Lyle, the sweat-guru — "an E.T.A. institution"

texture · standing E.T.A. present, ~YDAU

• When: standing; the nighttime weight-room sessions dramatized across Interdependence Day (8 Nov) evening
• What: A muscled yogic guru sits lotus on the weight-room towel dispenser, dispensing "little nugget[s] of fitness-guru wisdom" in exchange for licked sweat — "He's an E.T.A. institution," tied by legend "way back" to the founder (039). At night the locked weight room fills: E.T.A.s dicky the door with meal-cards, sauna up, and confess one by one (LaMont Chu's fame-hunger, Stice's moving bed, moles and mosquitoes) — the administration "turn[s] a blind eye," and Lyle, with Mario and Avril, is the academy's real counselor, the "school" that fills the vacuum left by the useless staff psychologist Dr. Dolores Rusk (091, and event 5). His bond with JOI ran deep — the two were the weight room's "odd couple of libations," JOI pouring out his heart (grading his marriage "a C--") while Lyle read him Blake in cartoon voices. His counsel is the institution's oral wisdom-literature: "Let not the weight thou wouldst pull to thyself exceed thine own weight" (039, literalized on scoffers hoisted by the shoulder-pull machine), and the hundred-keys parable pressed on Graham Rader — one of a "hundred keys" opens the door "onto all you want to be, as a player"; how many "would you be willing to try?" (055). See Lyle's timeline (event 1), events 6, 15; JOI's timeline (event 12).