So Call Me “Captain Backfire” (or: It’s John Mayer’s 2002 and I am just now reconciling it)
My parents agreed to pay for half of a black Ibanez bass so I could join a neighbor boy’s rock band. Bass was always the instrument that fledgling rock bands could never quite pin down — it’s one of those instruments that you rarely ever see anyone mime, especially as a sixth grader. My mom had to play me a James Taylor song and hum along to the bass riff so I could even know what it was I had agreed to play. I had to pay for the other half of the bass, which I did by cleaning our largely unfurnished ranch style home in Mustang, Oklahoma. The neighbor boy’s name was Robby, and I wistfully thought of him as “Cowboy Take Me Away” blared through the speakers of a Baby Boom Box my grandmother had won me at Casino Rouge (or had received as a rebate from Walgreen’s, I could be conflating two different Baby Boom Boxes). Robby was the only boy who lived in my neighborhood who went to my school, so he was a natural de facto choice for a middle school crush. Now, when I look back, I can’t exactly remember what he looks like.
With my electric bass dangling from my tiny shoulder, I walked to Robby’s house read for what I thought would be our first band practice, which would lead to lingering glances, which would lead to possible hand holding. As I approached the cusp of Robby’s cul de sac, one of the boys exploded around the left corner of his garage, with a hockey mask on and a machete in hand. He was much taller than the pre-teen boys I had prepared to “jam” with, so I astutely assumed it was Robby’s older brother. The disturbing, though minor, attempt at a prank was never really explained to me. The best I can reckon, they hadn’t told their parent that a girl was coming over, and needed an escape plan that left them less embarrassed than me. Maybe, too, they were Josie Grossie-ing me. Middle schoolers have too much language and not enough prefrontal cortex.
On the short walk home, I kicked red clay dirt, singing to myself: “I just want to be liked, I just want to be funny, well, looks like the jokes on me, so call me Captain Backfire.” There are few half stanzas that could so easily sum up my adolescence, or, if I may be so bold, our collective adolescence. The post-1980’s scrub-a-dub touched down with the post-9/11 patriotism to create a cocktail of pre-teens and teens who were defiantly “unpopular” and continued to waltz thru the new millennium in oversized cargo pants. To draw on what Marc Hogan’s newly published Pitchfork review of John Mayer’s debut album posits, “Nostalgic reassurance was in high demand.” And Mayer offered that up with musical influences that I hadn’t even heard of yet, and wouldn’t until my bass guitar instructor had me learn “Every Day I Write the Book” over a year later. I had thought that the way to a man’s heart was to fill a naggingly open space in his band’s line up, but had come to learn that maybe it wasn’t that easy.
The lilts that warbled throughout Room For Squares offered up something so specifically appealing to pre-teen girls at the time, it was like a drug. I cut it with the heteronormative rom-com’s I had developed a taste for as puberty neared. The women Mayer described in his songs were ghosts, the perfect canvas for a hormone-riddled eleven year old to project herself on to. I got my first period the summer “Your Body Is a Wonderland” was hitting the charts. I was a chubby, awkward, glasses-wearing only child who had bloomed early physically, but hadn’t the mental or emotional capacity to know what to do about it. And I wanted, more than anything, to be love. Songs that that longed for a woman yet to be found, or a woman yet to reveal herself, informed my self discovery seamlessly, showing me how I could desire to be desired.
In that same paragraph of his review, Hogan is reminded of “all those movies where the straight, white, middle-class, and (cis) male is presented as the default perspective.” While one could assume he is referring to The New Guy and Orange County — or even Serendipity which featured a track from Mayer’s debut “83” — there was another wave of films for the young girls, like myself, who were consuming Room For Squares with abandoned. I remember hearing “Your Body Is a Wonderland” on the radio when one of my parents drove me to the movie theater for a birthday party. I cringed so hard at each syllable Mayer cooed, knowing my parent was sitting in the car with me and hearing the words, “And if you want love, we’ll make it.” The same knot in my stomach would form, during an unprepared family viewing the simulated sex scenes in Love Actually. But, in my sea of bubbling hormones, I refused to change the station as my curiosity overpowered my embarrassment. I longed for someone to feel this way about me, with my sports bra thoughtfully and unsuccessfully hiding the physical manifestations of my burgeoning womanhood.
The birthday party would be a double feature viewing of two films: What a Girl Wants and The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Both films depict teenage girls falling in love with guitar-wielding crooners. In the latter, Hilary Duff narrowly escapes the grasp of said crooner, when he convinces her to pose as the other half of his pop star duo. The movie culminates when this man (boy?) attempts (and fails) to embarrass her in front of a sold out audience in the Flavian Amphitheater. Turns out, not only does Lizzie look exactly like her doppelganger, she can sing like her too! She learns to cherish her individualism and throws away her dreams of becoming the most popular girl in school by becoming one of the most famous pop stars in the world. She ripped the narrative right out of Mayer’s initial ascent and his first hit “No Such Thing.”
But in What a Girl Wants, we see a fresh faced Amanda Bynes waltz into a London hostel to meet Ian — a sweet British heartthrob toying with an acoustic guitar. She knows exactly what kind of guitar it is (easily one of the most popular models of acoustic guitar, but, she’s 18 here). That knowledge and power to wield it was something I violently aimed to relate to. When she (and the audience) meet Ian, he is attempting to write the song he will later perform in front of everyone at a debutant ball, but he will sing it directly to Bynes. This scene is not unlike Mayer in the “Wonderland” video. He realizes his muse, scribbles down lyrics, serenades her, heads to the studio, and then takes the stage in front of thousands to proclaim his love. But that woman in the video, with her camisole and baggy jeans, she could be you. And I thought, for sure, she could be me too. Later, at the aforementioned ball, we see Bynes shrug off a stuck up member of the royal family so she can stare, wide-eyed, at a sensitive boy singing about his journey to find love with a woman.
