Whole Lotta Love
Kristyn Channells
(c)2005
Jeff laid on his back in front of his Memphis home, watching clouds coast with cotton candy-like consistency across the azure sky. He was walled in on every side by three foot high grass, completely hidden from anyone who might be passing by. He liked the idea of being invisible to the world- it had been a long time since he'd felt that way.
Letting a ladybug scurry across his fingertips with a small smile of simple pleasure, he took a deep, slow breath and released it. It was the first time in a long time that he'd finally felt like his life had direction again. He'd been caught up in the whirlwind of premature fame, being badgered by The Suits to make another Grace. At first he had decided to go the opposite direction out of spite, but now he was finally finding the niche that he'd been looking for in New York and hadn't been able to. His meeting with Tom Verlaine had been nothing but a stunning failure- Jeff remembered his disappointment with finally meeting one of his heroes and not getting anything worth hearing out of the sessions. He scowled. Every fucking song they'd created during those times- from "The Sky is a Landfill" to "You & I" were going to be burned as soon as the band came down later that night. What a waste of his time.
But had it been Tom's fault, really? It had been Jeff's fault that he couldn't find his direction for this album, not Verlaine's. He'd been stuck in this rut for months, living in a nice East Village apartment that only expounded the fact that he was walking the wrong path. How could he sleep at night in his swank little flat when every day he had to walk past empty-eyed hookers and homeless men with dirty fingers and ruined lives, begging for a little of his change? He'd come to New York to feel alive and every day it seemed that the city consumed a little more of his soul. His heart was too big to ignore the pleas for charity from everyone around him- his girlfriend Joan frequently chastised him for making eye contact with the saddest and most pathetic of the drifters. Jeff would stop dead in his tracks, his eyebrows would furrow and he'd sigh as he reached into his pockets. And it seemed that these people knew he was a weak target, because every freak in the world seemed to want a piece of him. He'd been chased down streets by belligerent drunks and half dressed transvestites. He was the type of soul that seemed to invite every type of psychotic imaginable. Joan always joked that Jeff would take them all home like stray dogs if he could. And he probably would have.
He'd started drinking more heavily, losing himself in bottle after bottle of wine until he was using the empty bottles to support his weeping face. He was indulging in drugs he didn't normally do and smoking enough pot to tranquilize a pony. This self-medication was doing nothing for his creativity, not to mention that it stagnated any desire to be motivated. All it did was drive him deeper into the blackest part of his heart, isolating him further from everyone he loved.
He did a photo shoot for Sony recently that consisted of an hour long makeup and hair session, which was embarrassing enough, but then he had to drape himself over a velvet couch and make bedroom eyes at the camera.
Sony had made it very clear that he was their new sex symbol and had thrown a fit when he'd dyed his hair black and stopped washing it. His mother would plead with him to straighten himself out and he stopped returning her phone calls.
"Make love to the camera," the photographer coaxed. Jeff wanted to punch him in the mouth. This was a disgrace to everything he'd worked for his entire life. He could see his entire respectable career flushed down the toilet so he could be another pinup in little girls' lockers. He was going to be another Gavin Rossdale. Although perhaps that was infinitely better than becoming his father. But maybe he'd done that already.
He played shows to crowds that shouted their requests over his voice. If he obliged them, he was only greeted with more requests for songs he was sick of playing. If he ignored them, the crowd rose up against him, almost to the point of mob violence. He was losing his desire to be in this business. He'd become a musician because it was in his blood, no matter how long he'd tried to deny it. He didn't want this baggage that came along with it. All of this idol worship, this doe-eyed adoration. Women followed him like he was some kind of snake charmer, clinging to him like cheap leather. He could have anyone he wanted and for a long time, he did. But even that had become a tiresome charade of hearing a woman crow about music she didn't understand just so she could steal a piece of his fame. So that he could fulfill some animal desire that was never truly sated.
