach houses." Defining yourself along the double consciousness divide, you can embrace either the "beach part" or the "black part." Benji's friends have available to them black modes including "bootstrapping striver," "proud pillar," "militant," and "street."
From his older sister, Benji had been given an eight-track tape player with just two cassettes: Kraftwerk and " The Best of the Commodores."
Benji ribbed by his friends for wearing a black Bauhaus t-shirt to the beach. He appreciates the Rap his sister and brother play, but he "spent his money on music for moping . . . The singers were faint, androgynous ghosts, dragging their too-heavy chains across the plains of misery, the gloomy moors of discontent, in search of relief. Let's just put it out there: I liked the Smiths."
Successon on Azurest Beach: "It was where Reggie and I and Marcus and Bobby had spent most of our sunny afternoons as children doing the standard kid-on-a-beach stuff, making things out of sand, throwing dead crabs at each other. Our replacements were there, reenacting our botched creations, our futile passtimes. And one day they'd be passing their own replacements as they tromped off to work in town."
Recalling failed swimming lessons: "Swimming Instructor, Prison Camp Guard. . . Guppy, Snapper, Shark -- I can't remember the specific benchmarks because I never reached them."
Whitehead reflects on how Sag Harbor was a whaling town and that, in "Moby Dick," Queequeg was transported from his home by a Sag Harbor ship: "perhaps you'll recall how that turned out for him."
Queequeg, he further notes, "had a bit of double consciousness about him as well."
Once lined by whale ships, Sag Harbor's Long Wharf now home to Jonni Waffle, the ice cream stand where Benji works. "The Long Wharf was the main drag during the whaling days. Now it served a different trade -- tourism and leisure, although given national statistics on obesity, blubber still had its niche."
Industrial aspects of work at a beachfront ice cream store: "The dust of the Belgian waffle cone mixture swirled in the air like asbestos in the guts of a condemned factory."
American sugar addiction from the perspective of behind the counter at
Jonni Waffle's: "you looked up from the vats during the evening rush to see a ferocious throng. . . at the end of the night the floor was tackier than the aisles of a porn theater."
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