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The camera, dug out of a box of old apartment stuff, is a beat-up, beloved little thing. It may as well magnetize itself to Matt’s hand for how well his muscles remember it. In those days it barely left him, flash of silver, little wrist strap side-by-side with the Wii remote. Put on and tighten the wrist strap. Allow adequate room around you during game play. The "N" in Nikon was scratched off so it read ikon: "That'll be me, Bird, the icon."
He never had it out during shoots, as it would obviously lead to uninteresting footage, but just hanging with Jay or Jared or Eric he’d take stupid little photos constantly, nothing anyone would want to save in an album or hang in a frame. Extreme close-ups of body parts, the logos on shirts, patterns made by the fading sun. Corners of Jay’s young, bare face, the flash in his eyes, still so dark and swallowing up all that light. Scrolling over to one picture in particular pulls a visceral memory to the forefront of Matt’s mind as if by fish hook. Twenty years ago he’d curl up in a bedroom not dissimilar to this one, four kilometers east, and stare into the LCD screen at this picture, all six megapixels of it. Zooming into the roots of Jay’s eyelashes, the pores on his nose, like if he looked hard enough for long enough he could fall into the photo and become part of him.
That's not even mentioning the videos. Matt hasn't watched any of the old documentary dailies since that time, so these little fragments of their early twenties are whiplash, one after the other. Time both wasted and cherished. The bad good old days.
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
[2008-05-09 12:31:42]
Jay, a fresh twenty-five, sits in the driver's seat of a Lincoln Town Car. The light through the sunroof casts harsh shadows under his jaw and cheekbones. The hand holding the camera is shaky, jerky, and it captures the blurry Ontario highway and Jay's profile, but not both at the same time. An R&B song plays over the radio.
MATT: –oh, no, no, keep this on, this is your–
JAY: Lemme put my CD back on, you dipshit.
MATT: Fuck you! Shotgun is mobile DJ! Listen, bitch.
A sheet of realization drops over Jay's face. He smiles and starts bobbing his head, mumbling along to the song. The chorus kicks in:
JAY: You don't have to call! It's okay, girl…
His voice is confident. He sings full-out, performing to the windshield.
JAY and MATT: 'Cause I'ma be alright tonight!
JAY: You don't have to call…
Behind the camera, Matt cackles.
MATT: Finally, I have it on wax. Usher Jaymond.
Jay turns his head to look into the camera, then looks just above it. He stares for several seconds, his open mouth smiling.
A nearby car sounds a prolonged honk. Matt's hand reaches into frame and grasps the steering wheel.
MATT: Bird, watch the fucking road!
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
The thing still takes photos. Shit from today wouldn't hold up like this, that's for sure. Matt holds it at arm's length, arranges his face into something he hopes is smolder-like, and hits the button. Reviewing the photo on the little screen, he finds it's not too bad. Not as unkind to his undereye bags as he expected. His phone would've done him worse. He plugs the memory card into the PC tower upstairs and that's how Jay finds him, sitting backwards in the computer chair, arrow-keying.
Jay rests his chin atop Matt's head. "Whatcha got?"
"Old camera with stuff on it." He tabs through a couple more: Jared with no greys and no mustache holding a Handycam over his head like a trophy, someone's hand around a bottle of Steam Whistle. Probably Jay's.
"You find that in the attic?"
"Yeah."
Jay pulls another chair from across the room, and Matt wordlessly scoots over.
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
[2028-08-15 17:59:01]
The camera approaches a small galley kitchen in long, quick strides. Jay is at the burner, stirring something in a saucepan with a wooden spoon.
MATT: Tell us what you're making, Bird.
JAY: Pasta.
MATT: What kind of pasta.
JAY: Uh, it's got, uh–
Distracted, Jay lets the pan drift off the gas burner, the flames licking up one side. He quickly sets it back to rights.
MATT: Christ, Jay.
JAY: Sorry! It's got, like, tomatoes? I followed the recipe. It's from Ina Garten.
MATT: And who are you making it for?
Jay pauses. The pasta water boils audibly.
JAY: Us?
MATT: Got it! First time in twenty years he makes dinner for two! The bird's on fire!
