My Loving Affair with John Mayer
You'll just have to trust me
Here’s an abbreviated Love story:
Me and John Mayer walk into a room. I get naked and show him everything. Then, out of nowhere, I have an emotional breakdown. He’s still there, gently strumming his guitar for me, patiently waiting for me to move through my process. I emerge through the darkness having released a demon that was buried deep in my belly. I become a Musical Queen of my own making with John as my humble, musical King.
Let me have it, okay? Please?
Living out these fantasies does a lot for me.
Here’s where that story came from:
Several days ago I was in quite a state of arousal, preparing myself for what I expected (first mistake! expectations!) to be an epic self-pleasure journey. I’d been listening to Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and John Mayer - their disciple. Now, I’ll say it: I am a disciple of John Mayer, I’ve been going to the temple of his music since he found his way into my innocent ears and heart when I was but but nine years young.
I mean truly, this is a love story for the ages.
So why, oh why, did I feel EXCRUCIATINGLY embarrassed and literally stop taping when, mid self-penetration, a Mayer song began playing?
It’s a journey I’ve been unraveling and oh MY, is it juicy! Let me tell you about it.
At first I thought… maybe I’m embarrassed because I respect C and his musical experience & his opinion, so I don’t want him to think my taste in music is childish or silly. Then I realized I was just projecting onto him, with literally zero evidence, what I’ve heard the world’s idiots say about my King. So… that clearly wasn’t it. That was barely scratching the surface. Plus, I’m sure my naked body writhing and dripping for him, (C not JM - but also JM simultaneously) would be distraction enough to counteract my musical selection. And then there’s the option to turn the volume down, too. So many holes to poke in my own arguments.
Don’t poke the bear, they say! But why? That’s the way to get to the center of things. Maybe you will get eaten alive and die, but that’s probably necessary.
Anyway. The song that came on was a live cover of SRV’s Lenny, followed by JM’s Man on the Side. Yes, it is totally sappy, and absolutely beautiful. The way his guitar licks my body is stunning, euphoric, truly a religious experience. Enlightening. I was CONNECTED. Totally absorbed in the moment until my insecurity came rushing in.
Being seen. That’s what it was. Vulnerable, open, deeply in touch with my emotions. Deeply in touch with Love, channeling its raw expression.
The message in the song was a bit overwhelming, too. A sample of the lyrics:
One of the many
One of the few
To stand back and wait for you
Excuse Mrs. Busybody
Could you pencil me in when you can
Though we both know that the worst part about it
Is I would be free when you wanted me
If you wanted me
If you wanted me
Oh, I am the man on the side
Hoping you'll make up your mind
I am the one who will swallow his pride
Life as the man on the side
Like, woah. There are some emotions there. Deep ones, clearly, that my body wanted - needed - to tap into.
What was most interesting at first was that when I’m alone, I am not one to resist a swirling emotion. I break down and let it out. Even in C’s physical presence I was able to let go and weep and experience his embrace of me in my chaotic mess. How grateful I am for that. What a salve, to feel this foundation of safety between us. And still, the friction of this moment - my resistance to being witnessed - shut it all off. Perhaps my practice of gratitude is still a bit weaker than the emotional landscape I was pulled into in that moment. Perhaps that’s just another story - my superego saying “Faye, you’re not grateful enough for your experience.” Another shame to layer atop the mountain of emotion that still lives in my body. So right here right now, I’m just gonna say this: “fuck you, superego bitch. Get in the hall and put your dunce cap on. I’m more grateful than you give me credit for and I KNOW it.”
Now, let us proceed.
A couple things I’m recognizing:
1 - I had been witnessed, over and over again, but never HELD, embraced, in that particular flavor of yearning. I certainly didn’t hold myself through it. The last time I felt it, the sense of being totally available, and not chosen, well… it was an unresolved messy messy mess.
What surfaced in that moment was this unprocessed desperation to be “the one” a man chooses. Something I buried.
Layered on top was the beautiful recognition that I must choose MYSELF, first. Choose my Peace. Choose to recognize my wholeness is, without a partner. Choose to let go of any man or relationship that brings me nothing but strife with no useful dialog… yeah. It’s a a doozy, this wave.)
Hence the heightened response. The protective mechanism of freeze - of ceasing activity. The moment of “it’s dangerous to be seen this way. I’m going to be dropped, my heart is going to break and I’ll be left alone to clean up the pieces.”
All that rose from a romp with my childhood, and let’s not kid ourselves, current romantic fantasy. Let it be known: Do not underestimate the power of your favorite songs. Especially when you’re naked with them.
