plaintiff: william from milwaukee, wisconsin. hmm william is wearing a black shirt? jacket? a thick shirt that can also be worn as a jacket?? it has a white windowpane plaid print (is that what you call it? i’m not looking it up) and he has stylish glasses that he keeps looking over the top of and a short salt-and-pepper S-curl.
defendant: mary from milwaukee, wisconsin. mary is wearing a black mock turtleneck over a sweater shaped like a bomber jacket, and somebody let me judge project runway already! i’m killing it with the fashion descriptions! anyway who the fuck cares what mary is wearing, because atop her head sits the most resplendent platinum wig i have ever seen. it’s like he-man’s hair, blonde with bangs with the ends bumped under, and it is fucking dazzling. her lashes are voluminous and her lip gloss is glistening and she looks so irritated i could cry. MY QUEEN.
the complaint: william met mary in narcotics anonymous and they broke up after she “falsely” accused him of assault. hoo, boy.
what does he want: $2792 for a security deposit and furniture.
how it went down: before i press play again i just want to have a deep, negro spiritual sigh together because these are two lifelong crackheads who fell out of love about to go to war with each other in front of greg, a man who loves yelling at people about crack. deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. let’s begin.
william, whose voice sounds like the cookie monster after waking up from a long bender, says he thought he’d found a lover *gestures in mary’s general direction* but “it turned out she had somebody else.” sounds like the spoken word intro to a late 70s r&b B side, to me. after being addicted to crack for twenty years (yikes) william decided to get help, and to his surprise when he walked into his NA meeting there was a beautiful woman there so he decided to ask her out. um, sir? why not just focus on getting off the drugs? why fill one metaphorical hole with another actual one?? (i’m so sorry, that’s vile.) william says “it was me and her from that day on, we was hitting it off hard, fornicating and everythang.” i love old black dudes so much!
greg asks william if he was “a pimp or just a dope fiend” aaaaaand we’re off! william says he doesn’t know nothing about pimping and then greg says that william has “pimp mannerisms,” and as a person who owns a battered copy of pimps up hoes down on vhs tape i would have to agree! man, there is nothing gregory ellis mathis loves more than a raggedy dude around his age to talk that old 70s street talk to. all that “hey cat daddy aight now” shit. william says he was definitely not a pimp even though the judge thinks he talks like one, then says “well if i’m i pimp it sounds like i got tricked by an ex-ho.” GODDAMN, PLAYA.
mary says she met william in recovery and he pursued her and pursued her until she finally broke down and went out him, which seems plausible because he absolutely has that kind of unrelenting hype energy. she says she broke up with him because he was way too aggressive (that tracks) and because “once you put your hands on me, it’s a no.” amen, sister. she says they dated for 60 days before william told her he was unhappy, to which she replied “if you’re unhappy, find someplace else to be happy.” i know that’s right. imagine changing when the other person could just fucking leave!!!!!! william interrupts to object saying “why should i leave when she didn’t pay a nickel in rent?” mary claims he told her she didn’t have to pay, and greg gleefully scolds him saying “you already admitted to being a trick, now be quiet!”
mary gave william 30 days to move out, but he made no plans to vacate the premises. one day mary was talking to the landlord telling him that they were no longer going to be residing there, and william tried to snatch the phone out of her hands and was wrestling her for it. two crackheads wrestling over a phone? brb gotta write that movie. mary called the police on william after that altercation and they escorted him out but he came back, then william ran up on mary and said if she wanted him out she would have to give him a thousand dollars to leave and, of course, mary said she wasn’t giving him shit.
william is frantically shuffling through a bunch of papers trying to find evidence of the security deposit he paid on their apartment. greg asks if either of them have brought a police report to court today, and neither of them has proof of the phone incident but william has a printout from when he had to call the police to help him get his stuff out of the apartment. goddamn these situations where people gotta keep the cops on speed dial are stressful as fuck. william seems confused about what the papers he gave the judge actually say, and greg does a deep sigh and pleads “man, don’t make me read all this!” and i agree.
the ruling: greg skims william’s papers and figures out they are evidence of the police removing him from the apartment but there’s no proof of the $500 security deposit he supposedly paid. greg asks mary “what do you say about the furniture?” and she replies “what i say is he took me to the furniture store, told me to pick out whatever i want, and when the receipt came he told me to sign it and said ‘this is your furniture.’” she hands doyle a receipt that indicates everything is in her name because they were all gifts. william says he told her to sign for the furniture because she was gonna be the one receiving it, not because it wasn’t his. greg asks why he didn’t just sign for it so there wouldn’t be a dispute and william shrugs and says “i guess my crack-ish ways got me again!” the entire courtroom erupts in laughter.
apropos of nothing mary interjects to say that william didn’t sign the lease for the apartment either, because the day she signed it he was in st. louis buying some illegal cigarettes to bring back to milwaukee so he could sell them. greg can hardly contain his laughter: HE LOVES THIS SHIT. he says “that’s illegal but it does amuse me to hear the game go down.” me, too! he believes william gave mary everything as a gift and says he has to go with the law, since everything is in mary’s name the law says those things are hers, and it seems william has “dropped his books and lost his lesson.” verdict for the defendant!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “people who use crack for over ten/twenty years? even when they stop, don’t you agree they have a different personality? even after they stop it’s a different personality, it’s called CRACK-ISH WAYS. see, he’s grinning! he knows what i’m talking about? why y’all bring this to me? if you’ve done crack for twenty years, don’t come here! i don’t feel like dealing with these crack-ish ways!” you know what, i’m not doing my man justice, here’s a clip.
*bangs gavel*