plaintiff: niella from amityville, ny. she’s wearing a short, black structured dress under a wine-colored blazer, and bitch she looks great. she is also wearing neon red lipstick, which makes her a woman after my own heart. i only want to look like i just gulped down a pint of radioactive blood.
defendant: brian from jonesboro, georgia. he’s wearing a dark suit and glasses and i think he has a soul patch? he’s carrying an accordion folder! i don’t think i’ve mentioned this yet, but the shit the announcer says as each contestant (i know i know) enters the courtroom is sometimes so fucking funny, especially because he sounds like an old history teacher or something? like, imagine your elementary school principal saying “the defendant is countersuing her baby’s father for getting a lap dance!” or whatever with a gravity that should definitely be reserved for church. it’s hilarious. anyway, as brian enters bob (idk his name and google is not helping) says, “when brian met niella he liked what he saw” in this wink-nudge tone of voice and i’m dying.
the complaint: niella is suing her husband (word? oh shit!) for rent and emotional distress.
what does she want: $5000, the maximum. whenever people settle on $5000 you know they’re really owed a lot more but not enough to make it worth hiring a lawyer.
how it went down: niella met brian in october of 2016, when he was her uber driver on her way to her brother’s birthday party and it was love at first sight. i’m sorry, what? the first sight of what, that little sliver of eyeball you can see reflected in the rearview mirror from the back seat of a stranger’s car? every uber driver i’ve ever had has been like *squints at phone while idling in the middle of rush hour traffic* “hi, uhhhhh, amanda? you want me to put on [whatever the city’s urban radio station is]?” while i nod politely and hope they don’t ask me about politics. you mean if i would’ve pulled out my earbuds for a second there was a possibility i could have fallen deeply in love?!
their romance progressed quickly and brian proposed to niella the following march at her grandmother’s 100th birthday party. these motherfuckers have a lot of parties, sheesh. is this the natural consequence of having a relationship with one’s family? literally no thank you! they got married in august (how did they put together an entire 200-person wedding that fast?!) and three days after their wedding niella received screenshots via instagram (please, set me on fire) from a woman alleging that she and brian had been sleeping together. niella confronted brian about the messages and he left her. i’m gagged. he didn’t, like, walk away from the argument, HE LEFT HER. and he emptied their joint bank account on his way out, taking all but 16 of their gifted wedding dollars.
let me pause here to say that i would be in jail. i understand the dream of romance, i understand believing in love at first sight, i understand being hopeful and reckless. why not? imagine being so helplessly in love that you make all of these wild decisions with zero regard for the danger you might be placing yourself in? THAT SOUNDS EXCITING. my lady and i decided to get married after comparing insurance premiums, stone sober in the middle of the afternoon. is there anything less exciting than “your deductible is lower than mine, get me in front of the judge?” no there is not! so i get it, but: if you follow a whirlwind romance by stealing from me three goddamn days after reciting your wedding vows in front of my grandmother and that one person i hate but invited just to be nice, i am going to run you over with your 2017 silver toyota camry (the most popular car among urban uber drivers, according to the internet and my personal experience).
brian left niella and fled to atlanta, where he was staying with an ex-girlfriend who may or may not have been the mother of his children. he never stopped lying to her, even though she’d forgiven him and given up her house to follow his cheating ass down south. one day he handed her his phone to make a call and niella saw a bunch of outgoing text messages to women where he referred to his wife as a “lazy bitch.” man, this dude is a fucking asshole. this is reminding me of my idea to pitch a show called “murder court,” where instead of a cash award at the end of a particularly egregious case the winner gets to beat the other person to death. get my agent on the phone!
the ruling: brian and niella decided to go to counseling to fix their relationship once they settled in atlanta. oh wait, she moved from new york to atlanta, which was where he’d fled to from that whole cheating-on-her-after-the-wedding-with-a-woman-on-instagram drama. niella is a very nice person and i wish i believed in anything as much as she believes in this lying piece of shit. one night he texted her while she was at work and said he was going to leave her his half of the rent and when she got home she discovered that everything in their apartment was gone except for two bibles and his wedding ring. what the fuck is this, a nighttime soap opera on the own network?!
even after all this, they are still married. i need to write a pamphlet called “dying alone really is okay” because this staying married shit is for the fucking birds. it’s not like they have kids. FREE YOURSELF, NIELLA, HE SUCKS. so because they’re married the rent is considered joint property, so greg can’t order brian to pay it. ain’t that a bitch? he does grant her two thousand dollars for emotional distress, mainly because this dude is the fucking pits. next stop: divorce court.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “so he was a liar, a cheater, and broke? sir, you can’t be all three!”
*bangs gavel*