Defying the World's Weight

The weightlessness of a balloon is something I have envied for as long as I can remember.

My relationship with weight has been contrarian, to put it lightly, no pun intended. Since early adolescence I have been fat and well tethered by gravity’s oppression. Natural factors and a large appetite combined to give me a prodigious, bulging silhouette. My friends in high school would compare me to a blimp, and whenever a movie or a TV show went for an inflation gag, they would tease me by saying I was going to blow up a balloon if I wasn’t careful with my diet. I didn’t mind. In hindsight that good natured ribbing, and the less well-intentioned ribbing from others at school, might have been the catalyst for my principal fixation later in life.

There I was on the roof of an abandoned factory in the city’s industrial sector, surrounded on all sides by rectangular grey buildings as silent as the grave. Their windows broken or missing, their insides completely devoid of the daily routines of workmen they used to contain. With only the occasional mouse or group of teenagers looking for a secluded spot to smoke away from their parents, the entire area was empty of prying eyes. And I doubted the weed-smoking teens who holed up behind the dilapidated brick walls could even comprehend what I was about to do, let alone tell anyone about it, and still be believed.

I stripped out of my office clothes. My white office shirt, black pants, and pointy leather shoes went in a strongbox that I deposited beneath the rooftop stairwell.

The red latex shone in the waning sun. It was a candy red, deliciously tight across my skin. I could feel every movement as I lumbered towards the edge of the roof, my usual rolls and gently sagging belly pulled into a tight, spherical shape. Once I was close enough to see over the roof’s lip, and confident that I wouldn’t fall too early, I began the process.

A deep breath filled my lungs, pulled in through my pursed lips with a practised cadence. I arched my back and pushed my stomach forward, feeling my stomach distend with cool Autumnal air. It billowed tremendously, marrying the pliant curvature of my breasts with the mighty balloon my stomach had been transmuted into through my efforts. My fair skin turned pink with heat and exhaustion - the more you inflated, the more your temperature rose - and sweat collected on my forehead before it dripped down, over the curves of my puffy cheeks.

My fatness had always been a point of pride in my life. I had never been disgusted, or upset, by how inordinately large I was. I loved the way I took up space, it made me feel important; perhaps inconvenient to some, but it helped me stay grounded by remembering how physical my existence was. The way people had to permit me on a crowded street, or press against the walls of a cramped hallway, just to let me through. It was like being the star of my own personal, lifelong parade. And I was the balloon.

I closed my eyes, stopped pursing my lips, and continued to take in air at a more leisurely pace. Gravity’s awful grip waned over my form, my thick, arms and legs ballooned and refused to bend, and my double chin hid my neck from view, ringing my face like a tyre. This was the most transcendent stage for me. I could feel it, the way the laws of physics lost their hold, and I became free of the Earth. Part of why I closed my eyes when I began to float was to deal with the dizzying change in perspective, it helped to wait until my buoyant form levelled out before opening them again.

When I did open my eyes, I was upside down. The rectangular tops of the warehouse buildings hung above me now. I smiled and continued to inhale, growing beyond the size of a bus, beyond the size of a sixteen-wheeler, those were my previous bests. I kept inhaling, ignoring the erotic tension that tempted me. It was hard to ignore the first time you inflated, but I had practised long and hard to keep a clear head so that I wouldn’t be taken by explosive euphoria ‘too’ soon. A few more feet, a few more inches, a few more centimetres. Just a little more, that was the instruction I desperately conveyed to my body.

But as I crested the size of a small hot air balloon, my doughnut thick limbs rounded and useless, with the far edges of my body squealing for release, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to grow much larger. I closed my eyes, stopped breathing in, and mentally clenched. I willed myself to hold on, as I pulsed bigger, then deflated by a smaller margin than I grew. These rhythmic swells were the final stage of my pneumatic ritual, the signal that I had stretched too far, and that I was about to do what all balloons pumped beyond their limit, were ultimately meant to do.

I enjoyed the weightlessness for as long as I could, time stretched out as far as my inflated body for what felt like an hour, but was closer in reality to a few airy, delirious minutes.

Then I blew the silence away with a thunderous blast, raining scraps of latex confetti on the ground below.

When I reformed, as I always did, I was directly below the point where I had exploded. Back on that rooftop, with the single door to the stairwell where I had stashed my clothing. I went to cover my nakedness, dressed in the sensible manner of a mild, incredibly fat businessman, and went about my life.

Until the weight of everything compelled me to return, and defy it with a deep breath.