The nighttime weight-room economy: sweat for counsel, and the way he listens

pivotal · UNDATED (standing E.T.A. present)

• When: UNDATED — the standing after-hours ritual, present-tense
• What: The answer to newer kids' suspicions about what Lyle does in the locked night weight room: "the nighttime weight room is rarely empty." E.T.A.s in the know dicky the lock with a meal-card (hence the ravaged meal-card edges), hit the saunas until they have "enough incentive on their skin," then queue in towels "in the eye-averted attitudes of like patients in the waiting room of an impotence clinic," and go in one by one to "Proffer beaded flesh" and confer. Lyle leans forward "to accept what is offered," licks the sweat, and listens: "like all good listeners, he has a way of attending that is at once intense and assuasive: the supplicant feels both nakedly revealed and sheltered." He sucks the insides of his cheeks; often shrugs and says "The world is very old" or some such Remark. "But it's the way he listens, somehow, that keeps the saunas full."