I called him, but he didn’t answer. I was left to listen to that darn song over and over, when I should have been listening to “9 to 5.”
I was a mess all the next day, and it’s a blur now when I started drinking. I know I started backstage at the Kennedy Center. My mom had helped me into this Breakfast at Tiffany’s–style black strapless cocktail dress with a diamond necklace. I looked the part of Jessica Simpson, but I just had to trust that she was gonna show up.
Shania Twain was there, warming up in the staircase behind the stage to get the reverb. She seemed nervous, which scared me because I admired her so much. There were so many greats walking around: Reba McEntire, Reese Witherspoon, Allison Krauss, and Vince Gill. And I kept going back to my dressing room, where the Macallan was.
“You need to not be drinking,” my mom said.
“This doesn’t make me drunk at all,” I replied.
“Um, okay, whatever,” she said. “But yes, it does.”
Ken was trying to lift my spirits as I ran through the song, making up fake lines to be funny. I started repeating them, confused. My mom saw me take another drink.
“You need to put that down,” she said. I had never gone onstage drunk before. My dad was anxious, but he didn’t say anything. I think we all trusted that I would show up when I actually got onstage. The same way I’d always done my whole life.
Just before it was time to go on, John called me back. It was ugly.
“How could you do this to me?” I asked. “Why do I have to be thinking about you all of the time? If you are gonna let me go, let me go!”
I tilted my head back to keep my makeup dry. I think he hung up. He wouldn’t talk to me if I was drunk. And I finally realized I was.
Reba kicked off the tribute, introducing a video she had narrated about Dolly’s life. It opened with the first, haunting line of “Little Sparrow,” and my entire body tensed. The video then showed her as a kid, singing her way onto radio shows and leaving for Nashville the morning after she graduated high school. I thought about my life, and what Dolly had done with the gifts God had given her. She’d written so many songs, and I was afraid now to even write in my journal. When they played a snippet of “I Will Always Love You,” I lost it, heaving big hyperventilating sobs in a dress I wanted to burst out of, a necklace that seemed to choke me.
I began to pace around, and who knows how many people were staring at me. It came time for my part. Reese Witherspoon went out to introduce me, and of course she was perfect. The band started “9 to 5” and I waited for God to save me like He usually did. I’d get by.
I got through the first verse and chorus, and I was gone. I got lost and had no confidence to turn these lyrics into a song. I couldn’t understand the melody, the phrasing, or the tempo. And I didn’t know how to get back in.
I looked out at this bright room. I saw the President, all these dignitaries, and then Dolly. She looked so concerned. The band stopped, probably expecting me to start again, at least for the cameras.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, to her and to everyone. “It’s an honor to be here, but this song is too good for me. I’m so nervous.”
I turned, and as I stepped, I started to hop to the wing, a childish move to pretend none of this had happened. I ran to my parents, who were in full panic mode. They kept repeating, “What are we gonna do?” They were still so used to thinking we would lose everything if I messed up.
George Stevens, the producer, sent someone to ask if I wanted a redo when the show was over. My parents said yes for me. In the dressing room, it was like someone had died. I kept staring at a printout of the lyrics, and they all blurred together.
The show over, there was a knock on the door. I assumed it was my cue, and stood up, ready to walk the plank.
It was Dolly. She was wearing a white gown that sparkled, her blonde hair falling around the rainbow medal on her chest. She looked like an angel.
“Now, I hear you’re gonna sing that song again,” she said. “Before you do, I want you to know I wrote that damn song and I don’t even remember the words.”
It was a lifeline, her kindness and grace, in that moment. There are people whose cups run over—and yes, I worry I am risking a boob joke here when both Dolly and I are in the frame—but whose cups run over with love and grace. She is one of them. That she took the time to make me feel better on her special night will always mean the world to me.
I went back out to the stage, and the band was set. The audience had gone home, and it would just be us in the empty opera house. A producer told me they would dub in the applause later. I went out to the mic stand, and I looked out at the theater. With no audience, you could appreciate its beauty, like the red velvet lining of a jewel box. But there was no feeling. No warmth.
I had to sing to no one. Alone. I tried, but it was too sad. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”
I looked at the band, whose time I had wasted, and I wanted to disappear. I walked off the stage and looked back at the empty seats, and then into my dad’s eyes. “I will never sing again,” I said.
There was an afterparty, and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t think I deserved to. My parents made me. “This is disrespectful,” my mom said. “You have to go.”
I recently asked my mom why she was so intent on making me go to the party. “That was the thing that I had to do a lot that I hated,” she said. “Making you do stuff. But it’s business.”
I’m glad I went. I avoided everyone, but I wanted to thank Dolly again. Reese stood by her, when she saw me, she said in a full southern drawl, “Oh, honey.”
Dolly asked how it went, and I shook my head.
“Don’t you even worry,” she said. She probably knew I’d pull a Cinderella and flee the ball right quick. She gave me her number. “If you need anything,” she said. “Anything. You call me.”
