plaintiff: lakeshia from chicago, illinois. lakeshia is looking lowkey glam in an army green western-style shirt (you know, the kind with packets and snaps???) with her long, luxurious crimped ponytail cascading down her shoulders. she is standing at the podium snapping her neck and rolling her eyes all the way to the back of her head and the defendant hasn’t even walked in the courtroom yet??? MY QUEEN.
defendant: tennell from chicago, illinois. absolutely 100% without a doubt the prototype of the kind of man i would fall all over myself to talk to at sonotheque on dark wave disco night circa 2008. large, black, glasses, with a shiny milk dud head and clothes that are almost too casual to get past the bouncer. i would unreservedly let a man who looked like this categorically ruin my miserable life, and boy did i try!!!!
the complaint: lakeshia claims her ex-boyfriend lied to her and cheated on her and she is suing him for traffic tickets and impound fees.
what does she want: $4745
how it went down: lakeshia gets things started saying “tennell was the worst mistake of my life” and see??? that’s what dudes who look like this do to you!!!!!!!! don’t let a big ol’ teddy bear sweet talk his cuddly way into your life unless you are prepared for him to completely destroy it. lakeshia says that in the beginning her relationship with tennell was perfect, that he was sweet and caring and good with her kids, but then she found out he was cheating and everything went downhill from there. greg, who loves mess, asks “how did you find out he was cheating?” and apparently one night they were lying in bed and at two in the morning a woman called his phone. UH OH. another time he claimed that he was hanging out with his homies and lakeshia saw a picture of tennell on another woman’s facebook, taken and posted at the same time.
listen dudes, i love posting as much as the next person with an unlimited data plan but if you are going to cheat on your significant other could you please just put your fucking camera phone away while you do it??? internet brain worms will be the death of us all, and our relationships are gonna go down the toilet first because everybody is so addicted to posting that they don’t even stop to think about how they’re fucking their lives up! tennell is like “that’s a lie” and lakeshia, of course, cracks open her accordion and says, “i got proof, baby.” AND INDEED SHE DOES. she hands the judge a printed out facebook photo™ of tennell and a woman and some kids at a rainforest cafe and i love novelty chain restaurants, too, but that’s not a memory you could just file away somewhere??? you had to memorialize it on al gore’s internet?????
i missed two things: 1 the rainforest cafe picture was taken and posted on valentine’s day 2014, when lakeshia and tennell were definitely still together and 2 the woman who is in the picture with him that day (oh my god) was in the courtroom (OH MY GOD) but then she left (??????) and now greg is sending doyle out into the hallway to fetch her. lakeshia is licking her lips and sharpening her claws in breathless anticipation. while we anxiously wait (my stomach hurts!) lakeshia says that another incident that same year, she let him “weasel his way back in” according to her, she lent tennell her car and then she tracked the gps on her phone and followed it to where he was and lo and behold, he’s with the same woman.
now, lakeshia is hilarious and is laying out this evidence like johnnie fucking cochran but girl at some point you gotta either declare this a polyamorous situation or go on ahead and dump this dude?? i appreciate a scorned woman-cum-amateur detective but eventually you gotta love yourself enough to stop chasing your man when you know the road is just gonna lead to some other lady’s house. who has this kind of time??? i always found it a huge relief to get cheated on, like “okay i can stop pretending i make my bed every day and spending a hundred dollars a month on pedicures? thanks dude!” then i’d burn all my underwire bras and grow my pubic hair to my fucking ankles.
so i truly do not understand wasting more than an hour trying to solve a cyber cheating crime but who the fuck cares about that, the other woman is here!!!!!!!!!!!! her name is melissa, and she says that from the jump lakeshia knew that she and tennell, who have children together, would continue to do things together as a family despite his new relationship. lakeshia interjects to say “on valentine’s day?????” and greg is fanning the flames, shouting, “YEAH, ON VALENTINE’S DAY?????????” and tennell is pretty much like, “yes??...on valentine’s day.”
tennell says the first two years of his relationship with lakeshia were perfect. you know what’s also perfect?? chicago’s #1 guy fieri impersonator is sitting front row in the audience again! goddamn, does that gig pay well? how can he afford to guest star for free in so many episodes of this damn show???? okay so two years, great. after that? lakeshia is getting jealous, demanding he delete people from facebook, questioning who liked his photos, etc. tennell says she also had a problem with his children and their mother, and this is so much stuff that i am truly flummoxed as to why either of them continued this distressing courtship.
at some point during the denouement of this toxic relationship lakeshia says that tennell begged her to help him get his car out of impound and to pay of a couple thousand dollars in parking tickets, which sounds high as hell but they live in chicago so it makes perfect sense. if you move to chicago just push your car into the lake and buy a bus pass, it’s not worth it! anyway lakeshia lent him the money and tennell never paid her back because he said it was a gift, and i don’t know lakeshia but the 8+ minutes i’ve spent with her so far??? even i know that this is not a woman who would give this idiot this kind of “gift.”
the ruling: from her jam-packed accordion of truth™ lakeshia extracts another sheath of printed out facebook correspondence™ and mimeographed stolen texts™ between women and tennell, tennell and her, women and her, and the long and the short of it is that he was cheating on lakeshia with multiple women, some of whom were sending her very explicit messages that greg was almost too bashful to read (seriously, one of them was like, “i ____ in his ____ and if you think we _____ and he put his ____ in my ____” and greg was in a full body nervous sweat) and we’re not here to litigate whether or not tennell was faithful (he wasn’t!) but somewhere in that ream of kinko’s paper was a text from him promising to pay lakeshia back, judgment for the plaintiff, can’t wait to spot tennell across a hefty serving of anaconda pasta when we’re all vaccinated and eating meals in public again.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: (to lakeshia) “now don’t be ignorant or violent when she comes in here, be cool!”
*bangs gavel*