who's on judge mathis today? #294
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: laura from ypsilanti, michigan. goddamn it’s about time we had another hardcore butch on here!!! laura strides into the courtroom wearing her brother’s outfit from winter formal: a shiny black waistcoat over a deep wine button down from structure, black dress slacks from the jc penney husky section, and a shimmering wine/silver/black perfectly-knotted necktie. a bitch dressed like this could talk me out of my very last dollar!!!!! you know the kind i mean, the woman with a well-defined billfold imprint on her back jeans pocket who unironically drives a brand new ford super duty. our snow plow guy is this grizzled lesbian whose sole interest is her fantasy football draft and who only communicates using monosyllabic grunts, and if she needed a kidney i would offer her mine without hesitation. anyway laura looks like she has a riding lawnmower and that is sexy to me!!!!!!!!!!
defendant: jackie from garden city, michigan. jackie has a different stereotypically gay look: pierced bottom lip, chokers, little rectangle glasses, heavy eyeliner, many bracelets. i cannot wait to hear what the hell happened between these two.
the complaint: laura claims that after she and jackie broke up they continued living together until one night, after laura came home from a date with another woman, jackie attacked her. now she’s suing for property and harassment.
what does she want: $3000!! countersuit filed: jackie would like $2219 for overdue rent!!!
how it went down: west michigan has had 19 tornadoes so far this year and the storm that blew through a couple weeks ago really fucked our shit UP. massive falling trees wiped out house and power lines and our house was dark for a week and everything in it rotted, including me. i’m from the midwest and don’t typically get freaked out by weather, but i was up watching basketball during the scariest part of the storm and the shit was no joke. then the power went out and i used what precious little phone battery i had left to watch the nuggets beat the thunder, blissfully unaware that for the next few days i would have to sit in my car to make a freaking phone call.
laura says that a year into her relationship with jackie, jackie became abusive and controlling. the judge says “how so?” and laura says jackie always needed to know where she was and who she was with and that brings me to a quandary in my own life: do you guys always have your phone location turned on? cara was here last weekend and she asked me why i wasn’t sharing my location with her and i said, “because i don’t share my location with anyone.” and she’s like, “not even your wife?” and i was like, “NO????????” and cara almost fell over in disbelief. she could not fucking believe that the woman who has keys and/or access to just about everything on the planet that is mine isn’t also allowed to track my whereabouts at any given second. straight up dumbfounded!!!!!
it came up because cara was looking at her phone and saying “right now teddy’s at navy pier, and neri’s still at work—” and i yelled, “HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW THAT” and she said that all of her close friends/fam share their locations with her, then she turned pointedly to where i was shaking in the driver’s seat and asked, “so why don’t you?” am i just a paranoid creep or is everyone else fucking nuts? you guys all do that shit? i don’t want any normal people to see how much time i spend in parking lots! i can’t lie about what i did (read: didn’t do) all day if you can easily pull up my tracking device and bust me!!! it causes me actual anxiety to imagine someone looking at their phone like “damn, sam sure has been at big lots a long fucking time.” they wouldn’t even have to say it to me, the thought of someone’s judgmental thoughts is enough to make me physically ill. i take 80mg of fluoxetine every morning and still i’m paralyzed with fear that someone might clock how many drive thru iced coffees i get every week!!!!! when i say “mentally ill?” this is the shit i’m talking about!
anyway my location is on so now i refuse to leave the house. i’m team laura: what’s romance without a little mystery??? if you know everywhere i go and everything i do and everyone i’m with every day, what is left to talk about while we eat dinner? you don’t have to ask how my fucking day was if you already know i spent it at the YMCA and the library and mennonite grocery store. what is there to talk about between bites of spaghetti, my thoughts???????? i don’t have any of those!
two years into the relationship laura had had enough and broke up with jackie to start dating someone else. she says that after a weekend away with her new girlfriend, laura came home and jackie knocked her down in a rage, which i didn’t fully understand until laura clarified that she and jackie still lived together (!!!!!) after the breakup. what’s the fucking problem, lesbians? i swear to god all gay drama is some shit like this, “we got divorced but share joint custody of a goldfish and also work at the same place and also she lives in the garage but can come in to use the kitchen if i’m not home.” i get it in new york, i guess? the rent there is $9000 for a 300 square foot efficiency but i could get a studio apartment in ypsilanti for $560 RIGHT NOW. bitch, move out!!!!!!!!!!!
jackie says she’s a nice person who loved laura, which is why she let her stay despite her ending their romantic relationship. she says, “i was upset, but what could i do?” and they judge says, “well, she said you jumped on her” and yeah i guess that’s a thing you could do. jackie says she didn’t jump on laura, that it was laura who came home in a foul mood and started breaking her stuff. wasn’t laura fully in another relationship at this point? what, were there no available uhauls in that part of michigan???
