Style

He’s a hyperverbal rock star hunting for a wife. But don’t believe the tabloids—nobody knows what’s going on in his head

“I think about my wife all the time,” says Mayer. “I kind of obsess on it, and what I want to find is a person who can speak those kinds of magic words. I mean ‘No complaints’ is a great way to live. Also, I want a woman who doesn’t hear ‘How are you?’ as ‘I would like you to come up with something dramatic now that will allow me to sit in front of you and give you more attention than I would have if you had just said ‘No complaints.’ When I find the person I can relate to on that level and who is also a pinup and who also says ‘Can I please take pictures of your ass?’ then I am going to get married to her. That I can promise you.”

But there is one small hitch, and it bedevils Mayer day and night, because it’s largely out of his control.

“My fear,” he says, “is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say hello to you,’ and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, ‘Not for me, Bub. I don’t want anything to do with you.’ And she says that because of something in my past. I mean, I know how to be a celebrity. I know how to be a guy on the street. I know how to roll with the punches. I know how to do the whole thing. And my past is actually pretty sterling. But when I think about my wife, I worry. I worry about what she thinks when she reads about me in US Weekly. It’s all vapor, nothing, ether. But I worry about it. I worry about what she thinks.”

So, that’s John Mayer at the moment: a worrying, thinking man living in a land of vapor, nothing, ether, his perfect woman out there, sitting on a stool, maybe knowing too much about him already. Conversely, she might not know nearly enough—about his odd early years as an acne-ridden shut-in, about certain “loopholes” in his brain and the Xanax in his pants pocket, about his self-penned pornographic scribblings, about his constantly flapping lips, about his love for Jessica Simpson (and it seems he did love her) and how she changed his life. Things like that. Things that maybe his future wife really ought to know before she goes off half-cocked, deeper into Mayer Land, for better or for worse.

Look at him. Look at him in his chair at an Indian restaurant in the SoHo district of New York, near where he lives. Look at his big shock of tousled black hair, at those big, soulful, smoky-brown eyes, at that big head sitting atop that muscular six-foot-four-inch frame. Look at Mayer, in his black sweater and green slacks. Everything about him is big, oversized, exaggerated. Now listen to him talk.

Pushing back from the table, Mayer squares his shoulders and says, “I tell you this without fear. I don’t feel like anybody knows my personal life. My personal life is 100 percent intact. Where I ate last night or who I ate with is not my personal life. You want to say the name Jessica Simpson? Say the name Jessica Simpson. You want to say Cameron Diaz, say Cameron Diaz. That’s not my personal life. My personal life is what happens in my heart and my head. Nobody knows what’s going on in my head.
 
“You know what else?” he rolls on. “If you really like doing this, if you really feel like you’re born for this, then you have to get so meta in your consciousness that even the worst parts of it seem about right. People being nasty to me or not knowing how to relate to me…I almost have found a way to acknowledge what the positive is by way of how to look around the negative. So, if the negative is present, it’s got to be there because there’s a positive that has created that negative. So, I go, Oh, wow, I’m getting picked apart left and right. I must really be somebody. In a way, you kind of understand your place by understanding what the trouble is. You know what I mean?”

The honest answer is, of course, more or less, because whew, what a great big overstuffed load of verbiage. But that’s typical of Mayer, to never say simply what can be said with Fourth of July fireworks. “I think I’ve always been verbose,” he says. And with that admission, you’d think he might slow down a little. But then off he goes again, full-steam ahead, this time talking about his yearlong on-again, off-again relationship with Jessica Simpson, which ended early last summer, and how difficult the media circus surrounding it was for him.