Bryan (Vinny) Smith is an asshole

It never ceases to amaze me how low a person will go. Such is the case with my former roommate, Bryan (Vinny) Smith.

My wife and I instantly liked him. Thirty-seven years old, friendly, aspiring screenwriter. He even advertised himself as the best roommate you could have because he would be gone quite a bit, sometimes weeks at a time. This was because he works as a production manager, his most recent project being a Las Vegas wedding reality show.

Everything seemed to be going well. We didn't see him too much and when we did, he was quiet yet jovial. He complained to me exactly zero times about life in our apartment.

So imagine my shock and dismay when, after not seeing him for four or five days, I went to his room on April 2nd to collect the rent only to find that HE HAD MOVED ALL OF HIS STUFF OUT!!!!! I just stood there, not believing my eyes. All of his stuff was gone. The only things he left were our bed (which we had loaned him), the keys to the apartment and his door, and a bag of trash (complete with insulin needles for my son to find and play with). I simply could not believe it.

I looked for a note but there was none. He didn't leave a note, or call, or even send me an e-mail. He just decided to leave and simply wait for us to figure it out. Obviously, he wasn't concerned with us not being able to pay rent or have even one day to find a new roommate. This is why Bryan (Vinny) Smith is an asshole.

I finally got an e-mail from him and he said that his privacy had been invaded, that we had been in his room numerous times and that things were missing, like CD's and money. This was more than a little ludicrous, as anyone who knows me will tell you. I asked him which CD's and how much money and he didn't respond. What a shock.

So did we go into his room periodically? Yes. And why? Because my wife was doing a project for him. This guy had about 2000 CD's and she was cataloguing them into an Excel spreadsheet. She had spent hours doing this for him and he seemed to be grateful. But he knew about it. He knew that when she was done with one case of CD's, she would go in and get another. The only other time was to get a box from his closet that was ours ... which, again, he knew we would remove at some point. But we obviously hadn't been in his room for several days since we didn't realize he was gone for the entire week.

CD's and money missing? Bullshit. Our other roommate has an iPod, a Powerbook, and about 200 DVD's, none of which have ever come up missing. And anyone who knows me will tell you that CD's are not a huge commodity for me. And my wife has collected a total of maybe 20 CD's in her lifetime.

I e-mailed him three or four times, trying to understand what really happened and he has never responded. My only conclusion is that this was his plan all along. His job was ending in March and he only needed a place to stay for a month, so he duped us.

Now we have to deal with finding a new roommate and trying to recoup the money from Vinny IF we can find him. I have a couple of addresses and he doesn't agree to give us back at least part of the rent, I'll just take him to small claims court.

Saying he's a flake is putting it far too kindly. The words loser and jerk come to mind as well. Maybe I'm just dumb, because I can't even fathom doing this to a person, let alone a family. He knew this would screw us over. Even if what he said was true, he never said anything about it to me. For all he knows, it could have been our other roommate and he punished the wrong people. This lends credence to my belief that this was his plan from day one.

This is a small town, so I may run into him again someday. I would never touch him -- I'm not a violent guy -- but his reputation will definitely be damaged.

Oh yeah ... one thing that my wife noticed is that Logan would run from him whenever he was around. So maybe my son knew from the start that he was a creep.

I should have been weary about him the moment that I found out that he writes his screenplays at Starbucks. Ugh.