The antigravity treadmill looks like something that NASA would invent. Silvia informs me that NASA did, in fact, invent it. Makes sense.
She approaches me with a transparent plastic bag containing some kind of big black disk. The whole thing is hanging off a wooden clothes hanger. She hands it to me.
I open the thing and discover that it’s some kind of weird trouser. They’re not exactly shorts, but they don’t reach my ankles either. They look like something my dad would have worn on a walk around Mallorca when we were kids. The material is elasticated. Instead of a normal waistband, the legs of the trousers end in a kind of solid rubberised circle which is surrounded by a zip.
Silvia tells me that they’re an XL but that they might still be too small for me. Bitch. Her comment leaves me determined to make them fit. I put one leg in, then the other, the I pull the things up with all the force I can muster. They hit me right in the bollocks and I nearly fall flat on my face. I regret everything.
At least I’ve got them up to where they need to be. Silvia tells me to make sure that the label is at the back. I tell her I already checked the orientation. I grab the handrail of the machine, and I hop on to it with my good leg.
I position myself inside the circular opening of a deflated rubber bag. Underfoot, I see that I am standing on the belt of a treadmill. Silvia sticks her hand into the machine, yanks on a lever, and raises the bag up to the hight of the comical looking disk that I have around my waist. She grabs the zip lining the hole in the bag and shows me how to run it around my new trousers until my legs are completely encased by this big industrial-strength pod.
I look like Cinderella, if Cinderella’s dress were made of a heavy grey plastic. I can’t move. What a nightmare.
Silvia proceeds to outline the way the machine works. She presses a button and the bag begins to inflate. It expands until it begins to form a kind of rectangular box in which I can move my feet. It keeps inflating until it begins to lift me off the ground. I begin to float and the trousers that are holding me up once again begin to squeeze my still-sensitive balls.
Silvia faffs around with the buttons some more and the belt of the treadmill begins to move. She increases the speed to 1.5 and tells me to walk normally. I wonder what the number 1.5 refers to. I seek answers on the screen but there are none to be found. Another number that shows up is 20%. Silvia explains that the machine is currently relieving me of 80% of my body weight. I think about how this will be the closest I’ll ever get to experiencing what it is like to be skinny. It’s quite nice, I should really try to give up chocolate or something.
I adjust myself within the trousers in a bid to relieve a bit of the pressure being exerted on my gentleman’s area. With the pressure of the air within, the bag immediately moves its focus to my belly, pushing against it and moving my breakfast around in the most unpleasant manner. I really do need to give up the chocolate.
Silvia tells me to carry on like this for ten minutes and she walks away. I observe myself in the faint reflection of the glass wall to my side. If I squint, I kind of look like a centaur: a man from head to waist and then a solid mass extending out behind me like a ginormous arse. This giant bag features a transparent plastic window, allowing me to check out my legs and note the difference between my good and bad legs. The dodgy one stands out with how rigid it looks.
I suddenly need to fart. Can I do it inside the bag? I look behind me. Yeah, I’d have to do it inside the bag, given that it extends up well above my bum. Could I wait until i finish my time on the machine? There’s still seven minutes left. I can’t wait seven minutes. The machine sits beside the television, which is currently playing music from TV on high volume. Nobody will notice.