plaintiff: stacie from wichita, kansas. stacie is tall and pale with long dark hair, and she’s wearing a slate gray peplum suit jacket (?) with a single button at the waist over a black shirt. the jacket is, like, the kind of thing i would’ve bought for church on easter sunday, worn once, then gotten pissed at myself for the rest of my life because where on earth am i gonna wear a fucking flared polyester-blend blazer?? stacie has on a healthy amount of blush, my favorite cosmetic, and hot damn she is extremely statuesque!
defendant: jeff from lincoln, nebraska. uh oh, when i heard the announcer say “unwanted advances” during the voiceover as that big white lady entered the courtroom, i knew instinctively we were about to be in a, uhhh, “bust up the chiffarobe” type of situation and i was not wrong. jeff is shiny and brown, his bald head glistening like a fresh milk dud, his collared white shirt blinding and crisp. he’s wearing glasses and bracelets, and his accordion of truth™ is primed and ready.
the complaint: stacie says sent jeff her degrading texts after she refused his advances, and she’s suing for concert tickets and a hotel room.
what does she want: $382 and you already know what the fuck i am going to say. nobody sues you for the kind of money you could find at the bottom of a broken payphone in an abandoned building because they want the money, that petty bitch wants to prove a point or teach you a lesson or both. can you even get to chicago from wichita for under four hundred bucks? fingers crossed that this shit gets spicy and mean!
how it went down: greg is looking especially handsome today. i mean, he always looks fucking good? but today there’s a little extra sparkle on it. stacie begins by saying “the defendant pursued me for sex and when he was rejected he proceeded to send me nasty, degradable [sic] texts.” okay stacie, i see we’re just jumping right in head first! greg, who has a keen understanding of pacing and story development, asks how they met and under what circumstances. THANK YOU, GREG. i hate when they skip the foreplay and go straight to the penetrashe, can’t we build a little dramatic tension?? stacie says they met 25 years ago when she was in grad school in the same town where he lives, and six months ago she accepted his facebook friend request and they started talking on messenger. whew lord, that place is such a minefield. for every “wow, my old science partner!” there are 137 “omg why do you even remember my name???” no and thank you!
they soon graduated to texting, and jeff’s first messages to stacie were “i wish you were my wifey” and “i wish i could cuddle with you,” and as stacie is saying this she is shuffling through the papers on her podium, through what i can only assume are many, many pages of printed out texts™ that she brought to court, and i can feel my pulse quickening. i would rather lick a public toilet than have my embarrassing text messages printed out and read. shit, i don’t even want to read email threads i’ve responded to, let alone be confronted with amorous messages sent to the unrequited object of my desire on daytime television? guillotine!
ok this is about to get confusing and i apologize in advance for writing this when i should be asleep, but stacie says those messages are degrading, then the judge says “it’s not degrading to say he wants to cuddle with you if you’re flirting,” then stacie says the degrading messages occurred after she refused jeff’s invitation to take her to vegas and have sex for three days. clear enough? i’m not sure whether the cuddle texts are evidence of the degradation or if there are others she hasn’t gotten to yet, but stacie is telling this story out of order in a way that makes me suspicious.
okay okay okay, stacie starts reading the texts jeff sent after what i’m guessing was a failed sexual excursion to las vegas, texts in which he essentially says “you’re an egomaniac, i’m not into you, i didn’t want to fuck you but i would’ve after a few beers because i’m a man.” jeff, to his credit, looks appropriately horrified listening to this, but then again maybe he just has gas. HE’S A MAN. stacie flips a few pages back in her printed out texts™ to the messages jeff sent before their trip and reads this passage that’s like “we could be the next great american love story.” ugh i hate him.
jeff begins his defense by saying that all the evidence stacie has presented was done so out of context. he says that all of the flirty texts (the wifey, the love story) occurred during the 2-3 months they texted before reconnecting in person, and that he hadn’t seen what she looked like in over twenty-five years. i know exactly where this is going, and fuck him for taking it there. he also says that stacie is (conveniently) leaving out all the stuff she said back to him, stuff like “it’s really cool talking to you.” lmao it is entirely too late for me to go full misandry here, but: can this dude not see the difference?? her: “hey bud, you’re nice” him: “OH YEAH? WELL I WANNA FUCK YOU FOR THREE DAYS IN VEGAS” i mean come on man, what the fuck!
stacie invited jeff to a concert and he drove three hours to meet her there and when they met for dinner beforehand he says it was clear that they didn’t have chemistry but he decided to eat with her and let her take him to the show anyway, what a prince. that was on a friday, and the next day they were supposed to drive back to his hometown so they could attend his high school reunion. jeff says that after the concert, which they went to and had a nice time, he sent her a very nice and respectful (lol ok) text that he didn’t want her to go to the reunion. stacie fishes the exchange from her stack of printed out texts™ and gives them to doyle to give to the judge.
but wait, stacie wants to clarify that they stayed at a hotel in the same room after the concert, a hotel room with two beds as a matter of fact, and once they were snugged in their separate beds jason asked why stacie wasn’t in bed cuddling him. hold up, 1 bitch i thought you weren’t ~attracted~ to her and 2 what is up with all this goddamned cuddling?? jeff sent her the “don’t feel obligated to go to this reunion with me” text while she was twenty feet away from him in the shower, which is absolutely hilarious. greg reads jeff’s text aloud, which is so excruciating i covered my eyes and ground my remaining molars into stumps, and it’s pretty much “since u don’t like me i’m out.”
the ruling: long story long, stacie’s friend couldn’t go to the concert (they won’t say who it is and i am dyyyyying) so she asked jeff if he was interested and he said yes he’d buy her ticket and over course she has text proof. stacie also has text proof that jeff offered to pay for his half of the hotel room. damn, it sounds like jeff should just start picking up the fucking phone. jeff’s defense is that stacie had already been paid by her friend for the ticket so why should he pay her, and maybe i’m a moron but i think the answer is “so she can give the money back to her friend who didn’t go?” anyway, he supposedly gave her $65 in cash the night of the show. greg tells him whatever deal stacie made with her friend is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is what jeff agreed to, and what he agreed to is paying this apple-cheeked, cornfed woman her fucking money.
i think i understand why stacie dragged this asshole into court over this little bit of money because man he’s the pits. jeff says that he shouldn’t have to pay for the hotel because he was perfectly happy driving the three hours back to nebraska after the show (are kansas and nebraska close? what happened to vegas? why the hell don’t i know anything???), but stacie told jeff that she didn’t want to drive after having drinks so she insisted on a hotel. greg asks jeff if he was forced to stay because they were going to drive back together the next day, and when jeff says no he screams at him “THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT.” jeff, brother, please...we know why you stayed. she didn’t force you to do shit. please just put us out of our misery and admit you thought you could talk your way into stacie’s smoked kansas city barbecue brisket. (does that joke work? i’m delirious!)
stacie, who must have used up all the ink at her local kinko’s, hands greg even more sheets of printed out texts™. in these, jeff not only agrees to pay the $80 stacie tells him the concert ticket will cost, he also says that getting a hotel afterward would be wise. all this lying because homegirl wouldn’t bang you? greg is disgusted. judgement for the plaintiff, and her giant stack of laserjet paper.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: probably, but i made the incredible mistake of glancing at the youtube comments and was rewarded with this gem, which is so hilarious and specific and obviously was written with me and my gigantic underpants in mind: “he still was trying to get in those big panties! that lady looks like she pulls her big silk panties over her belly button!”
*bangs gavel*