[2/3] Part of a larger story that starts here.

I wish he had let things go in September, when I told Mars that I was done with him, but the truth of the matter is that Mars and his friend Cale both weaponized the police and legal system against me when I reacted to his abuse. Repeatedly sending the police to my house. Publicly claiming to be harassed while quietly keeping the drama going.

In November, Mars released his own "PSA" on Instagram about me, posted just hours after I made a post about a new person I was involved with. In his PSA, Mars made various claims that he contradicted or did not claim at all in court. Only one of us is willing to be held accountable and tell the full story.

I am not surprised Mars doubled down in his PSA, hit dogs will holler. Admitting fault would require Mars to admit that he lied or at the very least that he misrepresented events. Ask him which rumors he claims are false. Out of 50 pages of screenshots, the other people he's discarded in the last year, and official court transcripts, I'm curious.

Despite his claim of wanting to move on with his life, it was Mars who kept things going for months.

I named the harm openly because Mars had quickly taken to spreading a false narrative and involving others in his own campaign to escalate the drama. If he hadn't, things would have ended in September itself.

As a result of their joint filings, I was forced to go by my legal deadname and assigned pronouns to keep the record clear in court. This is how I have to navigate as a queer person of color in a heteronormative society. Unlike my white queer counterparts, I don't have the privilege of demanding the legal system cater to me. Nor do I possess the privilege of having the cost of gender-affirming surgery covered by my parent's insurance like Mars has, so I had to present in court as the gender assigned to me.

The judge was lenient with Mars and Cale from the start, but by the end of the hearing that took place on December 16, which was the third court date, her opinion had changed.

Breaking Down the Lies

By the Monday hearing in December, Mars and Cale hadn't seemed to put any real effort into attempting to retain a lawyer since the date they filed in September. According to Cale’s testimony, they had called a few free or low-cost law firms close to the final hearing and failed to follow up appropriately.

Instead, they waited just days before the hearing to file for an extension. The judge denied the motion, informing them they had already been granted plenty of time and that their EOPs had been extended for three months already, well past the standard timeframe allotted to an EOP. Mars and Cale had expected the judge to comply with their request and hadn't prepared at all. 

The justice system routinely fails neurodivergent people in need of accommodations in order to fairly represent themselves. Thankfully, I had retained a lawyer in part for this very reason. I only had access to notes I managed to scribble on a notepad while Mars was talking. I was permitted to view what I wrote down once but would have had to request every single time I needed to view them.

Right at the start, Mars tried to claim he didn't receive my lawyer's discovery request for evidence, when it was sent to the email Mars literally provided on his petition for an OP - an email address he had previously used to receive mail from me. The judge told him there’s no pleading with her about it. He was caught in what seemed to be his first lie.

Despite this, the judge allowed him to present two pieces of evidence if he had them, when many courts would not have granted him that opportunity due to his failure to comply. Though, Mars attempted to present much more than that.

When the witnesses were asked to leave, Cale came out of the courtroom sobbing hysterically on the phone, saying she couldn’t help Mars because she wasn’t a lawyer. Her help had apparently already gotten Mars into even more drama and prolonged the situation.

By trying to retaliate against me, she did me a favor in that, for the rest of his life, Mars is on record as having seemingly lied, alongside evidence admitted against him. This helps previous partners he's spread lies about and anyone he tries to paint negatively in the future. I can appreciate a back-rank checkmate and self-own.

While under oath Mars admitted the following:

-That I was the one who brought up that we should not have sex anymore and appeared to have ended the relationship because I didn't speak to him and he didn't know where we stood.

-That I had blocked him first.

-That I had confronted him for his behavior after he lured my wife.

-That we had been friends for a year prior to sleeping together.

This is important because he made several false claims in his PSA on Instagram that he did not try to claim in court, including that I broke into his grandma’s house three separate times and that he was the one to say we shouldn't sleep together. Either he lied in his PSA, or he lied under oath, which would be perjury.

In terms of taking from him, the item I took (a small stuffed animal) I returned. He has kept the $150 Shop Vac from my small business that I used on my hands and knees to vacuum out moldy rainwater from the carpet of his basement bedroom for him on more than one occasion, despite my own health complications, and without charging him as I would for clients.

I lent it to him because he said his health was struggling from the mold and mildew in his waterlogged carpet. In his petition, he indicated he would not return my business's equipment to me unless I asked the cops for help to come get it from him. He would feel safer if the police were involved and entered his grandma's house to retrieve it. He could have simply left it outside my door while I was at work when he realized he still had it, but he's kept it for himself.

