Day 52, 28 Feb: My Roommate Vinnie

Norfolk Terrace, Day 52. 21:19. My Roommate Vinnie

Vinnie giving a thumbs up
(He consented to the photo.) 

            Without creative writing class today, the only interesting points are academic or miscellaneous; without any centralized topic of interest, I have decided to devote this blog entry to the man who lives a half-wall away from me: Vinnie. [If you insist on skipping to Vinnie, start on paragraph 5. Otherwise, read on.]

           Before beginning, let me briefly go over a few points of the day: read more of Great Expectations, attended Robbie’s lecture (Robbie is Stef’s endearing nickname for Dr Robert Clark) on Dickens and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, attended a lecture (for FUN, yeah, shun me) on ‘Reclaiming the “Classic” Novel Reader’ of nineteenth century fiction, and cooked steak.

Steak with mushrooms...

            The lecture…yes, I was late again. Class starts on the hour, despite the deceitful description that it starts ten minutes after the hour. Bull. Stef keeps reminding me just to come at 4, but I resist. Dickens essentially defies Victorian convention with his uncharacteristic melodrama (a villain appears villainous from the first impression, yet this is not the rule, just a trend), ironic title, and the dame of the novel being “a cold-hearted bitch” (his exact words). The novel Madame Bovary is both writing about and IS fetish commodification, in which one transfers erotic desire onto objects (i.e. wearing a glamorous bra in a modern ad raises the implication that the wearer is good at “bumpy bumpy” [Robbie’s phrase for it, said on the same day he mimicked a clumsy girl in high heels in front of the lecture hall—a real character, that one]). So the novel is such a fetish because the very descriptions are erotically pleasing, following the theory of narrative “mimesis” (the act of resembling what the novel talks about).

The other lecture, in which Stef kindly joined me to, was a graduate research seminar reading of one scholar’s paper entitled “Reclaiming the ‘Classic’ Novel Reader [of Nineteenth Century Fiction]”—Dickens actually took a line from a reviewer’s description of the end of serialized chapter 1 of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop and put it in almost verbatim into a revised edition of chapter 1. That fact struck out as incredible that a reader could become a writer’s aid just like that. Past the somewhat hard-to-follow, dry writing of the argument, the lecture ended on this note: “Prose should just be a long intimacy with strangers.”

Vinnie Dressed for the Night

        Now…Vinnie. As I write this, he is currently half-inebriated and gathering the troops of the flat and the neighbour flats for a night out at the LCR (in defence of why I’m not going: sick and behind in work). The theme is Movie Stars. Clad in a black tie and white dress shirt, Vinnie struts around as a—it was first Men in Black, but ah, I believe it’s now Heath Ledger (I think it’s the Australian similarity he’s counting on).

Vinnie is a man of social aspirations with girls and camaraderie with his mates—his flat and New Zealand best friend Joseph being on the top of his list of hang-out buddies. He was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia to lovely parents whom I met on skype at some point. At home, he attends Monash University with Joseph and he is aiming for a degree in International Studies, but that’s enough biography. Next section: living with Vinnie.

As of right now, I’d say that his floor and my desk are at a tie for messiness: not bad, but not spotless. (I just checked.) He keeps a neat corner in his half of the room and generally types furiously into the late hours on his laptop at his bedside most nights (I know you’re grinning, Vinnie…)—okay, not quite. He goes out living life to the fullness most nights with some of his buds, enjoying the blissful enchantment from the bottle and the dance floor.

Dan and Vinnie playing Yaniv

But here comes the virtue of his good roommate role: he comes home quietly most of the time, respecting my sleep or concentration, and whenever one of us skypes or wants to put on music, we ask first. Our system works really well. He respects that I study more than I party and I respect his, switched around maybe. But this respect thing sounds too formal. We’re buddies. Even if he calls everybody either “buddy” or “mate”, I still give a personal significance to it. As he described earlier today on skype, I’m “a good bloke” and I definitely smiled on the other side of the room at that.

It’s been awhile since we cooked together, but it was fun and maybe we’ll start it up after he gets back from Paris this weekend (hint, hint, Vinnie?). I’ll ask him (unless he reads this first).

I’m actually surprised that Vinnie is not performing his pre-night ritual of listening to pump-up music right now, but he’ll surely have his text notes with him tonight to remind himself how it goes. (Think Momento.) Apart from what has been said so far, Vinnie plays football (not the American version) and futsal, I think it is.) and likes to win…a lot, as he would admit.

(I literally just went to the kitchen to take this picture.)

And that is Vinnie, the Aussie half a wall away. In sum, he’s a good guy.

Ah! I almost forgot! Vinnisms, here we go (capitalized for emphasis):

1. "Oh, that's a crispy one there."

2. "TELL you WHAT."

3. "YEH, buDDY!"

4. "Ahhh, mate."

5. "(H)eyy?"

6. "It's not ideal at all, to be honest."