Splish Splash. Swimming/Floating through Sag Harbor

What do Benji and I have in common? I’ll be honest: not much. But something that I found perhaps pathetically relatable was Benji’s description of his swimming capability (or lack thereof). Aside from it making me feel seen, it also summed up a lot of Benji’s mindset throughout the book: stay calm, observe, and perhaps gain some peace in solitude. 

Benji begins his confession just as I would (although he goes on to describe it in a much better way than I ever could): “No, I cannot swim in the conventional sense. To this day. Over the years I have learned how to generate forward movements in a liquid medium through a combination of herky-jerky flip-flapping arm-and-leg movements, but nothing that approaches the standard definition of a stroke” (Whitehead, 64). I don’t know about Benji, but I certainly had plenty of swimming lessons. I even have an above ground pool that I flail about in during the summer (it’s only five feet deep, so that I don’t…drown?). But I’ve never quite grasped swimming—Benji’s description of “herky-jerky flip-flapping arm-and-leg movements” sums it up remarkably well. Although an apt description of a non-swimmer, I found the subsequent part of the paragraph even more relatable: “I can float on my back—that counts for something, right?” (Whitehead, 64). But enough about me. Let’s get into the deeper (mind the pun) themes.

Benji describes his mindset in his teen years well after he attempts to steal some original cokes, “Bottom line, the episode put an end to my troublemaking efforts. What was the point? Move. Don’t move. Act. Don’t act. The results were the same. This was my labyrinth" (Whitehead, 106). The metaphor of Benji's floating instead of swimming works well with this attitude during his formative years. Ben explains, “In the doomed-ocean-liner movie that runs in my head, more frequently than I like, I float on my back to the eventual safety of the rescue boat or deserted island. Splish-splashing around with a healthy stroke, hell, that’s calling attention to yourself, alerting sharks, who are attracted to movements that resemble those of an ‘animal in distress,’ according to what I read in my shark books in elementary school” (Whitehead, 64). Swimming may allow you to come to safety, but it also presents risk. And Benji’s not quite prepared to take risks, if it means the sharks could come out. 

Benji’s reasoning is very illuminating to his mindset, which he doesn’t often outright explicate. Ben goes on to write,“Best to float and pretend to be dead, or so my thinking went back then—and in calm I found nothing more peaceful than doing that very thing” (Whitehead, 64). This element of peace also reveals a lot, I think. Benji lives kind of a hectic life (even if all he really does is shit talk during the summer), what with his family acting like a ticking time bomb, his unpredictable friends, and his messy job. I can imagine floating to be a relief. Then again, Ben continues, writing, “Letting my body go, as if I didn’t have a body at all and there was no barrier between me and the sea, while waiting for one of my friends to flip me over or pull me under, because that’s what friends do, but if I could get a few minutes alone out of the world I was happy” (Whitehead, 64). The simple statement “because that’s what friends do” feels neutral—it is neither a vice nor a virtue, neither chaotic good nor chaotic evil. It is simply a true neutral. I wonder if, in Benji’s adopted classification system, he ever saw things as true neutral. 

In conclusion: I can’t swim (in the conventional sense) and maybe that’s okay because Benji can’t either. Then again, he’s fictional. This is kind of just a mess of my thoughts on this particular passage of Sag Harbor…but I hope some of it made sense! And I hope that you know how to swim. But it’s pool if you don’t. (haha… like cool! But uh… pool! It’s funny, no?)