Father John Misty, It’s Time to Leave My Bed.

Honeybear, 

I hope you slept well. Your coffee and breakfast are on the bedside table. Per usual. 

I’m off to work, but I wanted to leave another note for you. This one is difficult for me to write, though it feels crucial as we move ever-forward in our relationship. I’ll get straight to the point: I need you to leave my bed.

Get up, take a shower, get dressed, and go do anything. Maybe visit a château lobby? I know how you love those. Just please get out of my bed. 

For the record, you’ve now been in my bed for nine straight years. Nine. We’ve talked about this issue many times through the years. This new note does not arrive from out of the blue. But I feel the need to further explain so that I have my views written out for you to contemplate … particularly as you lie in my bed …

We can agree it started with our first date, right? I know you remember. You have in fact told everyone who will listen how I broke my own rule about sleeping with musicians (especially on the first date!). 

Then, the next morning – and I can own my part in this – I watched you snoring in my bed, and I didn’t want to wake you. And so, before I went off to teach my way through film school (not cheat my way, you rakish jerk!), I wrote you that first note, in my admittedly perfect script, telling you what a great time I had. 

Here’s where it got tricky. I was like, “Hmm. What’s a good way to sign off? I could draw a heart. Is that too much?” But I looked at the clock, and I was like, “Shit, I gotta go,” and so I scribbled, “Stay as long as you want …”

Well. You haven’t left my bed since. In fact, you seem to have taken that last line quite literally … and maybe even as a competitive challenge, one in which you are showing the world just how monumental your love can be.

Listen, babe – I don’t want to sound like I’m ungrateful for the nine years, I really don’t. To be clear, for the first few weeks and months – heck, even the first year or so – I was thrilled to come home from film school, and then from my film career as it took seed and flowered, to find you in my bed. 

Even my friends said, “Who wouldn’t want to come home every day to find Father Fucking John Misty in their bed?” It was thrilling. 

But then it became less thrilling. More like expected.

Then it became entirely predictable.

Then it became redundant.

And then it became concerning.

As I’ve mentioned, the smell was the thing that made me start to wonder if something was truly off. You know I love your natural odor, and occasionally wiping a wet washcloth over yourself at the bedside helps with hygiene, it really does. But there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned bath (or waterfall, let’s say!) to take off the grime and stench that builds up day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

And yes, as you’ve made clear, you have been somewhat helpful when it comes to changing the sheets, rolling over so that I can pull the linens out from under you. Same goes with cleaning up after trimming your beard or giving yourself a haircut in bed – though, as we have discussed, you really have a lot of hair, and it gets everywhere. 

You are also very polite to Rosie when she changes your bedpan and disposes of your bottles of urine. 

And your avant-garde fingernail- and toenail-clipping art project – all nine years of it – is amicably contained in your bedside Tupperware set, and I am certainly thankful for that Tupperware. 

I have also truly grown to love our Satanic Christmas Eve in Bed tradition!

In short, I know you’re trying. I see it. Every day, when I come home.

But the best relationships endure change. We simply cannot live forever in those first addictively passionate moments, even if your stage name is Father John Misty. Passion fades. And hopefully a deeper friendship emerges. I want that. 

I also want to acknowledge something that you might be too proud to admit. Baby, I see the toll this is taking on you. Your sparkling blue eyes have taken on a hollowed-out look. Your muscle mass has dwindled. You even have bed sores. But you don’t have to engage in this bed-a-thon anymore. You’ve proven yourself as a lover and partner. At least in bed. 

Finally, in an effort to make extra-certain we are on the same page, I need to take a moment to address something you once said to me. It was at the beginning of our relationship, and you stated, “What's going on for? What are you doing with your whole life? How about forever?” 

I assumed you were being your romantically rhetorical self – and I never directly responded to your words beyond giving you a daydreamy smile. But in the years since, my friends and I have spent many a brunch trying to parse out whether or not you were asking me to marry you in your own loose, FJM, poetic way. After all, you have pointed out that dating someone for, say, 20 years feels “pretty civilian.” 

And then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, you had indeed asked me to marry you … and I never answered. And further, you were staying in bed until you got an answer …

With that in mind, and assuming you did in fact propose (and it’s still valid), I guess my response is, “OK?” By this point I’m not sure how a legal document could further cement my dedication to you, and you to me, after nine years of you never leaving my bed. 

But I’d marry you. I’d marry you in that wedding dress I bought long ago, the one someone was probably murdered in. And I’d do it on just one condition, baby. 

Do you know what that condition is? And do we have a deal?

I love you, Honeybear –

PS – Oh, one last thing: I know you steadfastly believe that people are boring. While I might’ve agreed with you earlier in our relationship, I no longer consider that to be true. Some people are quite fascinating! But you’ve got to get out there in the world and experience it for yourself. I’ll show you. Hold my hand, and let’s take our chances …