The week following that birthday party, I begged my mother to take me to Joann’s Fabrics so I could purchase swatches of paisley cloth to don as a sash around my waste and chunky bangles to wear as bracelets. Bynes does this in a scene where she and Ian are exploring a London market. I wanted so badly to play the part. Maybe if being in the band wasn’t the trick finding love with my soulmate, dressing the part could work. Or, in my case, some forced combination of both misfires. I got two thin scarves from Kohl’s in the weeks to come, very much resembling what Bynes is wearing in the scene where she meets Ian. One went around my neck, the other was braided around my bass guitar strap. With no more money left to spend, I would borrow my local library’s copy of Room For Squares and I saved it to my Window’s Media Player library. It would be one of the first CDs I ever burned to disc, alongside t.A.T.u.’s 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane and Lyle Lovett’s I Love Everybody.
Beyond “Wonderland,” the love songs that weave their way through Room For Squares were equally as easy to entrap yourself in as a pre-teen girl. “Love Song For No One” was undoubtedly my favorite song on the album once I got all 15 tracks on my hands. The guitar riff sounds exactly like a candied version of Gin Blossoms’ “Follow You Down.” In a more generalized sentiment to the Blossoms, Mayer here just longs for someone to dedicate his later Grammy Award-winning words to. He beckons his love with these sentiments, like a crusty bowl of cat food for the strays in the backyard.
Searching all my days just to find you
I’m not sure who I’m looking for
I’ll know it
When I see you
Until then, I’ll hide in my bedroom
Staying up all night just to write
A love song for no one
In “City Love,” his lover is named for just a moment: Lydia. A perfectly nice name of a woman who is teaching him, a plain Jane Connecticut boy, how to love New York City. He even proclaims, “ I can’t remember life before her name”! Wow! What a gesture, he follows by off-handedly mentioning he might (might) propose. And yet still, their love is confined to the geographic bounds of the 212. She’s a City Girl after all, she’s not in the crowd at the concert, staring up at him. She isn’t in the band. This wasn’t a love to aspire to, but it was one that was luxurious to consider, and gave you the illusion it was possible to pin Mayer down. Since I had seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s when I was in grade school, I had told my parents I would move to New York. I don’t think there was much question in that matter.
But perhaps the most engaging and sympathetic parts of Room For Squares are found not in the love songs, but in the quirky, self-effacing observational tunes. “Why Georgia ” was the most sentient of those: a “quarter life crisis” or a “stirring in my soul” conjures up the image of a man who wants more. “I rent a room and I fill the spaces with wood in places to make it feel like home but all I feel’s alone.” If I was in that apartment with my person, my man of course, in that car with him, he wouldn’t have to be alone, I thought. What I wouldn’t give to have him privately unfurl those “quiet superstitions” in his head upon me. I think this particular latent misapprehension has gotten me into trouble in relationships with men even as an adult. I thought if I was the holder of his secrets, it would equate to intimacy (I am here to tell you, it doesn’t actually). Also, if you’ll notice in the live video for this song, every member of the audience is a woman.
Mayer was as funny as he was deep on this record too, for the girls sophisticated enough to share his world views anyways— like “83.” Here is where Mayer’s conversational lyrics started to sound like a tête-à-tête you would have when you’re first starting to date someone. Talking about dreams, your siblings, your nostalgia, the “purest little part of me.” In “3x5,” he relinquishes his stunning, art school dropout-flavored realization that he should stop taking photos of the world around him and just enjoy it for what it is. This song, among all of them on this record, is probably the least relevant by today’s standards ( or, maybe the most?).
About three-quarters of the way through What A Girl Wants, our British John Mayer begs of Amanda Bynes, “Why are you trying so hard to fit in, when you were born to stand out?” Bynes does this by regularly falling down clumsily, dancing erratically, and connecting with her father (played by Colin Firth) over their favorite, you guessed it, rock music! That “ism” shot through me and lingered, however silly it was. But it never quite made it’s way out. The summer that followed the year I started my period and listened to “Wonderland” at full volume no matter who was in the car with me and I stared up to Amanda and Hilary on the silver screen, I also ferociously read the works of David Levithan. I would wake up in the middle of the night and sneak peeks at promos of GGW videos (yikes). But I didn’t dare question as to why my eyes wandered in these directions. We had moved back to Indiana from Oklahoma, and I continued to piece my identity together, using whatever unassigned instruments I believed would earn me love. By soaking in the promises of Room for Squares, I had learned that I would find this particular brand love from a man with a guitar. And that he would verbalize it into song.
I continued to play bass guitar after we moved as well, through middle school and high school, and even joined another all male rock band. The lead singer of that band would be the apple of my adoring eye for most of high school. I refused to acknowledge the tingling feelings I had for my best girlfriends. Instead, I would pour my heart into the lyrics and music of this boy. He would come be my first management client, and, at sixteen year old, I had been a part of brokering him a deal with Universal Republic. (Take that, Robby, you little shit.) He had a radio hit or two, taking some pointers from Mayer’s playbook.
Now, all of this is to say that there’s no mention here of who John Mayer would become or even who he actually was when he was promoting these songs. Just as the subject of these love songs were faceless, so was Mayer himself. There was so much left to the imagination at first. He did not remain the articulate and delicate soul we had swooned for, but that “3x5” of him remains. This album, in his place, represents a snapshot of one way you could fall in love and be loved, even if it was never really true.