JAY: Why don't you do this when it's done and I look impressive?
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
On a shooting day, Matt brings the camera out. He doesn't give a shit anymore about whether or not he can be edited around. Luca and Jared look at it like they're probably thinking hah, baby-time stuff, but they let him be. He lets them jump all over his furniture "to get the shot," so now they're even. Three unblinking lenses now, some kind of tricloptic beast. Outside the bay windows, the bright eye of the sun winks between the lazily shifting curtains.
Matt gets a shot of the back of Jay's head in the light, a timestamp of the state of the grey. He whirls around, and click, gets one of his coy little why-I-oughta smile.
"For crying out loud," Jay says, but there's nothing in it. Matt bobs and weaves back to the corner of the room, teasing out a Plan, and Jay doesn't stop looking back.
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
[2028-08-18 11:14:22]
Jay sits at the upright piano, playing something buoyant and jazzy. An old standard. He sings along, humming in some places. The shot frames Jay's back amongst the posters on the wall, the things on the shelves.
JAY: Keep an eye on spring, run when church bells ring–
The camera pans to capture Jay in three-quarter profile.
JAY: It could happen to you…
Zoom - zoom - zoom in on Jay's face.
JAY: All I did was wonder how your arms would be–
Tilt down to his hands on the keys.
JAY: And it happened to me.
Jay keeps playing, improvising. The camera zooms back out and watches him, holding the shot for a couple of minutes, until he stops and turns around. Spotting the camera lens, he smiles wryly.
JAY: You're still here?
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
"We should make a movie," Matt says over bagel-and-coffee-and-juice breakfast. It's a nice morning. A few days' miasma of humidity broke last night in torrents of rain, and the world felt especially green and lush when they woke up and could breathe easier.
Walking to the bagel place, picking up breakfast, bringing it home, Jay had felt almost light and free. A childhood summer vacation kind of feeling, but if it took two steps to the left. No guardrails. Usually, when he feels this nonsensically content, there's a counterbalancing fear: was I supposed to be doing something productive? Is everyone mad at me? Do I still have an essay thirty years overdue for school?
Back at home, with food in him, he feels less at sea. Matt always reminds him of that. You're upset? Have you eaten anything? It's one of his seldom mom ways. Maybe not like Jay's mom exactly.
"A movie, like, this whole…" Jay gestures broadly. No one else is here, no Jared, Andy, any of them, but the point makes it across.
A little secret smile lights up Matt's face. "No, Bird. I mean. Tonight. We. Go upstairs. Bring in a bunch of lamps. Good lighting, mood lighting. Sexy, sexy stuff. And you and me, make a movie."
"A sex tape?" He'd be lying if he said he didn't suspect Matt of harboring this particular dream. It just surprises him to hear it aloud.
"Whaddaya think?"
"Why do it?"
Matt rolls his eyes and takes the last bite of his everything bagel sandwich with whatever in it. Still chewing, he answers, "I just want to make you my star."
"You're not gonna post it. Are you?"
"Do you want me to post it?"
The instinct is to say no, he doesn't want his whole-ass everything all out online where his entire family can see, but the thought does strike him for a moment. The world seeing how deeply they belong to each other. How eclipsing it is to be near him. Would it be as plain, as bold-faced as it feels?
"N… no. Just for us."
Matt nods. It's as easy as that. "Just for us, then." He leans over to kiss Jay, and Jay takes it, onion mouth and all.
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
[2028-08-19 20:02:50]
"Waitwaitwait – how could I forget–"
Matt leans way over on the bed, coming so close to falling off that Jay grabs his arm, but returns with the sex whiteboard and a marker.
"I thought we said no plan."
"No, no. Hold the camera."
Matt sits up, fixes his shoulders back, shakes out his neck. His hat's still on. He holds the marker at an angle to the top edge of the board, upon which is written NIRVANNA THE BAND: THE TAPE. DIR. MATT JOHNSON. He claps the marker against the top of the whiteboard: "Action."
Falling back down to Jay, he asks, "You got that? 'Sfor audio. Now gimme. The thing."
"Uh huh."