After Mars spoke in court for three hours, only then did I get to speak and only then was my witness called. By the end of the hearing, the judge stated that he lured my wife. The exact phrasing I used in my callout that she had never read.

That Mars tried to further damage and destroy my relationship with my wife by telling her everything he could think of to upset her under the guise of being concerned for me.

That he never had any intention of being genuine or honest, and I might have left him alone if he hadn't lured my wife. The judge made a point in saying that Mars was hurtful, and that she would not say that I was entirely unprovoked. She did not have to make that point at all, but she seemed to feel it was important to do so and have that remark on the record.

That Mars himself had also engaged in conduct prohibited by the Domestic Violence Act:

Mars had to be shut down by the judge numerous times for attempting to go off topic, going in circles, and stating the same thing many times over. It was the same thing he did in conversation with me in-person, over text and Snapchat during the situation in September.

The court was able to witness firsthand the complete lack of communication skills that had sent me spiraling previously. This was validating, as Mars had made the claim over Snapchat that not a single person in his life had ever had a problem with how he communicated before me.

For people like Mars who try to hide their abusive tendencies, the best thing you can do is let them talk. I knew the exact moment he was going to lose early on, because I felt the atmosphere in the courtroom clearly shift.

He stopped what he was saying halfway through to veer off track and insult me in the exact same way that he had that night on his front porch in September. This time, snickering and trying to hide a smug grin as he did so in court.

Rather than feel insulted at his attempt to provoke me to anger, I sat in shock. I could not believe he would be dumb enough to put his ego on display in front of the judge and present evidence for me that confirmed he was exactly who I said he was. It was so out of place as to be obviously identifiable as a clear attack on my character and poor attempt to provoke me. The judge immediately upheld my lawyer's objection.

It's true that I insulted him back for the things he was saying to me during the altercation on his porch that night in September. I don't recall calling him a "retard" for what he did or said to me like he claims, but it would be my slur to reclaim.

I do remember Mars telling me in casual conversation that Cale told him he couldn't go around calling people "fucktard" anymore. It isn't his word to reclaim. He claimed that he just didn't know that it stood for “fucking retard” but he used it freely anyways.

Despite his claim that I refused to accept the relationship ending, it was Mars who struggled with knowing where we stood and he admitted it was my decision to make if he ever got to see me again.

I was the one who brought up that since he wasn't doing mentally well, we should stop having sex. I phrased it as gently as I could for him in hopes that he wouldn't feel rejected. He omitted that things were uncomfortable that week because he had spent it being verbally abusive towards me in my own home.

When Mars tried to dictate to the court how I was feeling based on my text messages to him, the judge told him that they had no way to verify what I was feeling and stopped him.

He did not get to decide my feelings. Something he frequently attempted to do throughout our relationship. In fact, much of what Mars describes as us arguing was me refusing to let him tell me how I was feeling or disagreeing with him on a topic he was adamant he had the only correct opinion on.

Mars told everyone he "had to make me wait a month" when the reality is that he started flirting with me the day after my argument with my wife. Before we had separated, when I was in the worst possible headspace, and waited barely two weeks to sleep with me, which I only consented to based entirely on his promise to me that he would communicate openly and honestly.

He tried to say of course he would never sleep with a married person because that seems like a terrible idea. The judge called him out:

Mars tried to say that since I blocked him, he couldn’t see my Snapchat messages and that since I have Snapchat Plus, the app let me take screenshots without alerting him. Being blocked does not erase conversation history, and the ability to screenshot without another being notified does not exist. He had blocked me back immediately as he had already decided to get back at me by manipulating my wife, so he likely couldn't figure out how to view the messages.

When my wife gave her witness statement, if Mars felt she was lying he could have questioned her. He chose not to cross-examine her, most likely because she had the ability to go into depth on everything he did. She had already revealed that she had to get between us because he had lunged at me and grabbed me himself when I already stepped away, something that would not qualify as self-defense:

My wife had already contradicted him after he tried to tell the court that I kept coming at him:

He then switched from claiming that he didn't do anything at all to me, to stating that he specifically didn’t hit me. Something my lawyer pointed out that I never claimed he did in the first place.

While Mars had asked his friend Cale to act as witness, he tried to tarnish my wife's credibility by stating that we must be on better terms. The judge countered his comment by referring to my wife as one of the most credible witnesses to come through the courtroom.

The judge once again showed leniency in allowing Cale to testify on an incident that was not included in Mars's petition nor amended to it after the fact:

Mars felt like he had so much leeway that he tried asking the judge to help him prove his case, but she reminded him it’s his case. The burden of proof was his responsibility.

