plaintiff: hello from hell, where i spent the better part of the day thinking about how to categorize and organize my various lotions to keep myself from looking at twitter and/or turning on the news! our collective nightmare continues apace! okay in walks caleb from stockton, california in a black blazer and pale pink dress shirt with a large collar, and he kinda looks like a washed up nightclub performer? like, he has a slick little beard and a big black bouffant and i keep waiting for him to pull a rhinestoned microphone out of his pocket and launch into a very jazzy rendition of “bye bye blackbird” or some shit.
defendant: jose from stockton, california. jose storms into the courtroom in a deep crimson dress shirt with a matte black tie and even though it’s satanic??? i like it.
the complaint: caleb says the defendant is his ex-boyfriend, and claims he cheated on him with men and women when they were living together, and now he’s suing him for stolen money. I LOVE THIS ALREADY.
what does he want: $1600 countersuit because we deserve it: jose would like $1950 for unpaid rent!
how it went down: caleb says that he and jose met last september and hit it off immediately and became instant best friends. aww, that’s nice! i love that feeling, when you meet someone and it’s like “hey i don’t even know your last name yet but i would absolutely die for you” and if they feel the same way? pals for life, BUT: you can’t fuck them, because that’s what messes it all up. too bad caleb didn’t consult me before agreeing to move in and be boyfriends with jose a few months after meeting him.
caleb says that after they moved in together he got to see “the real jose,” and they started fighting constantly. greg, the #1 lover of mess, says “what did you fight about?” and caleb says “cheating” and greg says “WHOSE?????” all agitated because it really is like pulling teeth to get this dude to spill even an ounce of tea. then caleb says that jose cheated on him with multiple men and women, including a few people whose naked pictures he found on jose’s phone. bazinga!
listen i don’t really understand the hoarding of nudes unless you’re trying to have some future blackmail material close at hand, but i especially don’t get it if you’re cheating on your partner, especially if that partner has access to the phone you store the nudes on???? what the fuck are people thinking about? i understand that some out of context testicles popping up in the middle of the day is thrilling, but why not just...delete them before your man sees?????? this tiny detail is bugging the shit out of me i’m so sorry!
greg is really trying to pry the gossip out of this dude but he is so dry and withdrawn that it’s painful. the judge asks caleb what he found on the phone and caleb says “dick pics” and greg says “date pics...?” and omg he is too pure for this world. DATE PICS!!!!! can we start that trend? i’d much rather see you enjoying a pasta at your favorite restaurant or sitting front row at a tori amos concert than a grainy picture of your flaccid dick that you took while taking a shit! caleb clarifies that he meant “penis pics” and even that sounds a little bit better, like the penis was artfully arranged in a still life or a painting.
it’s jose’s turn, and he says that caleb is a sex addict whom he met on a gay hookup app. jose says he’d just come out at the time, and everything was new to him. he says that he and caleb did have a friendship that became more, but then he started to feel like caleb was using him for sex because he wanted to do it so often. greg says, “how many times was that, three times a week? four?? once a day????” jose says that caleb wanted to have sex every single day, all the time, and my lower back is hurting just thinking about that shit. wow, no thank you, caleb! jose also says that he has never cheated, and it’s not his fault if people want to send pictures of their dicks to his phone!!!!!!!!!!! jose says that he often caught caleb using those hookup apps behind his back, and see why they shoulda just been roommates???
caleb says he came into $1600 from a family member and jose knew about it, and shortly after cashing the check he decided he was going to break the lease and move out. caleb says he went to get the box where he’d hidden the money only to discover that jose had taken it. greg asks “how did you know it was him?” and caleb says “because he admitted to it! he showed me the receipts!” and that is so brazen and hilarious that i stopped breathing for a second. imagine being like “well here’s a receipt for the new tires i bought with the money you inherited from your dead aunt lydia” and just going about the rest of your business????? ICONIC.
jose says that yes he did take the money without permission but he took it because they had signed a contract on the apartment together and caleb was about to flake out on the deal, so he decided to just take it before he could get fucked over (a different way). gotta love that initiative! jose says they moved in together june 1, signed a lease on an apartment through december 1, but then caleb moved out july 1. so caleb was gonna owe him for five months’ rent, but jose just decided to take it from him before he technically owed it. that’s some goddamn ingenuity!
the ruling: caleb says that he doesn’t believe he owes jose $1950 because he stole $1600 dollars from him and greg wholeheartedly agrees, he was paying in advance for those five months jose was gonna be stuck with an empty crib which means caleb is actually $350 short. judgment for the defendant, and for grindr!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “come on, man! give us some juicy gossip! that’s what people come here for!”
*bangs gavel*