A photographer wanted a picture, and Dolly called a bunch of the girls together. She put her arm around me, and Shania put her hand on my shoulder as Reba hugged me from behind. Reese and Allison bookended all of us.
“Smile!” Dolly said. And I did. Because you do what Dolly Parton tells you to, even if it’s hard.
That picture ran in a lot of places and for a long time I hated it. I hated that girl trying to smile in the center of these incredibly talented people. But now that I have learned to forgive myself, I see the bigger picture. I see four women and one fairy godmother supporting me solely because they knew I needed it. To Reba, Shania, Allison, Reese, and especially you, Dolly: Thank you.
I TOLD MY THERAPIST THIS STORY A FEW MONTHS BACK, ABOUT JOHN breaking up with me right before I went onstage.
“That’s not love,” she said. “You know that, right? I mean, he never loved you.”
She said it so casually, like this was something I should have figured out a long time ago. I felt a dagger, right in my heart again. I was still protective of him.
“What do you mean, he never loved me?”
“He was obsessed with you,” she said. “Love and obsession are so different. One is healthy, one is not.”
I didn’t know the difference then. Thank God I do now.
It wasn’t long before he was back in my life. I flew out to New York City to be with him for a New Year’s Eve party. We were in a good place, at least for us, and John seemed to welcome the press attention this time. Our rule was that we would never acknowledge in interviews that we were dating. We’d hide in plain sight.
He asked if I wanted to join him when his winter concert tour kicked off in Florida later in January and I dropped everything. From then on, I abandoned my life to be the girlfriend on the tour bus. It reminded me of when I was touring with 98 Degrees, and sometimes that felt right, and other times it brought back memories that made me uncomfortable. You create a family on the road, and there’s a feeling of intimacy as you arrive at a new city at four in the morning. Though this time around our bed was at a Four Seasons. John was a superstar in music, respected by veteran p
erformers as much as he was loved by his fans. People just loved to watch him play, and he brought an improvisational spark to all those years of preparation, playing guitar until his fingers bled.
I remember sitting alone at a soundcheck at Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, my feet up on the seats as he played guitar onstage. I’d worshipped Nick in concert halls, but Nick wasn’t always happy when it was me on the stage. How would John react to me performing again? I was so intimidated by John professionally. John was this guitar god, truly one of the greatest in history. He would look at me during certain songs, always reworking the playlist depending on his mood. If I was in the crowd up front, security would take me back to his dressing room during the last song of the encore so I could be there waiting for John. I’d think of Almost Famous and sing “Tiny Dancer” to myself, the L.A. lady in love with a music man. The groupie with her own platinum album and the clothing business raking in hundreds of millions.
I would periodically take breaks to go back to do work in L.A. The paparazzi started taking pictures of John even when I wasn’t around. In the beginning, he made a joke of it, putting an arm up to where my shoulders would be. Embracing my ghost as he walked. That’s what they wanted, right? Me. He already had fame, but I was a paparazzi target. And he welcomed becoming collateral damage.
In early February, Ken and I dyed my hair brown. I did it because I was trying to be someone new. I was going through a more “artistic” phase, carrying around my Leica camera and becoming really passionate about photography. I was obsessed, spending at least thirty minutes on each picture, color-correcting and making certain aspects pop. When I mentioned my hobby in magazine interviews, it became a cue for the writer to sneer at me to the reader.
But John encouraged it. First, he bought me vintage books on photography and technical manuals, then he decided to get his own Leica and he became better at it than me. Aw, damn, I thought, that was my thing.
With my camera in hand, I realized the tour was an amazing opportunity for the Collection. I would be in the middle of the crowd, taking note of what everyone was wearing. I photographed what women looked and felt good in before it got filtered through some fashion magazine. I wanted to know what jeans women really wore on a date, and how high a crop top people really wanted. John loved clothes, so when we went shopping together, I would pull luxury items, like something from some Japanese designer he was suddenly crazy about and think how I could make that spirit translate to something more accessible to our buyers. I sent tons of photos back home to the Collection, and on a tour bus, I had nothing but time to create mood boards and tear inspiration from magazines. I still wasn’t ready to go back to music. My acting career wasn’t satisfying me either. I knew Blonde Ambition could have been a lot better and wasn’t surprised when it later bombed.
Besides the Collection, my creative outlet was simply John, the two of us working at each other like puzzles, not sure if we were putting each other together or breaking us apart. We went to Sony’s Grammy afterparty together, and I was so happy he posed for pictures with me, because Grammy night is like the prom in our industry. He was nominated for five awards and won two that night. He broke up with me that night at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. I can’t even recall why. I just remember knocking on his hotel room door and begging until he finally took me back in the middle of the night.
From there I joined him on the road, Minneapolis and then Madison. That Wisconsin stop was Valentine’s Day, but he told me he didn’t believe in that stuff. Not for cool people. I watched him sing “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You),” a song about winning a lover’s trust just so you can break her heart, and then do it all over again. It was his MO set to a gorgeous rhythm, as irresistible as him. I sighed, but I told myself being with him was enough.
