The weight room: 110 kilos, Freer's bellowed atrocities, and Pemulis's whisper

pivotal · 6 Nov YDAU, 1610h

• When: 6 Nov YDAU, 1610h, E.T.A. Weight Room, freestyle circuits.
• What: Kornspan's defining scene. He and "Keith ('The Viking') Freer" spot each other "on massive barbell-curls next to the water cooler's bench, taking turns bellowing encouragement" — the narration tagging him "the steroidic fifteen-year-old Eliot Kornspan." Freer's spotting rhetoric runs to "It raped your sister! It killed your fucking mother man!"; Kornspan answers in pre-verbal roars ("Gwwwhoooooowaaaaa!"). At the climax, "Kornspan looks like he's about to have a stroke. There are 90 kg. on the bar, which itself is 20 kg." — 110 total, enough that Troeltsch, watching, says "I don't think all the curls I've ever done all together add up to 110." Freer has one finger under the bar, barely helping; Kornspan's "red face is leaping around on his skull"; when the bar crashes down, "Every vein on Kornspan stands out and pulses. His stomach looks pregnant." — a string of something hanging from his mouth. And then the scene's knife: Pemulis, who has spent the whole circuit wincing at the noise from the cooler's bench just off Kornspan's left hip, leans over slowly — "He gets so his face is right up near the side of Kornspan's mesomorphic head and whispers. 'Hey. Eliot. Hey.'" — and when Kornspan, bent over and chest heaving, rolls his head his way: "Pemulis whispers: 'Pussy.'" The scene gives Kornspan his body, his social function (spectacle), and his standing as a safe target for wit he can't answer.