Playboy Interview: John Mayer

Playboy: You and Aniston got back together and broke up again in 2009. How many women did you sleep with in the eight months after the breakup?

Mayer: I’m going to say four or five. No more.

Playboy: That’s a reasonable number.

Mayer: But even if I said 12, that’s a reasonable number. So is 15. Here’s the thing: I get less ass now than I did when I was in a local band. Because now I don’t like jumping through hoops. It’s been so long since I’ve taken a random girl home. I don’t want to have to submit myself for approval. I don’t want to audition. I’d rather come home and edge my shit out for 90 minutes. At this point, before I can have sex I need to know somebody. Unless she’s a 14 out of 10.

Playboy: You have been very up front about your fondness for masturbation.

Mayer: It’s like a vacation—my brain gets to go free. It’s a walk in the park for my brain. Pull the shades and let your mind go without having to answer for it.

Playboy: The way you talk about being 32 sounds as though you were too immature for Aniston.

Mayer: No, the actual day-to-day was fantastic. I have to explain this so people don’t say, “Sure, you’re 32, and you want to fuck other chicks.” If you say I’m not adult and stable, it sounds as though I’m someone who’s watching football and playing Xbox. I have this bond with infinite possibility—when I go out to dinner, I bring another shirt, a flashlight, a knife, a hard drive, a camera. It’s not like I wanted to be with somebody else. I want to be with myself, still, and lie in bed only with the infinite unknown. That’s 32, man.

Playboy: In 2006 you began dating Jessica Simpson, and the paparazzi started stalking you, turning you into a tabloid fixture. Certainly you knew that was going to happen.

Mayer: It wasn’t as direct as me saying “I now make the choice to bring the paparazzi into my life.” I really said, “I now make the choice to sleep with Jessica Simpson.” That was stronger than my desire to stay out of the paparazzi’s eye. That girl, for me, is a drug. And drugs aren’t good for you if you do lots of them. Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me.

Playboy: You were addicted to Jessica Simpson?

Mayer: Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm.

Playboy: But before you dated her you thought of yourself as the kind of guy who would never date Jessica Simpson.

Mayer: That’s correct. There are people in the world who have the power to change our values. Have you ever been with a girl who made you want to quit the rest of your life? Did youever say, “I want to quit my life and just fuckin’ snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to fuck you, I would start selling all my shit just to keep fucking you.”