A really really long time ago I saw Tim Buckley at the Cellar Door in D.C.. We had a table right in front of the stage. I stared up at him with, I am sure, shining eyes. At one point he gave me a crooked smile. I swoon just thinking about it. He was singing a rambling kind of song. It might have been Sweet Surrender. He sang something about "licking those stretch marks" and looked at me through narrow eyes.
Honestly. As I write this I feel like I'm making it up. Maybe I am. I was fat and already had some stretch marks. Was he singing that to me? It felt like he was. He also spat on me. Not intentionally. He was just singing ... vigorously. To my very young and enamored self it was holy water. No Covid to worry about then.
I feel like I might have gotten shy and some of confused energy was exchanged and things kind of soured. I'm just not sure what really happened. I can see it all in my mind eye as if it happened yesterday.
For no obvious reason I remembered it last night just as I was trying to sleep. I remembered it and imagined a different ending in which he came out of the club and we were standing there flirting. This memory and reinventing went on for about four hours. I'd sort of dose off and wake up stoking the story like it was the heat keeping me alive. Over and over.
It's one of my favorite memories but it doesn't come up that often.
He's gone.
He's been gone a long time.
If I was going to start believing in heaven I would chose a place where he greets me and says, yes baby. I was singing to you. And smiles that crooked smile and those narrow eyes would shine.
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