Do as John Mayer Says



I generally think of John Mayer as a giant tool, but he got it absolutely right with his song “Daughters.”  Fathers, you need to be good to your girls and raise them to have self-worth.  If need be, you tell them, just as Abileen does in Kathryn Stockett’s spectacular novel The Help, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”  Because if your daughter doesn’t know that she is a person of value, she may end up with someone like John Mayer, who, despite this lovely little tune, will bang your baby and then brag about it in the pages of Playboy magazine. While I am now grateful for my father every single day and truly believe he was always only doing the best he knew how, I wasn’t brought up with high self-esteem. My father liked to point out my acne, as if this would somehow encourage me to take more careful care of my skin and make all zits magically disappear. He also referred to me as fat, even though I graduated from high school at 110 pounds. I think he believed such comments would keep me fit. Instead, I honestly thought I was a repulsive young adult.  If ever a male classmate asked me out, I thought he was doing so out of cruelty and merely to mock me.  So, I generally dated losers because they were the only ones I believed could possibly be sincere in their interest.  This is a story about another dick I dated; thanks a lot Dad.

John Mayer: Douche-Bag Anomaly

Dan (name not so cleverly altered) asked me out on five different occasions, and I rejected him on five different occasions.  On his sixth attempt, I finally agreed just because I was so exhausted with him.  Somehow I rationalized that dating him for a brief bit would “get him off my back,” though I later learned he really just wanted me on mine.  This was after high school during a summer when I was home from college.  As I live in a town that I considered quite dull in my younger age, I figured I really didn’t have anything better to do anyway. 

Dan was nice before we started officially dating.  He told me I was pretty and he made me laugh.  I’m a sucker for a funny guy, even if he is fugly.  (I can’t believe I just used the word fugly; I have been working with high school students too long.) So, I guess things couldn’t be that bad anyhow, even though there was no reciprocal attraction on my part.  I was wrong.  We started dating, and he became a monster.  He told me I didn’t try hard enough to be pretty, and that I had really let myself go since high school, turning into a “total fat ass.”  I had indeed gained about fifteen  to twenty pounds, but, in retrospect, I was still looking all right.  (I wish I weighed now what I weighed when I only thought I was fat.)  He said he didn’t believe that was all I gained, so he made me get on a scale.  I repeat this: he made me get on a scale for verification.  I want to go back and kick my own ass for allowing this.  And I kept dating him. 

Here’s something else I’m totally ashamed to admit: he played Magic the Gathering.  Fucking Magic the Gathering.  I dated a guy who played Magic the Gathering. I must repeat this for confirmation as I remain in disbelief all these years later. Yeah, I’m a hater, but trust that it’s justified.  One day, he asked me to pass him his case of cards, and I accidently dropped them.  He lost it – absolutely, totally, completely lost it.  I don’t know if I’ve ever heard such screeching in my life as I was declared the “stupidest fucking bitch ever!”  ever! EVER! And I kept dating him.

One Friday night, he went to a party out of town.  That same night, he slept with some girl he had just met. I found out about this from a mutual friend.  When confronted, he defended himself by sharing, “But I had to.  She looked just like Gwyneth Paltrow.”  True story – he actually said that.  Not so true story – she looked nothing like Gwyneth Paltrow.  When I told our mutual friend of this reply, he laughed out loud, and informed me, “Gwyneth Paltrow my ass!  That girl was like 5’2” and 200 pounds.  She had fucking Britney Spears pig tails and a fucking Hello Kitty backpack.”  (Readers, remember that this event occurred about fifteen years ago when cuckoo little Brit-Brit first came on the scene as a seductive school girl begging to be hit one more time.)  I can’t say I was all that mad that he had “cheated” on me, because I really didn’t give a shit about our relationship.  So, I still kept dating him.  

I honestly cannot remember what finally led to our break up.  I can only assume whatever he said or did to me was so horrific that my mind kindly chose to erase that memory when I later suffered from a closed head injury.  I do remember him saying this though, as his weird ass way of bringing closure to our relationship I suppose: “You know, it’s like this – sometimes you go to a restaurant and everything on the menu looks good, so you order an appetizer tray and an entrée.  You eat all the appetizers, and then when the entrée comes, you decide you really didn’t want the whole meal.  You’re not my main dish.  You’re the appetizer tray.”  So very eloquent and touching.  Why did I ever let such a man get away from me?

 Fuck me; I was a stupid girl.  All fathers – please rush home this instant to tell your daughter she is intelligent and beautiful and worth way more than a comparison to some potato skins and onion peels.  Ensure that she doesn’t step on a scale for any man, and doesn’t stay with any one that would declare her a dumb bitch.  Fathers – be good to your daughters.  Don’t you dare let them date dicks like I did – even if he asks her out for a sixth, seventh, or eighth time.   And fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, all good people of the earth – remember this always: Do as John Mayer says and not as John Mayer does.