"The graphical fidelity of this thing is doing you no justice, Bird," says Matt. The camera roams over Jay's body, down then up again, and Jay watches Matt's eyes track its movement. "You look like Cloud Strife over here."
Rude. To the top-billed star, no less. "Yeah? You look like fuckin'. Uh. Gruntilda." Twisting his body, Jay angles his lower half away from the lens. He's wearing the smallest shorts he could find and nothing else.
"Birdie, if you want witch pussy, all you have to do is ask. I'll be your witch. I'll be your sorceress. I'll dunk myself in green paint." Matt's hand, the back of it, so light, runs down the line from Jay's ribs down his hip to his thigh. A touch that gentle from a man who crashes through the drywall of life. "Just do me one thing. Be my video vixen, baby."
Jay chews the inside of his lip for something to focus on. "Just for us, MJ?"
"Yeah. Of course, like we said. Not like you know how to upload anything."
"They still have Photobucket?"
"Don't think so, Bird."
"Then no." Shifting on the bed, mouth curving up at the side, Jay continues, "The graphic– the graphic fidelity is okay for the thing, right? We can still use this? 'Cause I don't think you could eat me out with Jared's rig on your shoulder."
Matt's eyes squeeze shut several times in a row. "Birdie." The digital zoom is audible. Jay can't tell what it's zooming in on. "Oh, Jaybird. Should we get Jared in here?"
"Shut up, Matt. You get any more serious about this, we'll end up like Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee."
"Yeah, man, look at you, you're Pam! You've got this Venusian quality about you. I'll just fuck off and be Tommy."
"Stop fucking with me. Matt. Would you look at yourself?" Jay snatches the camera away from Matt and points it at him. "You're Pam." Sotto voce, to the camera, he adds, "Goes around all blond, big-titted, and he doesn't even know it."
"The moment I saw you in my section at Hooters, I knew," Matt replies, laughing at his own joke, which makes Jay join in.
"Why are you wearing that?" He flicks the brim of Matt's hat. "Don't you wanna take it off?"
"It's my directorial signature. Like Spielberg."
Jay will let him have this one. Matt's hand has been climbing the insides of Jay's thighs in fits and starts and it's making his stomach flip. He hands the camera back to Mr. Directorial Signature, who leans in and tilts the camera down Jay's body again in long sweeps.
"Jay, I don't want you to ever touch a hair on your body. Not the chest, not the bush, not nothin'."
Jay goes all hot. Alright. "That mean you want me to take these off?"
"It wouldn't hurt."
He does it, but he doesn't try to be coquettish or anything. There and gone. "I'm gonna keep doing the bush, I think."
"You're no fucking fun." Matt pulls a nightstand around near the corner of the bed and props the camera on it. He checks the display a couple of times before returning, bouncing back onto the bed.
He makes quick work of his shirt buttons, Jay helping pull it off his shoulders, his hands lingering on Matt's biceps, tracing the lines of the muscles. He's distracted, mapping out Matt's back with his fingertips while he shuffles out of his pants, when he sees it. Just a flash of it when his boxer-briefs get pulled down for a second. It's a little shape, not too dark, about the size of a quarter, and it's on the very top of his upper thigh near the junction of his hip. Unbelievably, it's a tattoo. Unmistakably, it's a bird.
There is static spreading through Jay's chest. "Matt, what was that?"
"What was what, Bird." Bird. Oh, God.
"On– Take off your. I saw it. Matt. Show me."
Matt just smiles beneath that hat, and it's so familiar and dear that Jay settles. "You saw it, huh. And I was so excited for the big reveal! Lights-camera-action, cue the confetti, the violins…"
Jay claws at Matt's elastic waistband. Matt gives in and pulls them down, shimmying them off until he's wearing nothing but the hat in which he was born. It's clearly a new tattoo. It has to be; Matt couldn't possibly keep such a thing a secret for long, but moreover it's still a little red and angry.
"Get the," Matt whispers, and motions for the camera on the nightstand, about which Jay had in all honesty forgotten. "Close-up."
Jay grabs it hastily and pushes Matt over on the bed; he goes easily. Splitting his attention between the LCD screen and the real thing, Jay inspects Matt's new tattoo.
"You like it?"
