Benji:WHAT IS THIS? WHAT AM I LOOKING AT? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?
Mickey:It’s a gym photo. People send gym photos.
Benji:PEOPLE send gym photos. YOU have never sent me a photo of you. You have sent me exactly zero visual evidence that you have a body. And now you’re sending me a SHIRTLESS MIRROR PHOTO with SWEAT on your skin and your SHOULDERS looking like THAT and you think I’m going to be OKAY about this???
Mickey:I thought you wanted to know how the arms were coming along.
Benji:YOU THOUGHT I WANTED TO KNOW!! Mickey. I’m sitting in my bed right now. I have a client meeting in two hours. I have eyeliner from yesterday under my eyes and pillow creases on my face. I just opened a photo of you shirtless and WET and I made a sound that woke my neighbor.
Mickey:Sorry.
Benji:You are NOT sorry. You sent this at 6:47 AM. You knew I’d open it first thing. You’re a cop. You time everything. This was CALCULATED. This is the most calculated photo I have ever received and I have received some VERY calculated photos in my life. I’m a gay man in Miami. I’ve seen thirst traps from men who do this PROFESSIONALLY. And yours just beat all of them with two words and a towel.
Mickey:It’s just a progress photo.
Benji:With that LOOK on your face? That is not a progress face. That is an “I know exactly what this is going to do to you” face. That face is illegal. You’re in law enforcement. Arrest yourself, Mickey.
Mickey:I need to go shower. Talk tonight?
Benji:NO! You can’t just drop that photo and then say “I need to go shower” and expect me to function. You can’t put the image of you shirtless AND the image of you in a shower in my brain in the same text and expect me to conduct business today. I have to discuss centerpieces. How am I supposed to discuss centerpieces when my brain is full of your shoulders??
Mickey:You’re resourceful. You’ll figure it out.
Benji:I’m saving this photo. I’m putting it in a folder. The folder is called “Evidence” because that’s what you’d call it and I think that’s romantic.
Mickey:Very romantic.
Benji:I know it is. Talk tonight. Go shower. And Mickey?
Mickey:Yeah?
Benji:Guess what I’m going to go do now while looking at your photo??? My sweatpants are already off. Send more.
Mickey Weaver sent me a thirst trap. The man who types in complete sentences flexed in a mirror for me before breakfast.
I’ve been the one sending photos. The bathroom mirror. The hotel bed. The staged sheets. I’ve been the one performing, putting myself on camera, hoping he’d look. And he did look. He said he did.
But he never sent one back. Until now.
My phone buzzes one more time.
Mickey:Here’s another photo. Since you insist.
It’s the same mirror. Same bathroom. But this one is from the side. His arm is flexed, not for the camera, just bracing on the counter, and the angle catches his profile — the line of his shoulder into his bicep, the shadow under his chest.
Mickey:Now you owe me one.
I pull the pillow over my face.
That night I’m on my balcony at six to take Mickey’s call. He’s in his room, propped on the pillow, the phone angled up at him. He’s in a clean shirt now, but my brain immediately puts him back in the mirror from this morning. Shirtless. Sweating. I blink it away because he’s about to say something and I need to be a functioning person for it.
“Jason put me on the parallel bars this morning,” he says. “I stood up, Benji. For the first time since the hallway.”
My hand goes to my mouth. He was upright.
He’s getting better.
“Mickey. That’s incredible. I’m so proud of you I can’t breathe.”