Jeff remembered these days inside his grass fortress with a noise of disgust and contempt. He'd let the city corrupt everything about him that he truly loved. It had turned him into some kind of predator, a demon of selfishness. No wonder he hadn't been able to write a note. He was a cesspool of everything ugly in New York. It was only when he'd come to the sweltering heat and pure air of Memphis that he began to feel more like himself. He stopped the nightly binge drinking, feeling no further need to drown his misery in cheap booze. He told everyone he quit smoking, but that was a tiny little lie. He was still sneaking cigarettes from time to time behind the house or while hidden in the grass, pretending no one could see the tiny snaking trail of smoke floating above the three foot barrier from the world. He'd giggle like a mischievous child the whole time, dancing away from Joan when he'd return so she couldn't smell the smoke on his clothes.
For the first time in months, music was truly flowing from his soul. Every awful piece of rubbish that had come out of the Verlaine sessions were forgotten as he began to pen the songs that had been inside him all this time. He spent most of his days hunched over his four-track recorder, using his guitar and voice to supply all the missing instruments he heard so clearly inside his heart. When he played "Your Flesh is So Nice" for his girlfriend, they howled with laughter together before he tackled her into the wood floor.
"Your flesh is so nice," he purred into her throat, biting the skin until she shrieked. "I wanna take a bite."
"That is a perverse song," she giggled. "What would your mother say if she heard this?"
"Well it's a good thing she never will," he grinned as he began to unbutton her shirt.
Jeff stretched out, plucking a piece of grass from the ground and putting it in his mouth with a grin. Joan had gone back to New York for a couple of days to grab some more of her stuff and he missed her already. Maybe she was the one- it'd been a long time since he'd been with a woman for more than a few nights. But then again, they could break up next week. It's not like he was known for his stability, after all.
"Jeff?"
Jeff froze, letting his imagination take hold and believing that it was a drove of angry neighbors, coming to demand he cut his grass. He didn't move, trying to peer through the grass to see who had come into his yard.
"Jeff, are you here?"
Suddenly, he recognized the voice. Keith Foti, his friend and sometimes roadie, was here to help him get his stuff together for the album (and, Jeff joked, to baby-sit him while Joan was gone).
Keith scanned the front yard after peering in the darkened windows. This was just fucking like Jeff, he thought grouchily to himself. They agree to meet at five for dinner and as always, Jeff was nowhere to be found. Keith was starving and tired and absolutely not in any mood to chase Buckley all over Memphis.
But then he saw a stirring in the grass and a tuft of dark hair appeared from nowhere, followed by two twinkling eyes.
"You're causing me to abort my whole secret mission," Jeff said in a gruff general's voice that was not his own, still chomping on the grass in his mouth that hung almost to his knees. "But it's worth it if I can find more sustenance than this damned grass." He jumped to his feet and shimmied over to Keith.
"Where are you taking me?" he cooed as he reached to shake his hand. "I'm a cheap date."
"I don't know man. I'm fucking starving though. Let's go."
"I'm driving!" Jeff shouted as he walked to the car.
"Over my dead body," Keith muttered. After one car trip with Jeff, you knew that there would never be a repeat episode. Jeff was an erratic driver, frequently paying more attention to the songs on the radio or the scenery than the road. After the last trip with Jeff, where his closed-eyed operatic rendition of "Lilac Wine" had almost driven them straight into an oncoming semi, Keith had not only forced Jeff to pull over to the side of the road so he could get out but he swore from that day forth that he'd never get in the passenger seat with Buckley again. It had become kind of an inside joke between them.
"I'm Jeff Kneivel!" he trilled as he did a mock roll over the hood of the car and jumped into the passenger seat. "I shall let you drive now, but if any danger is afoot, it may be best to let my expert precision behind the wheel take over."
"If expert precision means driving like a crazy old grandma, maybe," Keith said good-naturedly as he pulled out onto the road.
Jeff's presence was intoxicating. By the time they pulled into the roadside diner and settled into their seats, Keith's earlier grumpiness was forgotten. Jeff was in uncharacteristically high spirits, cracking wild jokes and doing a hundred impressions. Every sentence he spoke was in a different voice, it seemed.
"What time are the guys getting here?" Keith asked, knowing the band was on its way to Memphis as they spoke. In fact, he estimated, looking at this watch, they should be landing within the hour.