The bird is perched on a little branch. It's not one of those minimalist birds-in-flight tattoos. It looks kind of like an old zoological illustration.
"What's the word for studying birds? The study of birds?" Jay's fingers skim near the ink, but not too close. Probably hurts.
"O… No, I have this. Ornithology."
It's like he got my name tattooed on him. A slutty little hip tattoo of my name. "It's not a blue jay, is it? Those have the things on their heads." Jay zooms in a little, shifts Matt's leg on the bed so the ink catches the light better.
Matt laughs darkly. "No. It's a grey jay. Canada jay." He reaches over and ruffles Jay's hair. "My grey Jay."
Jay's head is hot. He opens his mouth to reply, but all that comes out is an overwhelmed half of a laugh. The camera shakes in his hand; the coverage has probably drifted to who knows where. He returns it to the nightstand.
"You okay?" Matt asks, clasping Jay's shoulders with both hands. "You hate it? It's too much, isn't it. Did too much."
"Matt, no." Jay flops his head down onto the pillow and tips his face into Matt's chest just to breathe him in for a second. He smells like mint and sweat. "I really fucking like it. It's cute. It just surprised me. You know?" He presses a kiss into Matt's collarbone. "When did you get it?"
"A week ago." Matt's big stupid hand cups the back of Jay's head and slides down, down his neck, down to press the keys of his upper spine, one by one. Slowly goes the pressure, the release, the buzz down the middle of him, cutting through the tension and replacing it with arousal.
Jay lifts his head, finally, can barely see his lids are so heavy. "Love when you do that," he mumbles, and kisses him, Matt's arms locking around him right away, and his legs, his strong thick thigh with the tiny bird inked on it.
Matt's mouth leaves his but doesn't go far; he kisses Jay's scruffy chin, the line of his jaw, and once he gets near his ear he says, "Bird, lemme eat you out," and any reservation Jay may have previously held melts away.
Again, he's reminded to fetch the camera, this time to film the action from his point of view. It looks– It looks filthy, really. Pornographic, obviously. His mind bends back and forth between familiar-detached-familiar. Matt's hands, the definition of his forearms, traveling down Jay's skinny legs; his dark leg hair looks starker on screen, his and Matt's difference in size less prominent. Matt's thumbs trace half-moons in the pits of Jay's knees, where he knows he's sensitive, and a laugh bubbles out of him unbidden. The honesty of touch layered under the trickery of the lens.
Jay tries his best to think of what Matt would want to see: he zooms in on the single hand around both of his ankles as he's pulled down to the edge of the bed; he keeps his own dick from disappearing out of frame while capturing his legs hooking over Matt's shoulders; he reaches down to tuck Matt's hair out of his face and lingers over his pink cheek. Matt, kneeling there on the floor, lifts one of Jay's thighs off his shoulder, and with no preamble, his tongue meets Jay's hole.
It jolts him. The newness of it. Jay registers nothing else. Further, it shocks him into resetting coverage, pointing the camera further down at where Matt's mouth meets him.
Matt doesn't dive into the act, but he's not afraid either. He licks at Jay deliberately, pacing himself. First just flat washes, getting both of them used to it, but then he adds more pressure, making himself felt inside of Jay in this new way. It takes a minute but then all at once it falls over the threshold into good and then a second later into reallyfuckinggood and a sound rips out of him that he's never heard before, not from him, not from anybody. Something obscene. Matt presses his face in harder. His jaw works. His eyes meet the camera.
"Matt– M-haaah–" Jay slaps his hand against Matt's arm. He's clutching the camera so hard he's surprised it hasn't shattered into pieces, whiskey glass style.
Just as suddenly as he'd began, Matt stops, lifts his face, wipes his wet and shiny mouth on the back of his wrist. "Good?" he asks. His eyes stay low and lidded, and his thumb traces a line where his mouth was.
Jay shivers. "Fuck." He holds the camera back as far as he can to frame Matt between his bent legs. "What's better than good? I forgot."
Laughing, Matt takes the camera back from him, placing it on the nightstand carefully, pushing him up the bed and kneeling before him. He gets that look on his face that he always does when they're like this. Big eyes, little open mouth. Jay thought it was a joke the first time he recognized it for what it is. Adoring.