The next day we were back on the bus, heading south to a February 16 show in Kentucky. Somewhere in Illinois John had an idea, and started calling around on his phone, talking quietly. He told the driver he needed to make a pit stop. He jumped out, yelling for me to come along. He took me to a Tiffany & Co. store. We went inside and he picked out a diamond necklace.
“I’ve always wanted the first diamond I gave a girl to be from Tiffany,” he said, putting it around my neck.
I told myself this was our Valentine’s Day. The following month he took me to Rome. We had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel, and as I looked up at God and Adam reaching for each other, I thought of how much Sarah would have loved this.
Afterward, we visited another church. Fendi. Oh, I’m just kidding, but we did go, and it did feel like a miracle, because when we walked in he said, “Pick anything you want.” The extravagant gestures continued, and made my anxiety kick in. The higher he lifted me, the longer the fall would be when I disappointed him, and I knew I would. I was still self-medicating with drinking but doing it less so now that we were spending more time together.
I went along on his tour of Australia the following month. When he saw me start to drink, he stopped me.
“Don’t drink,” he said. “Try this pill. Just take this and it will take the edge off.” It was a Xanax, and he was right. It softened the edges of my fear and anxiety enough that I could be normal and present. But it frightened me into the realization that I clearly had a problem. Not with drinking, but with whatever I was covering with the drinking. This Xanax was a quick fix, but for what? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t ready to face it.
In Adelaide, a girl working the concert leaned over to me and asked if I wanted a water. She was sweet, my height and age, with brown hair.
“When are we going to hear you sing again?” she said with that Australian accent.
I smiled. “Oh, soon,” I lied, turning my face back to watch John onstage.
JOHN COLLECTED GUITARS AND HAD SO MANY THAT THERE WAS ALWAYS one in reach, the way an average person would be with a cell phone. Each had a story, like it was Eric Clapton’s and, by the way, it was the one he used for “Layla.” He would idly pick one up, play some gorgeous melody, and then look at me to join in. I would give a closemouthed smile. We did not have that spark to make music together, or maybe I resisted it. I know I had moved on from my ex-husband, but I still grieved singing with him. We were great together, where we were at our best. I wasn’t ready to share that with another man, even one I was in love with.
And John knew. He hated that I couldn’t let that part of Nick go. So, he presented me with an idea. He was obsessed with a song I wrote for A Public Affair called “Walkin’ ’Round in a Circle.” I’d used a sample of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” and that familiar tight rhythm allowed me to be a little looser with how I structured the song. I wrote it about the patterns I fall into, and how fear often keeps me stuck walking in a circle, where I can’t tell the beginning from the end. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced the song, and John’s idea was to redo it, make it less breathy and more direct, like my “With You” or his own music. As an artist, I knew he was right. It would be better that way.
“The song’s a hit,” he said. “I’ll produce it. I’ll release it.”
“No,” I told him. “I don’t want people to be like, ‘Oh, she’s using John Mayer to better her career.’ ”
He told me I needed to stop caring so much about what people thought. I don’t remember if he mentioned the idea to my father or if I did, but dad was cheering it on. “Yes, oh my God, he would be the best thing ever for your career.”
But I didn’t want my career to be about my relationship anymore. I had already broken my own heart with that approach.
John didn’t listen to me, or maybe he mistook my growing resignation as a yes. He went ahead and booked a recording studio for the next time we were in New York City. Chad Franscoviak, his sound engineer and roommate, was there, always calm around the storm of John’s energy and talking. Anybody would have taken advantage of this moment, and I didn’t. So, I sabotaged myself. There was Pinot Grigio, and I began downing it.
“You d
on’t need a drink,” he said. “Just be yourself.”
“You make me nervous,” I said. “I have to get comfortable.”
“Why do you need to drink to be comfortable?”
I busied myself with stalling tactics—lengthening my vocal exercises, “centering” myself, pouring another—until I had to get in front of the mic. The windowless studio seemed tighter, more like a prison cell than a place to create. John was on guitar. I don’t know if the plan was for him to do backing vocals later or if it would be a duet. I just knew he had a vision for how I should sound, and I worried I wouldn’t live up to that.
We started in. “Life is a curve ball, thrown with the wild arm, and if I’m gonna swing in, I must get motivated—”
I stopped, and said, “Sorry.”
He said something encouraging, but all I heard was the critique, which is what a producer is supposed to do. He wasn’t being out of line. But it brought back Nick producing for me in the studio. We started again, and we went on like that for a long time. If you told me it was thirty minutes or three hours, I would believe you either way.
“Just stuck in a dream, where the answer’s clear,” I sang. I’d written that song as a promise to myself to change my habits. Now it felt like I was narrating my current life with John. Caught in this cycle of make up-to-breakup and back again, no longer growing into myself. I got too in my head, wondering if this was God putting me in a position to sing the truth of my life. Or John. It occurred to me that I had always done well when I worked to be worthy of God’s gifts, and I had spent a year trying to be worthy of John’s love. Finally, it was as if my vocal cords became frozen. I couldn’t sing.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked John. “I hate it.”
“I’m trying to share this with you,” he said.
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