2 - I wrote this almost exactly a year ago to a man with whom my fragmentation and emotional burial ceremonies ran rampant:
This tease of your attention
is driving me
maddeningly
deeper
in love with you
And all I want to do is say
Fuck you
I wrote this poem once
I think it was about you
And then I wrote it again
a few weeks ago
without realizing the echo
until now
fuck you
i love you
two truths
no lie
you drive me
in love
madly
-
Don’t ask me
to tell you More
then drop the conversation
because my heart is in there -
in those words I share so willingly
So please don’t drop me
And don’t pick me up
if you can’t hold me
I’ll wait for you
All of you
I don’t want pieces of your attention
But I do want to know
when I’ll have you
in your fullness
Don’t you dare
assume you mean
anything less than the world to me
Do not diminish
the impact
you know have on me -
you know We
send me into another dimension
where you are the only ground
I know
TLDR
I want you to come back
-
Several hours earlier
Ever since our conversation on the phone, I feel more secure with you. My thoughts don’t automatically travel to “What is he doing? Why isn’t he answering me? Oh my god he must not be interested anymore. It’s been too long.” Which in a way, is kind of boring. As though I was so accustomed to that particular pattern of turbulent thought that now it’s gone, I don’t know what to think.
You know I love the intensity. So how do we create an intensity that isn’t overwhelmingly turbulent, while you’re hundreds of miles away?
Of course, now that I’m writing this, I notice the intensity building in my body. When I focus on you, it returns. The magnetism. The black hole of Love. Oh, how I yearn for us to be together, in space. How I long for you to enter me with your physicality. I love your consciousness, but the very human part of me needs your touch. Right here. Right now. My divine lover. How long must I wait?!
Enduring torture is my specialty but how can I be expected to tolerate it, knowing how perfect your cock feels sliding into the back of my throat.
-
Several hours later
I love you and I am aroused. All my attention is here, on the sensation, on my longing for love. This love courses through me, rushing wildly, uncontainable. Yet there is a part of it I cannot touch when you are far. A part I reach for but cannot so much as name. I contort myself to find it, hidden deep within my body. There must be a way to penetrate the pain of not having.
And despite the not having, I have so much to give. So perhaps the having is an illusion. Or a misnomer. We are really talking about sensing.
What I sense is my love for you multiplying the more I love you. It is the current always running. Never ending. I need you to ground me. Focus my attention. That is the penetration I find so hard to hold myself to. I need your weight to rest upon me, so I might soften into the pressure of what it is to be here now. Into the space between where tension ceases, the still point of infinity, here and now.
3 - You can breathe. Shortly after that letter I ended things. Also geeeeeeeez the way I romanced my way into enduring what I literally described as torture.
4 - Do you see how it was ALL ABOUT HIM? I attributed all of me - my love, my expression, my happiness, my emotions, my total state of being - to him and things he did. Oof. Ouch. I essentially blamed him for not meeting, instead of taking responsibility for my own needs. I let this happen for a long time. Much too long. I wrote literally an entire memoir’s worth of words to and about him. That’s what it took to recognize the pattern, though. And so, here I am, recognizing what I would’ve so willingly buried a year ago.
Recognizing the emotional breakdown was not about C and him not being safe or being willing to see me, because I know he is. I’ve experience it. I don’t need to project my past onto my present. I need to PROCESS what happened, release the debris, and integrate my new understanding. That’s what recognition is. Re-cognition. A new narrative written.
The emotional breakdown was my body’s way of breaking the cycle. It is a gift to be able to see this so clearly now. Thank God I’ve written through my most difficult relationships. My recollection offers prayers answered. The questions I asked then I’ve been responding to in my present experience, and I have a map of exactly where they came from. That’s the way life goes. To change our ways, we must sometimes reverse engineer our days. Crawl into the proverbial hole to see our way all the thorough and out into the light, equipped with a more attuned navigation system.
For this reason, I encourage everyone to document their lives. No matter how glaringly confronting or seemingly embarrassing, letting yourself see yourself and be with yourself through your darkest, most confused and vulnerable moments is the key to expansion.
That, and gratitude, not just for your joyous moments, but for the darkness, too. It is important to cast light upon all you wish to see. In this way the value of a moment appreciates beyond what you think is possible. A moment appreciates through time and space when you are willing to move the experience offered through your body. The issues, as they say, are in the tissues.
P.S. if you wanna see all the memes, you can find ‘em on my insta: https://www.instagram.com/fayeshotmess/