laura says that the new girlfriend eventually broke up with her “due to the harassment of jackie.” greg asks her what that entailed and she says jackie kept calling the girlfriend, telling her over and over that she and laura were still together. the judge says, “that doesn’t sound like harassment, that sounds like an FYI” and yeah homie i just don’t know how you pull off living with a heartbroken woman who isn’t over you while making a new relationship work with someone else!
jackie says that laura isn’t fully telling the truth, that yeah they had a brief interruption in their relationship for that lady but they got back together until laura cheated on jackie with her boss at the halloween store, the woman who is sitting in the witness chair behind her in court today. THIS IS SO JUICY!!!!!!!!!! jackie says that she’s known laura since high school and she was her first girlfriend, then tugs the front of her top down a little to show off her tattoo of laura’s initials. you might think i’m about to clown that, BUT: i can’t because i’ve done it, too. just one initial, and it’s covered with something scary-looking now because lmao i’m fucking stupid, but i deeply relate to the very specific type of brainrot one has to possess in order to make a decision such as this. jackie was obviously out of her damn mind.
jackie says she and laura moved into a house in august, laura started working at the halloween store in september, and on november 7th jackie went to work and came home to find all of laura’s belongings moved out of their shared home. goddamn, working at spirit halloween clearly made an impression on laura. she moved out quicker than she moved in, leaving a trail of rubber freddy krueger masks in her wake.
laura says she’s suing jackie because, while she did jump ship on both their relationship and their FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE DOLLAR A MONTH RENT (i fucking told y’all), she says jackie changed the locks and didn’t allow her to come back and get the rest of her stuff. laura claims that jackie changed the locks but then changed them back after laura called the management company to try to get in so she wouldn’t get fined. jackie says that she did allow laura to come get her things, and that laura and the new girlfriend were in the house several times while she was at work with plenty of time to sort through her shit and take what they wanted.
greg asks laura if she has an itemized list of what she’s suing for and she hands one over. after studying it for a few seconds with his face all scrunched up, the judge says, incredulously, “five pictures of marilyn monroe totaling $100?” EXCUSE ME, PLEASE? okay, i own a lot of weird ass shit too, shit that i would rather literally die rather than attempt to valuate before a semi-retired judge and his rapt studio audience, and i’m sorry babe but there’s some shit you just gotta charge to the fucking game. unless those are polaroids from john fitzgerald kennedy’s personal camera, i need you to let that bullshit go!!!!!!!!!
the ruling: jackie says that anything she might still have of laura’s is because laura abandoned it at the crib, not because she’s withholding it. now, if that was me it would’ve been in the garbage the minute that bitch ran out the house with her tattered mummy costume rags trailing in the breeze behind her, but i guess jackie is not a total piece of shit. in my defense, i feel like there is a deep, disgusting untapped pit of despair within me that would sleep in my ex’s forgotten tshirt or walk around sucking on the toothbrush they left behind. that has not happened, because i’m deathly afraid of unearthing the darkness within me, and therefore have immediately tossed any shred of relationship evidence the minute the bell tolled. can’t be drying my tears with the birthday card they got from the gas station!! that’s sick!!!!!!
the other things i cannot be trusted with post-dissolution are 1 anything you’ve left behind and 2 a working telephone, because at the exact moment the wound begins to heal i will take a rusty blade and rip it open with a casual “hey brother, you left your [worthless item you probably don’t care about] at my place! is there a good way to get it back to you?” text, while my underarms grow slick with the possibility that the response might be “HEY, WANNA FUCK IT TO ME?”
judge mathis razzes jackie a little bit for trying to use laura’s old skateboard and craft supplies (wtf else could a lesbian possibly leave behind?????) to reestablish contact but jackie claims to have moved on. then laura’s spirit halloween manager takes the stand and drops this bomb: jackie used to work for her at the costume store as well, but got her ass fired because she spent every shift following laura around to make sure she wasn’t flirting with anyone?????? see, this is the kind of shit that can happen when your rent costs less than a netflix subscription, taking a job you don’t care about being good at just to make sure your woman doesn’t trick with anybody else’s treats!!!!
becky says that jackie and her friends would call the store every day to harass laura and has witness statements from other people at the job to corroborate her story. again, these are the kind of shenanigans you have time for when your rent is the same price as a latte. the judge believes the witness statements, probably because the minute becky stood up jackie’s attitude turned to shit and she started acting like the kind of person who would sit on the phone all day bothering a bitch who’s just trying to sell an inflatable chicken costume to my dad.
laura gets some cash for the marilyn monroe pictures and a little more for being harassed, and jackie only gets three months’ rent because it’s not laura’s fault that she spent nearly a year not finding a replacement housemate. in the hallway after the verdict becky and jackie and laura start having a loud, gay argument about who did what at somebody’s nephew’s funeral two years ago and jackie’s witness, who heretofore has been sitting and/or standing in stone silence, raises her hand and asks the cameraperson, “can please i go home?????” JUDGMENT FOR HER.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you broke up but you didn’t think to…………….break away from that apartment???”
*bangs gavel*