"C'mon," Jay whines, arching higher, "you gotta, after that, you can't–" and he's choked off by the cold drizzle of lube over him, Matt holding the bottle high. Trick-shots for the camera. Cool. It goes everywhere, too, Matt pressing it in with his fingers, then pressing his fingers in, two of 'em just like that. The noises are involuntary and appropriately pornographic, not just those coming out of his mouth but also those being made by Matt's sloppy-wet fingering.
"Would you tell me when I'm–" Jay goes on, catching his breath, but Matt cuts him off again.
"I'll tell you when you're ready, Birdie, don't worry," Matt smiles, so smug as he slips another finger in, blustering even as the way his fingers coax and seek envelops Jay with fullness and flattens him down into the earth.
Somewhere in here Matt folds Jay's legs back, gets his dick lined up and bullies his way in. Jay forces his eyes open; he doesn't want to miss the way Matt always gets overcome at this part. He clenches down and appreciates the ensuing trembling cry from Matt's beloved, bitten mouth. Why not give the camera what it wants? Matt starts in, then, slow, rolling, and Jay meets him right away, heaving his hips up.
"Did I say?" Matt leans on him with one hand, pinning him, but for just a moment, then seems to rethink it and lets go, making a flip directorial decision. "You took 'video vixen' to heart, didn't you."
Jay keeps fucking back onto him, even as Matt goes faster, leaning in, running his hands all over. "I am the captain now," Jay says, and Matt laughs loud and ugly just how Jay likes, and the camera beeps.
Matt pauses at the apex of a thrust, his timing near comedic. Moving gingerly, he picks it up and studies it, looking irritated. It beeps again, a few times. He turns the camera around to show it to Jay, face falling.
The screen is black. "Can you believe this shit, Bird? Dead battery." Matt looks at the thing for a long few seconds before mercifully dropping it over the side of the bed. He moves again, but only to pull out.
"Matt…"
"Birdbirdbird. Camera's dead. Middle of our movie. You know how that makes me feel?"
"Bad?"
"Annoyed. And hungry."
It's no feat at all for Matt to flip Jay over onto his front. Jay, half-fucked, puts up all the resistance of a cup of pudding. It's even easier for Matt to spread Jay's legs, tilt his ass up, and lick back into him. A noise bursts forth from Jay's throat, the short A in Matt's name, but it strangles itself before it can even be muffled by the pillow. Jay clamps it tighter to his face anyway.
Matt wasn't lying. He is hungry, or at least he eats ass like he is; Jay's still a little loose from a minute ago, not to mention all lubey, so Matt's tongue can get up in there immediately, lips slipping, making it wet. The warm pressure is familiar but different. He's caught in a recursive cycle of re-remembering what Matt's face must look like buried in his ass, pink and drooly, and every time he does his whole body jars.
Matt surfaces for air and tosses his hat away somewhere. "Stop squirming," he says, and winds his arms under Jay's thighs, pinning them apart, spreading his ass with his thick, square hands. Butterfly in a shadowbox. Somehow, Matt maintains a rhythm, and it's expressed through his whole body. His fingers flex in time. His upper body rocks against the side of the bed, the frame creaking along. A delicate percussion section of two.
It's too much. Jay keeps squirming with legs locked. The feeling is building, and building, and it can't go anywhere; he can only get so much friction off the bedsheets. It feels like half the pillow is in his mouth for how hard he's been gnashing it. Abruptly, that pillow is ripped from underneath him. Jay crooks his neck to look back.
"No hiding, Birdie bee," Matt says, panting, beautiful. Damp strands of his hair stick to his face. He smacks Jay across the shoulderblades with the pillow. "Wanna hear you sing."
Jay doesn't often know exactly what Matt is thinking, but the look on his face right now is a five hundred point typeface. I'll devour you from the inside out, it says. I'll eat your heart.
Jay locks his arms above his head and arches his back. I'll let you.
