Second-rank and unpleasant: the B-squad slide, the suspicions, the sexual aggression

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING — an ongoing standing and reputation through YDAU
• What: Competitively Freer is a "second-rank junior player" in decline: once good enough to take Hal out of the U.S. Clays (event 3), he now sits on the B-squad five slots below Hal — six if Troeltsch can still beat him when they replay after an illness-default — in the churn Hal itemizes for his Little Buddies (Hal, in the same breath: "I may despise K. B. Freer"). Socially he is the Academy's designated unpleasantness: "the unpleasant K. Freer always has suspicions of all kinds" — he is among those suspecting Hal gets secretly high — and he is its most aggressive womanizer, one of "the more aggressive Freer-type guys" who "can break some of the girls down," counted among the table's members who have had sexual intercourse, keeper of a souvenir colposcope bolted inside his locker door, and author of the pet theory that E.T.A.'s female athletes are latent lesbians (event 10 quotes it from its richest raw). With Struck he keenly anticipates the visiting Québecois Jr. Wightman girls as prospects (event 12).