plaintiff: john from south bend, indiana. so two men are walking into the courtroom but idk which one is john yet? the man on the left is taller and kind of bashful-looking, and he appears to be latinx and has close-cropped hair and a neat little beard plus a fitted black suit with a slate grey dress shirt and tie, but he’s also wearing sparkly earrings to telegraph that he’s young and cool. the man on the right is short and old and y’all know what the hell i’m going to say: HOW ON EARTH DO THESE PEOPLE KNOW EACH OTHER. my kingdom for a reality show that plucks an incongruous-looking pair of people off the street and sits them down to tell their origin story! listen, i know 99% of the time the answer is gonna be “drugs,” but what about that 1%????? the older dude has wispy white hair and thick, wire-rimmed mister magoo magnifying glasses, and these two might actually be wearing different sizes of the same suit??? i need a men’s wearhouse salesman to take a microscope to them but to my untrained eye it looks like the modern day version of that movie twins. what is going on here?!
defendant: kyle from mishawaka, indiana. kyle has jumped right out of my chemically romantic dreams and into greg’s courtroom, with his ghostly pale skin and black gauges and inky black emo-swooped hair shimmering vampire-style under the lights. why isn’t his accordion of truth™ covered with faded AFI stickers??????
the complaint: john says his friend was in a volatile relationship with the defendant for four years and claims he had to intervene in one of their fights and got injured, so he’s suing for the cost of medical bills. if this is the old man and he got between these two young whippersnappers while they were putting their dukes up i am going to fucking scream.
what does he want: $1593
how it went down: okay apparently john is the older gentleman and i’m not being ageist, this dude looks as old as i feel and i literally cannot imagine his being strong enough to withstand a gentle breeze without falling over so jumping into a fistfight?????? absolutely the fuck not!
john says that his friend pache and kyle the defendant have been an a volatile relationship for the past four years and that he’s been a friend of pache’s for “quite a few years more than that.” john says he’s been a mentor to and a benefactor of pache’s for the entire time he’s known him, and that he’s always tried to make sure pache gets what he needs, like a place to stay and his GED.
kyle begins by saying that john is a known drug dealer and is the “go-to guy for sex drugs in the gay community.” *chokes* excuse me?????? what did you say????????? are you trying to get me to believe that this shriveled prune in a jc penney suit is the tony montana of northern indiana?????????? wild!!!!!!!!!! greg says “what do you mean ‘sex drugs?’” and kyle says “methamphetamines,” and oh nooooo this just reminded me of that harrowing documentary meth storm i made the mistake of watching a few months ago and am still recovering from. i cannot believe that this mild-mannered dude is the meth kingpin of south bend, what in the world!!!!!!!!!!
kyle says that pache confided in him that he and john have had an ongoing sexual relationship in which they exchange drugs for sex. kyle says that he and pache were together, seriously, for over two years, but he just couldn’t reconcile being in a romantic relationship with someone who used drugs and pache just couldn’t quit. greg asks what type of drugs pache was on and kyle says that among other things he was smoking a lot of synthetic weed, which drug abuse dot gov warns me is extremely not chill! kyle says that drug use isn’t a part of his lifestyle, and also that pache constantly cheated on him and that he has a protective order against him.
one night kyle couldn’t sleep and he got up to go to walmart for some melatonin (i am obsessed with his inclusion of this detail) and when he went into the garage to get his car he found pache passed out on the couch out there. (this is extremely not the fucking, BUT: in the midwest you can have a garage big enough to put a couch in and the mortgage on the house it’s attached to is probably ⅓ the cost of what you’d pay for a studio apartment in a big city, just saying!) he called the police immediately and they arrested him for breaching the order of protection, and as soon as they were gone kyle went through the bags he’d left behind and discovered a shit ton of drug paraphernalia.
and, because he’s clearly a lawyer in training, kyle documented all the stuff he found and he hands the judge a bunch of color photocopies (thank you for your service, kinkos!) of burned out glass pipes and needles and baggies of drugs and a treasure chest full of viagra. kyle says that john hands out viagra at the sex parties he hosts every weekend, where groups of people show up on friday to have drug-fueled group sex for days at a time. i am so exhausted, just in general, that that sounds like absolute torture to me. sex for three days straight??????? just throw me in a grave!
a couple days later he was studying for an exam (i knew it!) when he heard arguing coming from the living room, and kyle got up to find john and pache in his living room fighting while packing up pache’s things. kyle informed them that they were trespassing and told them to get out, and he helped john leave with a push to his back. john says that he came into the house to break things up when he heard kyle and pache fighting, and he told pache to go to the car before he was rudely shoved to the ground by kyle, resulting in tremendous damage to his left arm. greg skeptically demands proof but like...my man looks kinda frail! i’d buy it if he said he’d patted him on the back too hard and shattered all of his ribs!!!!!!!!
john has pictures and medical records of the damage and it looks pretty gruesome. his arm is completely fucked up, like he fell on some gravel then was dragged down a street made of gravel by a gravel machine. and kyle already admitted to pushing him, and now that we’ve seen how gross it was he is definitely gonna lose!
the ruling: greg is inexplicably trying to get kyle to forgive pache and maybe even take him back (??????) and i cannot understand why. he says kyle seems hurt and still in love and maybe that’s true, but dude says he doesn’t want to be with him and he hates drugs (can’t relate), so isn’t he smart for not continuing to chase after this man? i wish i was as clear-eyed and focused on my goals as he seems to be! why is the judge encouraging him to hustle backwards, especially if pache is happy snorting meth in scar-arm’s kinky drug den?????? judgment for the plaintiff, may he waste it on all the k2 his elderly heart desires!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “meth makes you freaky??? i know a lot about dope but i didn’t know that part!”
*bangs gavel*