It's a Sunday afternoon, and we've just arrived from a harrowing three-hour service at Al Green's church. Jeff is wearing a Sweet's Trailer Hitch thrift-store t-shirt, his dress shirt discarded. His suspenders frame the Sweet's logo nicely; sadly, his belt is not visible from the angle of the photograph. He's leaning back in the booth, one hand wrapped possessively around his iced tea glass. His delicate face and pouty lips are striking, yet nothing about his demeanor suggests that this young man was on People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" list.

  Following Jeff's gaze, to his left, sits a girl-me. I am also dressed for church, in a silk blouse and skirt, my hair pulled back and pinned up. My bangs are crooked. My lips are pulled back menacingly in the sort of expression that my mother warned me would freeze that way. Over our shoulders, a man at the next booth smiles, perfectly centered in the picture. A painting of Martin Luther King Jr. hangs behind him.

  All movement in the photograph is arrested-frozen. But Jeff's face comes alive every time I look at it, which is often. His eyes look alternately bemused and alarmed at my moon face. The real action took place out of sight of the photographer, beneath the table. Jeff kept kicking me, prompting these faces. Kick, smile. Kick, grimace-and my friend Lely captured the moment with a click of the camera.   Earlier that morning Jeff wasn't ready when we went to pick him up. He was talking to his aunt on the telephone and painting his toenails green. He looked great in his pin-striped suit, but I noticed that his fly was undone. I said, "Jeff, zip your pants up." He shot me a pained expression--so uncool--zipped his pants, locked the door, and hopped off the porch. I introduced him to my friends from D.C., Lely and Alec, and we were off.

  Most of time I spent with Jeff was like that photograph. Funny, jesting. Our first introduction, that February, involved spontaneous karate kicking. A couple of days later he called, and I invited him to lunch with Luther Dickinson. While we waited for our food, Luther scribbled in a notebook while Jeff talked. Suddenly Jeff became paranoid that Luther was taking notes on the conversation. Jeff had been telling us a story about family camping trips, and how his grandmother would call him "Stinky Feet." Jeff reached across the table and wrenched the book out of Luther's hands, and there was a drawing of a pair of feet and the words stinky feet.

  We were eating at a soul food restaurant, and Jeff asked for two main dishes. When the food arrived, everyone came out of the kitchen to watch this little boy eat a giant meal. I think some nights he would go eat dinner, like a stray kitten, at three or four people's houses.

  Down here Jeff could definitely be himself, or be whichever self he wanted to be. Memphis is easy and comfortable, and I don't think people were too concerned about him. Jeff didn't have a lot of needs while he was here. He'd lie in the yard in the weeds, and because he never mowed his yard, you couldn't tell he was there. He would hide like that for days. He was such a sweet baby.

  And it was funny because my roommate and I started listening to his music in earnest. I would get embarrassed because he'd be knocking on the door and Grace would be blasting. Even though I worked in a record store, I knew nothing about Jeff's history. I never talked to him about his music. I knew who his father was, that's about it. It just never came up. I do wish I had told him how much I liked his songs, but the topic seemed unbroachable.

  The whole time that we were friends I was careful to not count on him because I knew that he would eventually leave. It seems that I am always friends with people who are in transit. Our relationship was completely plantonic, but I was afraid of falling in love with him. Just the way he would look at me made me feel on top of the world. He made me so happy, and we had so much fun.

  Jeff was always an actor. The last week he was here, I was walking down Madison Avenue and spotted him coming out of a Mexican restaurant. When Jeff saw me, he started prancing down the street toward me like a fairy. I said, "Jeff, someone's gonna pull over in a pickup truck and kill you-just like the end of Easy Rider, they're gonna shoot you off your bike." He thought that was hilarious.

  The night Jeff drowned I had been at the casino with some friends. He and I had talked about going down there for drinks, but that particular night his band was flying in from New York for a recording session. I walked my dog over to Jeff's before I left. Gene Bowen, Jeff's road manager, and Keith Foti, Jeff's close friend, were there. We decided that Jeff would stay home and I would go to the casinos. Then when I got back I would come tell him how much I won.

  At about 12:30 a.m., I walked my dog over to his house with a report on how our casino trip went. After I knocked on the door, somebody told me to go away. For a moment I was perturbed by how awful musicians can be. But then I thought that maybe they were having a private discussion, and so I didn't think another thing of it. I went home and went to sleep. The next day at work my boss asked me if I was with Jeff the night before, and I said yeah, and he said no you weren't, and I said yeah, and he asked again, and at that point the telephone rang and it was a reporter from the newspaper wanting a comment about Jeff's death.

  At Jeff's memorial Elvis Costello sat in front of me, and Marianne Faithfull performed. I was in shock, thinking no, this wasn't the Jeff that lived down the street. This wasn't the kid who could afford a car but rode a bicycle.

  To paraphrase something Robert Gordon once told me, I knew a Jeff Buckley. I can lay no claim to his life, or his art, or his happiness. But I will never forget the glorious spring of 1997. There is a photo of us, and we are happy. We are two shining stars stuffed with fried chicken and collard greens. We are alive, and we are happy.

Source: Our Glorious Spring by: Andria Lisle from Oxford American issue #34, July/August 2000