"Soon," Jeff said, peeking over his menu at Keith and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "We're supposed to meet them at the recording studio."
"Did you bring the directions?" he asked. The last trip there had been a nightmare of driving in circles through a town that seemed a bit too claustrophobic to get lost in.
"Nope. We'll have to wing it, I guess," Jeff said as he watched the waitress approach. She was a fire haired woman in her late 40s with giant beehive sitting above her penciled eyebrows, a pen stuck into the mountain perched on her head. As soon as the waitress caught sight of Jeff, she was unable to tear her eyes away from him.
Keith often forgot how beautiful Jeff was until someone who didn't know him saw his face. He had such deep, soulful features- eyes that were nearly black, big and wide like a devious little kitten, full of both innocence and jaded malevolence; cheekbones that stuck so prominently out of his thin face that they often cast shadows over the rest of his features; full, sensuous lips that hid rows of jagged, demonic looking teeth that guarded the softest, gentlest voice he'd ever heard.
Jeff was a tiny little man, one of the most fragile and unimposing looking men he'd ever met, but he had this overwhelming charisma that could enchant an entire room- men, women, gay, lesbian, all ages and all races. And when he would sing... it was like the entire room fell away except for this man, who seemed to grow in size with every lilting note and every passionate scream. It was no wonder that everyone wanted a piece of this man- it seemed that if you could get into his heart, he would save you somehow. That he could protect you from whatever you feared. Jeff was always surrounded by fame leeches, most recently in the form of former drummer, Matt Johnson. Well, that's how Keith felt about him anyway- Jeff would shush his lamentations about Matt by saying the two were just not compatible band members. But Keith had seen the dark looks the two had given each other on a number of occasions while onstage and off and knew there was something much more sinister going on between them.
They ordered their meal while Jeff made a big show of fluttering his long, thick lashes at the waitress, leaning forward with his head in his hands and flashing her a big silly grin. She was like putty in his hands, a blush rising to her face as she scurried back into the kitchen.
"You're shameless," Keith said with feigned disapproval. "That poor woman..."
"What poor woman?" he replied haughtily. "I just made her day. When's the last time a young guy paid a bit of attention to her? She works all day every day for barely enough money to survive. She serves us food that we're too lazy to cook. The least I can do is treat her like she deserves to be treated- like the princess of this diner."
Keith laughed, shaking his head. Jeff never would go down without a battle- the two of them had spent many hours debating every subject in the world. Part of the reason for it was just so Keith could see if Jeff ever would admit to being wrong.
The verdict? Admissions of erroneous facts would only come if feelings had been hurt in the course of the discussion. Otherwise, Jeff would go to the grave being an undefeated debating champion.
After they ate, Jeff gave Keith a guilty look.
"What?"
Jeff fiddled in his pockets for a moment or two, pretending to look for something that he had already found. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Sure."
With excruciatingly slow speed, a cigarette slid out of Jeff's pocket and into his fingers. He looked around the restaurant with overdramatic paranoia as if any moment, he expected to see an army rushing towards him to assassinate him for his failure in quitting. He slid down in his seat until just his nose and eyes peered over the table and Keith could hear the flick of the lighter. Jeff closed his eyes in ecstasy as the first hit of smoke bellowed into his lungs and it filtered out of his nose like the extinguished flames of a fire-breathing dragon. Then he laughed as the moment passed and he jumped out of the booth.
"Let's go, buddy. We're going to be late."
"Buckley, you've never been on time a day in your life," Keith laughed.
"Buckley?" a quiet female voice asked behind them. "Jeff Buckley?"
"That's me," Jeff said with a hint of irritation in his voice. He most certainly traveled at his own pace and when someone disrupted that rhythm, he was more than perturbed.
"Hi, sorry," the young girl babbled. "I just wanted to know if you could sign this for me real quick please I don't mean to disturb you I just noticed you here with your friend and I didn't want to interrupt your meal and I..."
Jeff's smile silenced her and he took the napkin from her shaking hands. "Yeah, sure. What's your name?"
"Cathy."
He patted his pockets, searching for something to write with. "Do you happen to have a pen, Cathy?"
"Oh! Yeah, sorry," she said nervously, thrusting a pen into his hands.