However, it is telling that he thought he could ask her for help to prove his case against me and felt that the judge would help him do so. Especially since he is probably telling everyone he wasn’t given a fair chance because I had a lawyer, despite him having months to retain one himself. 

In short, neither Mars nor Cale were able to play the victim well enough for a system that has historically been designed to give them the upper hand and a judge who, compared to some others, was quite lenient and repeatedly gave them chance after chance.

Their lack of courtroom decorum, refusal to follow established legal guidelines, lying about the relationship on the petition, and intentional omission of details that would paint them in a less-then-perfect light was their own undoing. 

I confided in a friend before the hearing that Mars would lose because his ego would get the best of him. He would either have to admit the relationship shifted to mirror a dating situation or deny it and appear as if he lied about our relationship on his petition for an EOP where he checked the box that indicated we had been dating.

He also claimed that I wanted him to be my boyfriend, when I stated multiple times in the beginning that I didn't want a romantic or emotional relationship with him and he was the one who love-bombed me until I did. Sending me mushy "this is us" couple memes on Instagram, love songs, and reading me the love-stricken poem he wrote about me, revolving around his fear that our relationship was only temporary, until I developed feelings for him.

He told me he could confide in me more than others, encouraged me to lean on him emotionally, and informed me he took pride in marking me as his. He would become angry when my wife made attempts to make amends with me and fix our marriage.

When it was his turn to ask me questions, Mars asked in a small voice, why, if I didn't want to be friends anymore, didn't I just clearly say that. I was dumbfounded at this and drained after having to listen to him for three hours I could never get back.

I did not think he deserved any clarity from me after he argued in circles for hours with me on Snapchat that night in September as I tried to explain how he made me feel used and discarded. He had already been verbally abusive, called me stupid, and threatened to kill my cat while in my bed after smoking my weed and eating a dinner I cooked for us, and I had still given him a chance to stay in my life.

He already had the opportunity to have an honest conversation with me when I had returned to his porch that night in September to tell him I don't even want to be friends and to stay away from me and my wife. He chose not to, opting to lie, insult, and gaslight every single time I tried to get a word in.

The fact he could still ask for kindness he himself was not willing to extend was jarring. I couldn’t reach Mars that night because he had already decided to lure my wife into conversation with him, and I couldn’t reach my wife because she was being manipulated by Mars.

The time for him to ask me that question was that night in September, or in the following week when I mourned what friendship we had. When my fawn response kicked in, and I tried, in vain, to reach out to him because I was in denial and did not want to accept that he would be so malicious.

Instead, he opted to go straight to the police, threatening my safety, and then sat across from me in court after intentionally further sabotaging my marriage, impacting my ability to work, and causing financial harm. The audacity that permitted him to ask me why I didn't just think of how he might feel left me speechless with how outside of reality it was. Imagine taking someone to court just to ask them why they broke up with you.

I do not even fully believe Mars was high in the first place the night that he became verbally abusive. Rather, I figured he was using it as an excuse to act out and put his abusive behavior on display. The way he acted was all too reminiscent of a child pretending to be drunk off their first sip of wine. I still took care of him just in case because that is who I am and I saw it as his insecurity. It still doesn't excuse how he treated me.

I’ve never felt like verbally abusing anyone after smoking a joint, unlike what Mars had done to me. In fact, Mars was my first time hitting anyone outside of the one time I hit my father back during one of many episodes of physical abuse growing up, after which he stopped hitting me.

When I reached out to Mars after taking space for myself and didn't give him attention for a mere 13 hours after he got high and threatened to kill my cat, he asked me what my deal was:

I told Mars in court that I showed up to tell him to his face that I didn't want anything to do with him and to stay away from my wife. I also wanted to call him out for getting defensive and being a dick when I told him bluntly how he could have done better while we had been together.

I wanted to give him one last chance to explain himself the night I showed up. Though, either way, I had decided that I didn't want to be his friend, let alone sleep with him, and I didn't want him around me or my wife anymore.

He had switched to insulting me over Snapchat and had already misconstrued everything I sent him. I wanted that final conversation to be in-person and face-to-face. I wasn't going to waste any more time texting just so he could twist my words again. But he was a coward that night even when I showed up.

Mars stated in his Instagram PSA that two months is a long time for me to be speaking out about what he did. Yet he kept a "not-relationship" with me going for three months where he wanted boyfriend treatment without boyfriend status.

He kept sending the police to my door, kept the situation going for three months despite having the chance to let it go when he wanted to, and has kept his post up knowing it has the potential to cause me further harm and that he lied in it and contradicted his own sworn testimony.

