Weight room: bellowing Kornspan through the curls

texture · 6 Nov YDAU, 1610h

• When: 6 November YDAU, 1610h, E.T.A. Weight Room, freestyle circuits
• What: Freer and the steroidic fifteen-year-old Eliot Kornspan spot each other on massive barbell curls by the water cooler, taking turns bellowing abuse-as-encouragement ("It raped your sister! It killed your fucking mother man!") — cords standing out on Freer's neck as he screams — though when it's Kornspan's lift Freer has "one finger under the bar, barely helping." When the bar crashes down he roars approval, then collects rosin, "watching himself walk toward the mirror." The book elsewhere folds Freer into Kornspan's transformation: the boy was skinny before Loach and Freer got hold of him. This is also the raw that first prints the self-applied moniker: "Keith ('The Viking') Freer," with its deflating endnote (see event 1).