He lifted his knee to use it as a makeshift table and wrote a little note on the napkin before signing it with a big flourish. Then he handed it back to her, letting his fingers brush across hers as he returned it.
"Thank you so much," she gushed. "Oh wow. You know," she said hesitantly, "I think you're really handsome. You look just like your father."
The smile on Jeff's face faded to a cold stare. He mumbled a word of callous gratitude before turning his back on her and heading once again for the car. Keith jogged a little to catch up, but knew better than to speak. Just as Jeff's happiness could be contagious, so were the dark moods that came out of his pores like a plague.
They were silent in the car for a long time, Jeff staring sullenly out the window. All of the hard work he'd done, all the accomplishments he'd made in his life and still, even now, he was just a shadow in his father's giant looming legacy. He was never going to escape those comparisons, no matter how much he tried to tell himself that he could free himself. He was just an ant in his father's mountain of success.
Success? He scoffed at the word, especially when linked with Tim's name. He sure as fuck hadn't succeeded as a father. He got some silly naive girl pregnant and then dumped her like a bad habit as soon as things got too real. He didn't succeed at anything, dying of a drug overdose before his life had even begun. Jeff had sold nearly as many albums as his father, if not more, and critics always praised him for having a voice that outshone the elder Buckley. He'd even outlived the man he never knew, which, for a long time, was a feat he didn't think could be accomplished. But it didn't matter, ultimately, because there was always that comparison. He could never just be himself, Jeff Buckley, the musician who didn't want to sound like anyone else in the whole wide world.
He snarled a little out loud, which frightened Keith into speech.
"Are you okay, dude?" he asked, turning his concerned eyes onto his furrowed browed friend.
"You realize we've passed this gas station three times already," Jeff snapped, lighting another cigarette.
"Yeah, but you're the one who knows where this place is and you weren't exactly volunteering any information," Keith responded, his voice a little wounded.
Jeff's features softened. "I'm sorry. You're right. I'm supposed to be the navigator and I've failed you." He wrinkled his nose, leaning forward as he stared at the signs lining the side of the road. "The problem is that everything looks so familiar and so foreign all at once."
His eyes settled on the banks of the Wolf River. "Pull over a second."
Keith gave him a funny look. "What?"
"Pull over," Jeff demanded.
The car rolled to a halt next to the water and Jeff leapt out. Keith followed him with a sigh. They were an hour and a half late, irrevocably lost, and Jeff wanted to go sight seeing?
"Jeff c'mon man, we're really late. Everyone's probably already there."
Jeff ignored him, stretching his arms over his head. "Do you have a little portable radio or anything in there?"
"Yeah... why?"
"Well we're fucking lost, Keith. We might as well enjoy this sunset. I mean shit man, you never know when you'll see something as beautiful as this again." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, turning his face up to the few remaining rays of light left in the sky. "So what about that boombox?"
Keith muttered to himself as he rummaged in the backseat for his new radio. Why were they doing this? He frequently found himself questioning why he let Jeff's whims get the best of him, but when he returned to the riverbank and saw the joy in his friend's eyes, he knew the answer. Who could ever deny that face?
Jeff turned on the radio and set it beside the water.
"Hey be careful with that thing, it's brand new."
Jeff found an old Led Zeppelin song and cranked the volume. "Oh hell yeah man, this is my jam!" he howled, wading into the water with all his clothes on.
"What are you doing?" Keith asked, feeling his stomach turn in a most unpleasant way. "At least take those fuckin' boots off, dude, they weigh 100 pounds a piece."
"And cut up my delicate feet with broken glass and rusty fish hooks?" Jeff scoffed like a spoiled princess without turning around. "I think not." He stepped further into the water, turning to float on his back when the dark liquid reached his waist.
"Wanna whole lotta love?" he sang to the sky, backstroking towards the middle of the river. "Way, way down inside, I'm gonna give you my love, I'm gonna give you every inch of my love..." His voice echoed off the trees that framed the water, reverberating through Keith's chest.
"C'mon Jeff, get out of the water," Keith urged, looking around nervously. The water was rising rapidly and despite the glass-like calm of the surface, he knew that the depths churned with a dangerous undertow.