I was the one who submitted as evidence seven texts of Mars making violent threats against people in the year that I knew him. These were regular text messages outside of Snapchat, and he claimed each of them were just a joke and he would never do anything that he described. Keep in mind that he had also previously told me that he would never treat me the way he had that summer.

While he had excuses and a back story for each one, the texts display a pattern. That pattern becomes important when he claims exclusive victimhood and paints the brown lesbian who cared for him while their life was falling apart as extensively and suddenly irrational, aggressive, and hostile.

When Mars called Cale to testify as his witness, she lied from the very start, stating that it was her roommate Sara, and not herself who saw me walk over to her house a week after my altercation with Mars. I had never met Sara and was at a considerable distance when Cale saw me.

I watched Cale immediately yell to Mars to stay upstairs; I had no intention of speaking to him face-to-face that day in the first place and wasn't expecting Cale to arrive while I dropped his item on the mailbox or porch.

Cale later claimed to have looked out the window and witnessed me walking over. My recording from that night tells a different story and also shows that I explicitly told Cale I was leaving after I returned the item, asking her to take it.

It was Cale who refused it, prolonging the interaction, and leading Sara to call the police because I wouldn't leave without returning it and refused to lower myself to leave it at Cale's feet, something that holds deep significance in my culture.

Within the three minutes of the interaction during which I was calmly trying to explain to Cale that she didn't have the full story, and I only meant to leave the item, Sara had described me as hostile and urged the police to get there and arrest me because I can “pick lock”.

When I told Cale that I would stay to be arrested, only then did she permit me to return the item - by setting it on the ground in front of her.

I returned the item to Cale and not his house, because there were then three people who would have to lie to say it was never returned, whereas otherwise it would have just been Mars and his grandmother.

At this point, Mars had already lied to me, my wife, and to the community. Whether it was the police or Cale, there would have been more than one witness to the item being returned. The original goal was to simply set it on the porch or in the mailbox and snap a picture.

Regardless, the restraining order Cale requested, she requested under the claim of being stalked. From the start of her testimony, she couldn't keep her story straight even when Mars was questioning her as a witness, and I wondered if she would admit to overreacting when she saw me walk over or if I would be able to use the recording I had from that night.

In the end, I didn't have to use it, because it was determined that she had no case in the first place.

She also admitted to never having an issue with me prior to September:

This is important, because after events like these, the guilty party will generally switch to attacking character and credibility with "I had a feeling all along" and "I heard from [other people]" and "I knew something was off" statements due to the lack of credible red flags.

In reality, the only animosity I noticed from Cale had been on a day when she was clinging to Mars's thigh in a swimming pool and gazing up at him after Mars had started hooking up with me, and later that day seemed hesitant to even say "bye" to me.

I stated in the previous write-up that Cale was in hysterics, and it was both her and Sara who took the opportunity to utilize white privilege in a typical "Karen" fashion. Cale, however, described her behavior as being in a "heightened state" admitting she wouldn't have heard what really happened from me in the first place.

When she mentioned that I did leave, after she permitted me to return the item like I set out to do, she referred to my ability to Google an address as being a technologically smart hacker, causing the judge to smile. 

I had Cale's address because it's public record. Anyone can look up a property record. Even if an address wasn't considered a matter of public record, Mars had given it to my wife when he relied on her for a ride to Cale's house.

While we weren't talking much at the time, my wife most likely would have given it to me if I had told her my intention and asked her for it, because she never considered me a threat until the night Mars pulled the antics he did.

The real reason Cale filed for a stalking/no contact order quickly became apparent. They did not like being called out. They did not like that I spoke up.

The supposed Personally Identifiable Information (PII) found in the document, however, can all be obtained from public sources. This is a good lesson to people who are previously unaware that once you put something on the internet, it is likely out there forever even if you delete it.

It is no longer considered private, protected information once made publicly available. This isn't hacking, this is what is known as Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). In short; advanced Googling for the most part.

The real reason for the petition having been brought into the open, the judge asked Cale if she wanted to offer my write-up as evidence, because Cale had submitted only the URL/link to the document as evidence and not specifically what applied to the petition, or the document itself.

Returning to privilege, Cale didn't even think she had to put forth the effort to argue her case and was unprepared for the hearing. Like with Mars, it was assumed they would simply be handed a win or handed an extension when they asked for it.

With the privilege and whiteness they hold, they had so far been able to spin a one-sided narrative to the community and avoid being held accountable by the people around them. Cale admitted that she did not bring anything from the write-up with her at all, not a single page.

