the locker room after drills: the mark of the equipment
Stice has pulled his towel down slightly and is fingering the deep red abdominal stripe a jock's waistband leaves.
Context
A small body-inventory detail: Stice reads the "deep red abdominal stripe" his jockstrap's waistband has pressed into him, the gear leaving its impression in the flesh. The athletic body is legible by the marks its equipment makes — a stripe today, a tan-line, a brace-groove — the apparatus of the sport written on the skin.