cimorene

one of the paper topics for my class on the gothic novel is as follows. at the beginning of the italian, vivaldi is accompanied and counseled bya friend named bonarmo, who then disappears and is replaced by vivaldi's new sidekick, paulo. thinking about bonarmo's perplexing disappearance, the relationship between vivaldi and paulo, and the ruined friendship between father nicola and schedoni, write an essay about male frienship (its benefits and hazards?) in the italian. okay. so. obviously, i could go slashy places with this essay, and the professor is both a novelist and a lesbian. should i seize the opportunity and do that? i'm not talking about totally making this up, because i think there's a lot of emotional tension between the latter pair, who are both old and monks and villians. the text gives essentially no clue about bonarmo/paulo, but i suppose... if you think about radcliffe's probable motivation, the servant is less of a threat because he doesn't think as much for himself; he's obliged to follow orders. he's devoted too. then he provides comic relief, and it's better to make fun of a servant from the 19th century pov. the threat could be sexualized, though, right? by making him a servant, you remove any inappropriate element in the male closeness, whereas with bonarmo, an equal equally empowered to make decisions, equally intelligent...

hm. so should i do that? there are other topics that'd be rather easier, i think. i might be more enthusiastic and thus articulate about slashiness, but if she doesn't buy my premise... .

...in other news, my roommate's partner from bartending school called with his cute little brooklyn accent. after id'ing himself as david said, "from bartending."

me: oh yes. we all know who david is.
him: you do?
me: yes! you're precious.
him: precious?
me: it's lisa's highest compliment.
him: it is?
me: i'm surprised you don't know this. precious is really good. and you're precious.
him: really? wow. i believe you, it's just. uh. thanks. you just... made my day.

oh with the cuteness! squee!

moving right along, intended to do phonetics exercises. gak. and start writing gothic novel paper. gik. ew. have im'd for approx. 3 hrs. instead. i suck.

but! i did get much walking and talking and shit done today, including ingratiating myself with the greek prof. and talking about dogs and petting her dog. who is unbelievably precious. "my dog is 5 too," i said, "and he's the cutest dog in the world, with the possible exception of your dog." she laughed and said, "thank you, that was very diplomatic of you."

heh.