Atlanta, Georgia. 2006.
It’s my first concert. A John Mayer concert. And I’m in love with John Mayer.
My dad’s girlfriend gets us “Meet & Greet” passes to meet John Mayer before the show. I’m nervous and excited and nauseous. My dad, brother, and I are waiting in this patio area at the venue when he comes walking out. He. Him. John Mayer.
I’m barely 5’2. Most people are tall to me. But John Mayer is freakishly fucking tall. His body just keeps going up and up and up.
Even though he’s ten feet tall, he’s hunched over and leaning into his chest like a malnourished Frankenstein. Dark circles hang under his eyes. His jet black hair is mussed up. His skin is pale and sallow. He’s talking to someone. He’s very animated. Arms swinging around and shit. But no one else is around. It’s just him. John Mayer is having a heated conversation with himself.
At 16, I’ve never done drugs, but I deduce from what I’ve learned off the internet that John Mayer is coked out of his goddamn mind.
John Mayer says to absolutely no one around him, “Meet and greet? What does a meet and greet SMMMEEEELLLL like?!” He stretches out smell in a way that feels… visceral. Like, imagine someone or something sniffing at the back of your neck in an elevator. Maybe dragging one fingernail down your spine. That’s how John Mayer saying the word smell makes me feel.
At 16, I haven’t even kissed anyone, and yet, there are sirens blaring in my head that say: do not put your body near that man’s body.
My dad tells me and my brother to stand on either side of John Mayer so he can take a picture. I counter: I refuse to move within three feet of John Mayer.
John Mayer stretches his ten-foot-long arm out—reaching for me! I do not move one fucking inch. I cross my arms across my Abercrombie and Fitch halter top and plant myself firmly in the concrete.
I’ve never seen the picture, but I’ll never forget the look on my Dad’s or John Mayer’s face. Their disappointment. Their confusion. The way John Mayer’s jaw kept clenching and unclenching and the way he kept grinding his teeth and trying to smile but it being less of a smile and more of a cry for help.
Anyway, John Mayer’s song “Gravity” is apparently about coming down from a cocaine high, if the internet is right, and you know what—I think it’s his best song.
A real banger that came straight from the heart.
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M.M. Kaufman is a writer based in Georgia. She is a Fulbright Scholar and earned an MFA in the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop. She is currently the Managing Editor at Rejection Letters and team member for Micro Podcast. Her fiction is published with The Normal School, Hobart, Metonym Journal, Sundog Lit, Daily Drunk Mag, (mac)ro(mic), HAD, Olney Magazine, Pine Hills Review, Maudlin House, jmww, Major 7th Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @mm_kaufman and on her website mmkaufman.com.
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image: Jade Hawk is a meat popsicle.
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