The Topeka School

by Ben Lerner

we liked Topeka’s lack of exclusivity, the unobstructed sky; we watched thunderstorms together on the wraparound porch of the ramshackle Victorian house we bought without having to ask my father for a dime.

this is the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, circa 1983.

We had to pay a lot of money to get the tickets for the next day; luckily they still had seats, although I suppose there are usually seats to and from Kansas City.

too close to the norms to prove them by his difference, the real men—who are themselves in fact perpetual boys, since America is adolescence without end—had to differentiate themselves with violence,