When Matt gets back to it it's slow and hard. His tongue is so deep inside him it's impossible to fathom. Every new scrape of his stubble is an illicit burst of flame. Jay begins to shake apart, and it can't go on like this, there has to be some kind of reprieve– "Matt, I can't come from this, MJ, please–"
Matt presses a sweet little kiss in. "I think you can, Bird. You're doing so good." Awfully, terribly, tears spring to the corners of Jay's eyes. "Hold on to the headboard for me?"
What else can Jay do? He grips the slats of the bedframe, forcing his hips into a deeper arch. Pervert. This time Matt's mouth is accompanied by his fingers: they toy with Jay's balls mercifully, they loosely ring his dick. Jay rocks against the mattress, more leverage now that he's only half-pinned, and it's almost. The buzz and the tangle of sensation are at his throat. Matt presses his thumb into Jay's taint, working him from the outside, and that's the last broken string – it tips over headlong – Jay comes, thrashing, ringing, rushing.
He spread-eagles there on the bed for what feels like a long time, feeling his pulse slow to rest. The pins and needles ebb. He drifts.
After an age, Jay cracks an eye open and props his head on his arm. Matt's there. Stars in his eyes.
"What do you." Jay circles a limp hand in the air. Need. Want. Think of me now that you've eaten out my asshole?
"Oh, nothing, Bird, I'm all set," and he's deeper red than previously imagined possible, which can only mean one thing.
Jay ducks his head to look down that flushed chest, down, to find him soft, matter-of-factly there. Huh. He grins back up at him: "You liked it that much?"
Matt's face goes through some complex microexpressions that all come down to yes. The dumb fucking stars. Cygnus, Lyra, Polaris. "There's something to be said for the amount of trust it takes to do something like this without any nut shots," he says. "Trust is hot these days."
Jay pouts. "That's what you were thinking about? Was this whole thing just a weird… avant-garde nut shot compilation thing that you backed out of at the last minute?"
"Bird, that is a whole different octagon we call cock and ball torture."
"Oh."
It becomes apparent that Matt's come is drying tacky on the backs of his thighs. So that's where that went. Matt rises from bed, turns off the nearest lamp, and cracks the windows, his pale body luminous in the blue dusk. The little grey jay hasn't gone anywhere; in fact, it surprises him all over again. The crickets are out tonight. Someone outside is grilling. Jay doesn't mind a thing.
⏪︎ ⏯ ⏹ ⏩︎
Matt lays flat on the couch the next day and flips back and forth between the new photos and the old. He lingers on the differences in their faces, in the set of their shoulders; their voices in the first seconds of autoplay in the videos. Still, the flat pixels that make up the new don't compare to the full body of reality he lives now. Seeing a photo of Jay's toothy smile and his crow's feet doesn't make him feel that all-consuming urge to steal cars or scale skyscrapers the way it does to see it in person. The thought makes him all wistful about the things about being young with Jay he's probably forgotten. You only live twice, or whatever that song said.
Bond! Been a while since he's seen that one. He wonders if Bird will watch it with him tonight. He'll figure something out. Might be a Doordash coupon in his email somewhere. Mindlessly, he keeps clicking through photos while planning the night, and Jay manages to sneak up on him like that, poking his forehead, ever the gentle scarer. Matt doesn't yelp, but it's close.
"You watching our thing?"
"So you're creeping up on me and trying to watch it together? You peeping Tom? Bird? Tweeting Tom?"
"No, Jesus!" Jay curls back, entirely too offended. Matt thanks the sun and the moon and the sky every day that Jay enjoys being the mouse in their sick little endless game. "Just saying hi."
"Hi." Jay leans down to kiss him upside-down like Spiderman, and Matt pinches his ear out of some stray happy electrical impulse. "I didn't put any of the new stuff on the computer. Like we talked about."
"I know."
"I think the memory card's almost full."
"What do you wanna do with it?"
Matt looks over at the box from the attic. They haven't done much with the other things in it. There's already enough ephemera on every surface of this place. He thumbs over, finally, to that old photo, the one of Jay's eye, no wrinkles. That remembered furtive feeling is already in its half-life, fading away.
He shuts the thing off, looking at Jay, those eyes, still the same. Matt can look at them any time he wants. He can get in real close.
The camera goes back in the box. They'll kick that problem down the road another twenty years.