plaintiff: mikhaila from nashville, tennessee. mikhaila is wearing a black twinset with grey pants, and she has her hair pulled into a top bun (i don’t know what to call it? but it’s, like, the bagel looking kind) and she’s wearing glasses. before we get too deep into this here is the link to yesterday’s case with the handsome nigerian brothers i would let eiffel tower me in a heartbeat. i got a lot (okay, 3) of emails inquiring about them!!
defendant: aurelia from west chester, ohio. aurelia is swaggering into the courtroom with a lot of big lori lightfoot energy, her oversized cornflower blue sport coat flapping in an invisible breeze. she has paired it with a starched white shirt and her best formal jeans, and her accordion of truth™ is clutched firmly in one hand.
the complaint: mikhaila rented an apartment with aurelia and claims she created a hostile environment by ridiculing and threatening her.
what does she want: $1532 for rent and damages. countersuit just to further test my will to live: aurelia would like $3000 for emotional distress, and now i’m emotionally distressed.
how it went down: mikhaila, who is just darling and sounds like an adorable cartoon squirrel, says she met aurelia at tennessee state university through a mutual friend. she thought it would be a good idea to live together but it turns out she was wrong. omg this is absolutely not the place to re-litigate every poor decision any of us has made in our youth, BUT: there needs to be some sort of trial period leasing situation for when you meet someone and, because circumstances require you to share a dwelling with a virtual stranger, you can test what they live like before making a full commitment? listen, i know this is a fantasy, but imagine how much trouble we’d have all been saved if we hadn’t had to spend an entire year lease with the person who “forgets” to flush the toilet or that other person who “didn’t believe in using heat????”
mikhaila says that aurelia (who appears to be black) made their home a hostile living environment from the outset, that aurelia would bring friends over who would call her “cracker” and “white girl” because she’s biracial. see what i mean?? if we had Roommate Test Rentals (bear with me, the branding is a work in progress) the first time this happened mikhaila could mixed-ish her ass right around, pack up her shit, and leave without penalty! anyway mikhaila has video proof of this happening and i am fucking thrilled, never before in my career as a court stenographer (just go with it) have we ever had video evidence introduced so early in the game! how long is this case gonna take, three and a half minutes???
uh oh i almost forgot how much greg likes to turn the mere suggestion of race into a civil rights lesson, and he interrupts mikhaila to ask her why she didn’t tell aurelia about the old law that said one drop of black blood makes you BLACK. these girls are in college, which makes them children-adjacent, and i am absolutely sure that the worst response to being heckled in your own home is to climb up on your soapbox and ask if your tormentor has ever heard of martin luther king. of course they have, those bitches are just mean! they don’t want a history lesson!!! just put some peroxide into their shampoo bottles like a normal roommate scorned (don’t do that) and keep it pushing (but also you could “accidentally” throw out their homework and/or belongings).
greg then begins a lengthy history lesson about indentured irish servants and electoral politics, and i am tuning him out because i hate learning. also, i hope these young women are reconsidering their overpriced college degrees; why get a BA when you can learn all you need to know just watching court tv?? the judge wants to know where this hostility between them came from and asks whether or not they’d fallen out before, and i knew it was too good to be true when they dangled the promise of some convicting evidence video™ earlier. i should have known! mikhaila says that aurelia knew it was a sore spot for her to have her whiteness acknowledged without recognizing her blackness and was calling her names just to get under her skin, and in 2020 we are still doing this garbage-ass shit, huh? dang.
aurelia says that she and mikhaila were really good friends at the beginning of this whole thing but that it was mikhaila who made things toxic. they moved in together in august and everything was smooth sailing until they had a fight in february, which is honestly a long and peaceful stretch? wow! aurelia says that they were looking to get a new apartment and she requested the master bedroom in whatever place they were moving to because mikhaila had the master in their current place. cut to mikhaila throwing away aurelia’s food and pouring out her drinks and generally “going crazy.” hmm, sounds weird but okay! not to sound like your horny gay mom but i wonder if these two were maybe a little bit more than roommates? to go straight from “you know, when we move i would like more closet space” all the way to “fuck you i’m gonna throw out your [whatever young people drink]” in one conversation seems like a lot, right???
the ruling: mikhaila says that aurelia stopped paying rent after their february blow up and owes her for march, april, and may. apparently after the argument mikhaila left the apartment to cool off and when she returned she discovered that aurelia had moved all of her stuff out and was gone, and i’m not sure whose side we’re supposed to be on here but that is the kind of shit i would absolutely do so team aurelia, i guess? i fucking hate fighting. why fight when you can just never speak ever again?????? this is just good sense, honestly.
except the key to that gangster move is you have to STAY GONE. aurelia came back and broke down the door to get in because mikhaila says she put a “safety stick” (not googling that) on it for protection, due to fears that aurelia was going to kill her. hang on, this took a turn! greg asks if she has a police report and to all of our surprise mikhaila does, thanks to her white half. aurelia looks gobsmacked and says “man, i gotta go” and ooh, cringe. idk how big a deal it is to have a police report filed against you but yo this is definitely not the way i would want to find out!
the video is short and blurry and mostly bleeped-out but you can hear aurelia say “you’re gonna end up in the hospital” as the camera pans over the mess she’s left in her wake and this feels like a WRAP on that countersuit! “why did you say you never called her a racial slur?” greg asks with the kind of calm that means the hammer is about to come down. he doesn’t even really want an answer, and he cuts aurelia off as soon as she begins to speak, dismissing her claim due to “perjury.” forget whether or not aurelia actually owes on the rent, mikhaila’s claim is granted because the first word aurelia says on the tape is cr*cker or is it crack*r or is it c——— (GOD PLEASE) and brb i gotta call 911 on everybody who’s ever called me an o*eo.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: greg, an anthropologist all of a sudden: “most of us are biracial because most of us got one drop of black blood, white or black folks. now let me see...” doyle, the pasty bailiff: “i got two drops!”
*bangs gavel*