Mark Ginter, aka TJ, eats some aquarium coral

 

It was the fall, and I was in Chico. School was starting up and roommates were being chosen at the dorms for the fall semester. I was hanging with a group of fellow students, checking out the campus and searching for accommodations. 

In the group with me, was my antagonist, TJ, one of Sharon's ex-coworkers, with whom I'd always suspected her of being a little too friendly. TJ was a computer nerd who used his tech skills, along with his depression diagnosis and thesaurus of sexual euphemisms, to passive-aggressively lure sympathetic females into bed. 

It is a tried and true method which, if attempted on enough test subjects, with persistence, will prove successful at least a small percentage of the time. I'm still unsure of whether or not that held true in Sharon's case. She'd always denied it.

His character in the dream was kind of a mashup with another fellow of similar ilk, Mark Ginter, who was a resident at Chico's Esplanade Manor, the board and care for the mentally ill, where I worked for a couple of years in the early 90s. 

Mark was a little less affrontive in his technique for girl-getting. His was the long, quiet approach, leading up to a seemingly random chance encounter near his room, where the subject was likely to see some of the wildly impressionistic nudes he had painted of them on display though an open window. Subtle/not subtle. Creepy, yes.

In the dream, Mark/TJ had some of his art on display at the university's locker room/quad area, a giant indoor hall with a high ceilinged atrium-like appearance. 

"That's mine over there," Mark said, calling attention to one of his pieces. 

I had to admit, the art didn't look bad or out of place in the hallowed halls of the university. It was abstract enough to not give away the fact that he'd painted a nude of anyone in particular. That was his little secret. But I knew that he knew that I knew, and I disliked him for it. The competition for females was on, and I knew my opponent's game was in top form.

"Where's yours, Andrew?" He taunted me. Mark 1, Andrew 0.

I, of course, couldn't readily find mine, and I wandered around searching in vain for my entry. In one of the corners of the building, a student pulled a gun out of a small alcove, where it had been stashed for purposes unknown. 

"Look what I found," the student exclaimed. "I think they meant to take you out, Andrew." He deposited the gun in a nearby waste receptacle. 

I took that to mean that I should get out of there, and I left the building for the time being, with Mark and a couple of other classmates in tow. We got into someone's beat up station wagon and went out cruising the town in search of affordable housing and females, possible not in that order.

First, however, we made a stop off at the front porch of Manuel Salazar's deceased brother, Gilberto. I instructed one of my fellow passengers to affix some letters to the door steps which read "Baby Boy Mechado." 

I don't know why I chose this moniker, as it had no real significance and bore no relation to any name by which he'd ever been called. Sad but true side note: Gilberto was tragically electrocuted while doing home repairs in his attic in June of 2014, leaving behind a wife and 3 children. 

After leaving our inappropriate memorial, we were back on the road, driving in circles trying to find a place that would rent to a group of rowdy, randy freshmen. Our spiral trajectory landed us in the parking lot of some old art deco style apartments at 180 E 8th Ave. 

The address familiar to me, since I'd lived at 180-1/2, in the small garage/shop behind the apartments, in the early 90s. The owner, Eric Hart, was a slumlord, and it appeared to be the kind of place that would rent to clients of our demographic.

Inside the building, a scramble for the rooms ensued. Mark decided to initiate a competition to decide who got what. 

"Let's see who can catch carrots in their mouths," he challenged me. "I bet you can't do it."

I opened my mouth wide to prove that I was at no disadvantage. He took the opportunity to toss a piece of aquarium coral in the air, which I disdained to catch in my mouth. So that was how it was, eh? I pried open his mouth and stuffed the coral in as he struggled to bite my fingers. He foamed and frothed, but down it went. That would show him.

Across the hall, my friend Bongo was staking out his claim to a room. I supposed I could always bunk with him, since we were old pals, and there was an open spot on a cot in the corner. It didn't matter, though, as the dream was pretty much concluding, and I woke up to the sound of my text dingy going off.