the locker room before the exhibition: the pre-match liturgy, named as a ritual
Dressing and stretching, wrapping grips with Gauze-Tex or filling a pouch with fuller’s earth (Coyle, Freer, Stice, Traub) or sawdust (Wagenknecht, Chu), getting taped, those in puberty getting shaved and taped. A ritual.
Context
The body prepped like equipment, at maximum resolution: grips wrapped in Gauze-Tex, sweat-pouches filled with fuller's earth or sawdust by name, flesh "shaved and taped" — and the narrator lands the word himself: "A ritual." The pre-match locker room is liturgy, each item of the body's servicing a rubric performed the same way every time. This is the ceremony irony-sincerity handed us for its substance; the register is theirs, the rite is ours.