Next, was a text sent to Cale's employer at The Literary describing a rumor that the owner had talked about "increasing diversity" by hiring more white people. What's funny is that Cale hadn't told me this in front of Mars, though I wonder if Mars convinced her that she had. Mars had told me this himself one morning in my apartment.

I had talked about this openly in public, shared spaces to friends. I would bring it up while explaining to others that Mars had shared details about all of the friends he claimed to care about, including things they would tell him in confidence.

This included, at one point in the early stages of getting to know Mars, him randomly describing a past history of hard drug use from a person of color he calls his friend and how that friend used to party in California, caring only to make himself seem cool by association.

It was Mars who told me in detail of his brother’s cocaine addiction out of nowhere and how it makes Mars sad and that he thinks his brother’s girlfriend should leave his brother. It was Mars who ran to Cale to "protect himself from me" after telling me he felt like she didn't really understand him in ways that he could only talk to me about.

If he hardly knew me, as he claims to have just been someone hooking up with me in his PSA, then this is a lot to just be blabbing to me.

It could have been a joke, but that isn't how Mars described it at all. What's funny is that when he was telling me what Cale told him, I joked that if they wanted more white people working at The Lit, they could just hire Mars, because he is white passing. He took offense to this.

As a mixed South Asian I thought it was funny, because when I was new to working in a corporate space, I would initially mess with my exclusively white coworkers who would ask about my racial background by telling them I just like to tan.

In the end, Cale had no basis to claim stalking, chose not to call her witness, Sara, when asked by the court if she wanted to, and did not even make a closing argument.

I get to rest knowing I told both sides, survived, and rebuilt. I had the backbone to take accountability in court.

It's lost me followers, community safe spaces, and money, but coming from an Asian household that relies on a culture of log kya kahenge where "what happens in the house stays in the house" because you're always supposed to care what everyone else thinks:

There's nothing more freeing than never shutting the fuck up.

Only one of us has told the whole truth to the community, and only one of us told the entire truth while under oath in court. Whereas both Mars and Cale felt they had the privilege to lie, exaggerate, and assume they could commit perjury and get away with it. They did, and they did get away with it, because they hold that privilege.

Mars did try to use every bit of his identity to escape consequence and explain away his behavior and words during the hearing. From leaning on the fact that he is transgender when his violent text messages were brought up, to finding a way to slip in that he was attending a powwow, this information did not make the judge any more sympathetic and did not work to his advantage the way he thought it would.

He was already being granted the privilege he was seeking as both white and male-presenting in court. His own conduct inside and outside of the courtroom lost him his case.

If it was really as bad as Mars claims, he wouldn't need to lie.

He can lie to his friends until he is blue in the face and charm new friends the way he did my wife and I, but the public docket says it all:

Respondent's exhibits A-G are admitted into evidence. Court finds that the Petitioner has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they are an abused person within the meaning of the ACT. Request for plenary order of protection is denied. Cause dismissed.

The judge did speak on my own actions, actions I already took accountability for in my writeup, and admonished me for them while not denying the harm Mars caused. Given that the only evidence of that night was my own admittance, what I had written (which was rejected as evidence), and my own witness, I could have denied the majority of events entirely.

Instead, I chose to openly admit to my own actions, something Mars has not been willing to do at any point for himself. Ironic, since he accuses other people of not being able to own up to their actions. It speaks volumes that the petition could have been converted into more than one charge against me but based on everything Mars had done I only received a lecture.

As they left the courtroom my wife heard Mars wonder aloud why she would support me when I called her pathetic during an argument that had to do with the way she simply moved out of the way for Mars during the summer and didn't fight for me as my wife.

Omitting to his friends that my wife had also made remarks towards me this summer that resulted in Mars encouraging a divorce and stating there was no excuse for the things she said.

With his black and white thinking pattern, he could not understand that we could both be wrong, and also both choose to forgive each other. All Mars could do was mutter about the stuffed animal I returned:

Well the judge said they stole from me which is worse!

Desperately trying to reframe himself as the sole victim and repeating the endless cycle of refusing to take a shred of accountability even when dismissed by the very system that was designed to act as a powerful tool for people of his pallor.

With the case dismissed and the record set, this next closing section explores the harm caused by privilege, misrepresentation, and escalation, while turning toward healing, accountability, and rebuilding community after months of legal and emotional strain:

Telling the Truth

With the case dismissed and the record set, this section explores the harm caused by privilege, misrepresentation, and escalation, while turning toward healing, accountability, and rebuilding community after months of legal and emotional strain. Part 3 of 3.

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