Jeff ignored him. "Shake for me, girl... I wanna be your backdoor man," he sang suggestively, his voice rising over the tinny quality of the tiny speakers. He kept swimming further and further, each lazy stroke pulling him away from the bank.
"Jeff, seriously, let's fucking go," Keith said, his voice raising in irritation. "This isn't cool."
Jeff's head was smaller and smaller as he swam away from shore. He was damned near the middle of the river now and Keith's heart was pounding. A boat was approaching Jeff's slight frame and he could envision the massacre the blades of the motor would cause when the lack of light caused the two to collide.
"There's a boat coming," he called. "C'mon, you've gone far enough. We're late! Everyone's going to be pissed." He knew that if anyone would be to blame for this rendezvous with the Wolf, it would be him. Jeff was very rarely scolded for his wild behavior - with a wink and a smile, he could get himself out of nearly every unsavory situation his spontaneous actions caused. Jeff's joke about Keith being his babysitter struck a little too close to home - it seemed at times that he was solely responsible for keeping this wild child in check.
The boat passed by Jeff and Keith strained in the failing light to keep his eyes on his bobbing head.
"Jeff!" he yelled, now feeling anger swell in his chest. That son of a bitch, he was the most irresponsible jerk in the world sometimes. When he finally got back on shore, Keith was going to make sure he socked the guy hard in the arm. He fucking deserved it.
Another boat was approaching and Keith shouted a warning to the oblivious Jeff. He could still hear the echo of Jeff's voice, now a faint murmur over the radio. He glanced down at the boombox and saw that the water was now beginning to lap at the bottom of the cheap plastic.
"Ah, fuck, you're going to ruin my fucking radio," he snapped, and reached down to move it further back. When he lifted his eyes back to the water, Jeff's head was missing.
"Jeff?"
His eyes scanned the surface, but the river now seemed quite empty save the small wake each boat had caused, which was only now beginning to slap at the shore. Where was he?
If this was some kind of joke, it most certainly wasn't funny. Keith grumbled to himself for a moment about Jeff's bad sense of humor as he continued to search the water. A minute passed, maybe two. Keith began to realize that it wasn't a joke.
"Jeff?"
His voice echoed off the water and bounced back to him. There was a realization that hit him like a ton of bricks- he had disappeared.
In the water, Jeff watched the second boat approach him as he kicked his waterlogged boots to move out of the way of its path. He felt a tug at his legs and kicked again, pulling with his arms to get out of the undertow. But his clothes were heavy and swimming against the current had exhausted him. He struggled, worrying that the boat was going to plow into his face. He could hear Keith shouting from shore.
It happened fast. Jeff's weary limbs floundered against the wake from the second boat, water rolling over his face. He sputtered and fought to bring his head to the surface but in the murkiness was disoriented and couldn't remember where the top of the water was. He clawed at the water, but it gave way in his hands. He held his breath valiantly, reaching for his boots to release them to the depths. If he could just get those shoes off, he'd be able to float back to the top with ease.
But his fingers fumbled with the seemingly hundreds of eyelets, the knot he'd tied earlier to keep them from coming off tighter than he expected. His head began to throb with a scarlet darkness, white spots dancing behind his eyelids. He gave up on the shoes and fought for the surface with all his remaining strength, but it seemed he was lost in a weightless world of perpetual darkness. His lungs were burning for oxygen, threatening to force his mouth and nose open to take whatever bit of air it could out of the surrounding environment. There was a surge of panic in Jeff's heart as he realized, for the first time, that this was the end. The feeling he'd had when he first floated into the water had meant more than he realized. He wasn't coming back out of this river- it was, in fact, going to swallow him whole.
With one last thrash for air, his body relaxed and water poured down his throat. The weight of the water that filled his lungs would drag him further into the depths of the water, but though his body sank, his spirit rose. As Jeff ascended from the water, he could see Keith screaming hysterically before running to his car, the radio abandoned by the side of the water. It would be a week before they freed his body from the bondage of the Wolf River, but as far as Jeff was concerned, this was only the beginning of an eternity of freedom.