Was this Benji's last summer coming out?
As introduced in the beginning of the book, Sag Harbor is predominantly a vacation community, which is pretty much only populated during summer. Due to Benji and Reggie’s private school schedules, they get out of school a few days earlier than any of the other kids. Benji describes how empty the town is when they first arrive, and he introduces the concept in their community of “coming out”. In this case, the term is used to describe familiar families coming out to their vacation homes for the summer. This arrangement forms a tight knit community in which people, who are normally minorities as upper middle-class African-Americans back in New York create a kind of utopia for the summer. The community in Sag Harbor almost feels stagnant, frozen in time; filled with the same elders telling Benji stories about his grandparents, and acting simply as a backdrop to his own development. One especially interesting effect that the phenomenon of coming out has is how one can on...