Amanda Filipacchi - Vapor

“I know you have scales.”

“I just have one.”

“No kitchen scale?”

I brought out my human scale and my kitchen scale.

He got undressed and stepped on the human scale. He weighed two pounds. He wrapped the tourniquet around his arm and injected himself with a clear solution. We watched the scale, and within a few seconds he lost one pound.

“I want you to bring me closer,” he said, stepping off the scale.

“To what?” I said.

“Zero.”

“Why?”

“Cause then I can do even more fun things.”

“Like what?”

“Like swim in air or be blown by your breath and stuff like that. The lower the weight, the more fun it gets. But don’t let it reach zero or I’ll die.”

“Do you mean you’ll die, as in: you’ll be upset, or you’ll die literally?”

“I mean the latter, and therefore the former as well. If I become completely weightless, I’ll be more cloud than human, and there’s no turning back. I won’t regain my weight, I’ll just eventually rain. Not right away. It takes a few days or weeks. But once you rain, you lose your life. You become a puddle.”

He placed one needle and the tourniquet on my kitchen scale, which he then set to zero.

He stepped onto the kitchen scale himself, trying to find his balance.

“Watch the scale and tell me what you see,” he said.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What if my scale is inaccurate and you’ve reached zero and it says you haven’t?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

He was about to inject himself, when I shouted, “Wait! Are you sure you got all the air bubbles out?”

“The liquid is weightless. You can’t get the air bubbles out.”

“But if you inject yourself with air, it can be fatal.”

“I am air, or rather, cloud. It doesn’t matter.”

He injected part of the solution into his arm, and waited.

After a few seconds the scale steadied at eight ounces.

He injected himself again, and his weight went down to four ounces. He continued giving himself tiny doses of the solution, bringing himself closer and closer to zero.

“How close do you want to get?” I asked.

“Quarter of an ounce.”

“That’s crazy. My scale’s not that good. You can’t trust it at that level.”

“I’ve done it before on my own kitchen scale, which is no better than yours.”

“I don’t believe you. How could you tell how close you were getting if you had no one to tell you?”

“I used mirrors.”

He kept injecting himself with small doses until I lied to him and told him he had reached a quarter of an ounce, when he actually weighed half an ounce.

“Are you sure you’re not fibbing?” he said. “I think you’re fibbing, but let’s try it anyway.”

He stepped off the scale. “Oh yes, I feel heavy.”

Naked, he jumped in the air, reached the ceiling, and slowly drifted back down like a balloon. Before he landed, he started kicking his legs vigorously and doing the breast stroke with his arms, as if trying to swim in air. And then he landed.

“ An-na . You fibbed . I’m not supposed to land when I do this.”

He went back on the scale and said, “I’m sure I weigh at least three-quarters of an ounce, which means I will inject myself with enough serum to eliminate half an ounce.”

“If you do that you’ll be dead. You weighed half an ounce, okay?”

“Okay. Don’t lie to me anymore, or it can be dangerous. Be very truthful, very accurate.”

He injected himself and we waited a few seconds. I then told him he had reached his ideal weight.

“Good. Now I’m as heavy as a Bic pen.”

He stepped off the scale, jumped toward the ceiling, and did the breast stroke and kicked his legs. He succeeded in not landing. He slowly, very slowly, advanced in air.

After a minute, he stopped and landed. He was panting from the exertion.

“You know, I’ll have to get a more sensitive scale so I can get closer to zero, because a quarter ounce still requires too much effort to stay up in the air for long. I bet that if I could get down to one-twentieth of an ounce, I could stay up in the air with as little effort as staying afloat in water.”

We then played around. He asked me to blow on him, and I did: I blew him upward, I blew him away. I fanned him away. I opened the window slightly to create a draft. I tapped him like a balloon. He swam after the rat.

We even tried to have sex. When he was on top, he weighed nothing, which was pleasant on the one hand, but impractical on the other. The way we finally managed to do it was with me on top, pinning him down so he wouldn’t float away.

Then came the serious question, as we laid side by side, the weight of my arm holding him down.

“Do you want me to try it too?” I asked.

“That’s not up to me. It’s entirely up to you if you want to try becoming light. I’m not going to pressure you or even encourage you. I’m pretty sure it’s safe, health-wise, even in the long run, but I can’t be absolutely certain.”

For a moment I had a horrible vision of ourselves, a few months down the line, vomiting and shriveling up, due to having been injected with this potion.

“Is it fun? Becoming light?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s like being an astronaut. But God forbid, if you reach zero by accident, you’ll be like that rat, doomed to rain and die any day. I’ve already had three rats rain on me. It’s something to think about.”

“You won’t let me reach zero, right?”

“No. I would rather rain a thousand times than let you drizzle once.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

Damon made me light. He gave me a tiny dose at first, to see if I tolerated it, and if I wanted to go further. With that first injection, he made me lose ten pounds in about fifteen seconds. I giggled nervously. I felt giddy and, of course, light. It felt good.

As I soon found out, being twenty pounds lighter felt even better. But no matter how good that felt, it was nothing compared to getting down to a quarter of an ounce. I had to perform the injections on myself, after a certain point, because any touch from Damon would have altered my weight on the scale.

Being light, very light, was not much like anything I had ever experienced. It reminded me vaguely of the liberating feeling one gets when someone offers to carry one’s bag.

We bounced in slow motion around the apartment, danced and swam in the air.

Then we walked down the street with our heavy shoes (he gave me a pair of shoes like his) and took Damon’s car out to the country, to a deserted road, and while one of us drove, the other was pulled through the air by a thread attached with Scotch tape to the roof of the car. When we had exhausted the fun in that, we left the car and climbed trees using only the tips of our fingers and the lightest pressure. We sat on branches no thicker than chopsticks. We swung off leaves.

When the weight came back, it came back slowly, which meant we started landing just a little quicker than usual when we jumped off the top of trees. We drove back to the city and injected ourselves again and waited till night so we’d be less visible when we drifted outside. We went to deserted streets and made sure no one was around, and then climbed up the walls of buildings. We lowered ourselves down to the East River. We held on to threads that we tied to the railing, so as not to be blown away. It was a very warm night.

The next day Damon bought a scale that allowed us to get down to one-tenth of an ounce: the weight of a jumbo-sized paper clip. And later that day we weighed in at one-twentieth of an ounce. We had so much fun at that weight. We didn’t need to be any lighter.