a note: i had surgery on my jaw monday morning, which i had to undergo while wide! fucking! awake! bitch!, so i should probably be horizontal somewhere in a painkiller fog. BUT life is hell and this is fun, so i’m gonna distract myself from my missing skull parts with gregory and try to catch up. if my next few emails don’t make sense or there’s a glitch or literally anything weird happens, please blame al gore and his internet, not me and/or these opioids.
plaintiff: a’lexus from atlanta, georgia. high pony with yarn braids, a very cute kelly green silky shirt dress, gorgeous cheekbones, pouty lips, accordion of truth™ clasped firmly in hand.
defendant: pape from st. louis, missouri. i’m not gonna lie, i had a visceral ache as soon as homeboy sexy-walked through the door. was it his tightly wound accordion of truth™? possibly! could it be his sultry shawl-collared sweater? probably! is it because he’s nine feet tall with a smooth, hershey dark chocolate complexion? um, definitely! this is the kind of dude you meet at the bar and are immediately like “yes, i will let you ruin my life.” i mean, he’s got neat little twists and a goatee, and this motherfucker licks his juicy lips as the camera lingers lustily on him. whatever he did to a’lexus, i understand why she let it happen.
the complaint: a’lexus and pape were good friends for four years, and they took a trip to las vegas to celebrate her making the top 50 of american idol, which pape failed to pay his part for.
what does she want: $2013 for travel expenses. oh, boy. y’all know you can’t take people on trips! recipe for disaster!
how it went down: a’lexus and pape met in 2015 and instantly became best friends. tell me something: is it ever really worth it to be friends with a man? do you need a man for anything? i mean, if sex is off the table and especially if he’s not generous and rich, what’s he there for? can you tell him things and guarantee that he’s listening while you talk? does he offer any discourse or interesting ideas? are they capable of emotional intimacy or is it just, like, chest bumps instead of feelings? i am very old and in addition to having no practical use for snapchat i also cannot maintain a relationship with another person that doesn't include the complete baring of souls +/- an incredible amount of intense, therapeutic crying! anyway, a’lexus tried to have a friendship with pape and that was her first mistake, especially since it’s impossible to be just friends with a hot person. but that’s a painful lesson for another day.
a’lexus went on american idol and was doing well in the competition. she says that during this friend period “they never found a time to date” because when she was single he was attached, and when he found himself single she’d be dating someone new. see?! i fucking knew it. they weren’t friends, they were just in the pre-sex portion of a romantic relationship! “best friends” my asshole, that was just four long years of dry, protracted foreplay. this past summer they found themselves both available at the same time and they decided to take the plunge. she says she thought they were gonna be WAKANDA FOREVER but “he didn’t have no vibranium.” okay so i love her and i laughed.
a’lexus planned a trip to vegas because she was going to start her own cosmetics line. is that the hot new hustle? i feel like if i wanted to get rich quick the last thing i would ever consider doing is, like, put my name on products that can blind people? i was scrolling through estée laundry the other night and there are well established legacy companies getting dragged to death on that shit! girl, you want to expose yourself to l’oreal kind of scrutiny? literally no thank you! can you imagine waking up in the morning like “welp better log on to twitter dot com and see if anyone is complaining that i poisoned their cheeks and eyelashes!” ugh never. so a’lexus was supposed to go to vegas to meet with a chemist about her all-natural makeup line (is she the bravest person who ever lived? jesus) and didn’t want to go alone.
pape, ever the supportive best friend turned boyfriend, said “i’ll go with you!” which is nice. if any of my friends makes so much as a single lipstick i’m never talking to that silly bitch again. when they arrived in vegas a’lexus went to all of her business meetings alone while pape was “kickin it” and “messing up the hotel room.” i’m not mad at that? it’s not like he was her business partner! i would do the same thing, to protect myself against a potential lawsuit later on when someone figures out you have sulfates and phthalates in your “natural” overpriced vaseline.
the ruling: a’lexus invited pape to vegas and he accepted and said he had the money to go and she believed him because, according to her, pape had “15,000 jobs.” but as the trip drew closer and it came time to purchase plane tickets he asked her if she could get them and said he’d pay her back. look, in these situations you either have to say SORRY, NO or ya gotta sigh, look at your debit card, and think “having ____ on this trip is worth the money it’s going to cost me.” maybe make a pro and con list if you need to? just to be sure? but you either have to be cool with 1 going alone or 2 taking this shiftless asshole and never getting the money back ever.
because of a snafu that isn’t fully explained here, a’lexus and pape missed their flight to vegas and she had to buy them new tickets. they somehow also missed the flight from vegas as well? what the fuck are y’all doing?! i have done two book tours and between them have flown extensively enough for work shit to have an airport routine, and i’m no travel expert but i truly cannot understand how that happens two times and they are both your fault. i don’t get to the airport three hours early or anything but i try to spare myself the creeping panic that sets in if there’s not at least half an hour for me to pee and look at magazines between security and my assigned gate? are there really people who don’t start flop sweating if they aren’t seated close enough to hear their zone being called when the time comes? how good and manageable must your life feel if you somehow are free of this crushing anxiety????
a’lexus bought them two new tickets to get home, and honestly i am in awe because i never have emergency plane ticket money just lying around. if i miss a flight you’re gonna find me slumped over a margarita at the airport chili’s calling everyone i know to see if they have any strings they can pull with delta. they get home and pape is like “hey let’s have sex” and a’lexus is like “nah dawg, you owe me money” and that is the most sensible decision i have heard her make this entire episode?
greg asks pape why he hasn’t paid, and pape says it’s because a’lexus texted him that he owed her $1800 for half the entire trip. which he doesn’t think he should have to pay, since she was already going to vegas on business and would have had that room for herself whether he tagged along or not. i get it but that’s shitty. they agreed that he would pay her $1000, which would cover all four of the plane tickets she’d purchased for him and then some. what airline is this? i’m flying wrong!
judge mathis asks a’lexus to break down the math to prove what pape owes. the first flight was $291. she tries to list the second flight but she caused them to miss that one because she didn’t have her ID when they got to the airport and had to wait for her parents to bring it and greg is like FUCK THAT. the return tickets cost $1182, which is $591 each. she tries to add $291 for luggage (?) but hands the judge a bunch of papers that don’t have luggage itemized on them. nothing makes greg more furious than having to sift through every scrap of paper someone has shoved into their accordion of truth™, especially when the documents of truth™ aren’t even in there. with much irritation he grants a’lexus a judgment of $1000, a seemingly arbitrary amount according to the evidence we’ve been presented, but it’s what pape said he was gonna pay so i guess that’s that and greg is taking his word for it. HOLD UP, DID I JUST WITNESS A MISOGYNY??
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: at one point pape said he was too broke to pay a’lexus for the trip because he had just gotten back from a trip to atlanta, and greg said, “man, you were probably down there making it rain in the strip club,” and as the audience laughed he made a making it rain in the strip club hand gesture and now i have passed away. where did greg learn to do that?!
*bangs gavel*