the plaintiff: demarco from milwaukee, wisconsin. he has neat cornrows and a bright blue sweater vest but, sadly, he is not made of cheese.
the defendant: marie from milwaukee, wisconsin. marie is wearing all black and looks very angry and serious, as she has obviously shown up for demarco’s funeral. she has made the bold choice to not bring so much as a handbag to these proceedings, which is secretly my favorite kind of defendant. no contracts to rifle through, no kinkos text message printouts, just a brain full of facts and a heart full of confidence.
the complaint: demarco is suing marie, his ex-girlfriend (that explains the outrage, tbh), whom he broke up with shortly after valentine’s day. ok, yikes!
what does he want: $500 for an unpaid loan.
how it went down: demarco met marie at his sister’s wedding. he was on the dancefloor and caught her checking out his moves, so he decided to ask for her number. at my sister’s wedding i ran out of drink tickets because that cheap bitch had a cash bar and met no one. after a month of texting and calling their relationship progressed and they started seeing each other in real life and hit it off immediately. this is sweet! he’s a funny and charming dude! he seems very nice! i literally cannot wait for the rug to get yanked out from under me!!
two months into their relationship demarco noticed that marie liked to eat out a lot. because he’s a gentleman he would always pay for those meals. and, he adds, the extravagant dinners never stopped. i don’t want to denigrate my sister city in the northern tundra, but if they went anywhere more lavish than the cheesecake factory i would be shocked. he was surprised that he was actually expected to, um, date a woman in a typical way? apparently he expected at some point that she would start cooking for him, you know, because he had a stove. instead he was going broke taking her to chili’s and shit.
i am a withered old crone who has been gay married for approximately 300 years so please ignore this question if it’s outdated, BUT: isn’t two months a little early to expect someone to regularly cook meals for you on your own fucking stove? again i’m not sure of the courtship benchmarks by today’s standards, but it doesn’t seem out of place that after eight weeks you’d still be meeting up with your new special friend down at the ruby tuesday?! considering that we probably aren’t seeing each other more than three times a month, is it out of line to be expecting romance (and unlimited breadsticks) for a few months?
they broke up on valentine’s day (yikes) because even though he took off work and bought flowers and got her a pair of shoes, she got to his house to celebrate and said “where are the turtles?” (i assume she meant the candy kind? but honestly, i don’t know!) so he immediately dumped her.
marie starts her testimony by telling demarco that a man needs to “take care of his queen” and that she deserves “breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and appetizers.” i mean, i respect it, but maybe demarco had a point. greg starts on a whole thing about women’s lib and how if a woman wants to be taken care of then she needs to do all the cooking and cleaning for the man. then he asks what she did to take care of demarco since she was under the impression that he should be taking care of her, and she says she did things “in the bedroom” which earns her another archaic lecture about old fashioned values. thanks, i hate it. this is why i can’t be a queen. i’ll buy my own snacks at happy hour, fuck this shit.
at some point before the st. valentine’s day massacre of their relationship marie’s car went down and they found out it was gonna be a little over $500 to fix it, and demarco lent her the money on the condition that she would pay it back in two weeks, which she did not. now this is when i would’ve started busting out the pots and pans. no better distraction from towering debt than a home cooked meal. i would have had my apron on covered in streaks of flour and grease splatters like, “what loan? i don’t know shit about a loan, but i do know these biscuits are delicious!” i’d be in there frosting layer cakes and throwing my back out hauling pans of lasagna out of the oven and whisking eggs by the dozen. he’d be out five hundred bucks but he’d be up five hundred pounds.
the ruling: the judge asks demarco for evidence and he doesn’t have any. marie says that’s because the money was a gift; demarco says it’s because he didn’t want to make an agreement with his girlfriend all legally binding and shit. marie didn’t think she had to pay it back because she drove him back and forth to work every day, so she figured it was just as much his car as it was hers. demarco says that at one point he proposed to marie, before he knew she had such expensive tastes of course, and marie confirms that not only did he propose but she also said yes! then greg PULLS OUT A BIBLE and the courtroom explodes in stunned applause. wait, are we really about to see a judge mathis wedding?! i can’t attend a wedding in my house sweater! hold up, let me run and put on some lipstick and a closed-toed shoe.
false alarm! despite having reconciled their many differences in the seconds it took the judge to whip out the word of the lord, they decide to pump the brakes on getting hitched. thank god. but, since they aren’t getting married right now, his money is still his money and she owes him that $500. it’s worth at least that to be free.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: he really told her at one point to “GET IN THAT KITCHEN.” greg!
*bangs gavel*