The wet boy: the omniwetness, the verses, and the weight-room intimacy with Lyle

texture · UNDATED (E.T.A. years, B.S.)

• When: UNDATED (standing affliction across the E.T.A. years; recalled by Lyle on 8 Nov YDAU)
• What: Lyle, in the dark weight room, sometimes recalls a player "whose first name was Marlon and whose last name Lyle never to his knowledge learned" (n.152 explains: a lightless, eye-averted late-night weight room is "not exactly a last-name type of place"). The thing about this Marlon was the wetness — arms purling, T-shirt darkly V'd, "a lemony, low-cal taste" to the sheen; not sweat exactly, since licked-off beads instantly replaced themselves. He was always in the shower; there were powders and pills and electrical appliqués, and still he dripped and shone. He wrote accomplished juvenile verses about the dry clean boy inside; he confessed to Lyle that he'd gone in for high-level athletics mostly to have an excuse for being as wet as he was; "He shared extensively with Lyle," and Lyle told him everything Lyle had to tell — Hal later recalls that "Lyle and Marlon Bain had been particularly tight" (scene 160). Orin's version for Steeply: "the single sweatiest human being you’d ever want to get within a click of" (n234). The affliction outlasts E.T.A.: a photo in the Academy's Viewing-Room collage shows "An old one of Marlon Bain at the follow-through of a big forehand, a corona of sweat shimmering around him" (n209).