If he were a woman or a racialized or otherwise othered body, he would be in immediate mortal danger from sexual predators and police. It was his similarity to the dominant that rendered him pathetic and a provocation: the man-child was almost fit for school or work or service, could almost get his license, finally discard the dirt bike; 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, Klaus’s voice.
