Francisco Torres was a dream world. I would have dreams about that place and the people for over a decade later. Usually, at significant moments in my life, that I felt necessary to respond to my interpretations of my dreams. FT was 2 approximately ten story towers just northwest of Isla Vista. I lived in room 327, North Tower. Housing about 1,200 students, at least half female and very attractive, fresh out of high school before they put on the freshman fifteen.
I started the year focused on school. I quit smoking pot for the first couple months and was taking such classes as Global Studies, Calculus and Psychology. I learned how stressful a class can be when it is graded on the curve. I went into my Calculus final with about 60% of total points in the class, and I still managed to get an A. That alone influenced what classes I took and the major I would end up deciding upon. I did very well in school that year with all A's and B's, first semester getting 3 A's and a B-. The B- was in my academic writing course, I guess having a unique style to your artform does not abide by academic and professional etiquette.
Of course I was going out drinking, if you didn't, you would be considered abnormal. My roommate was a Jewish kid named Jeff Ellison. He was straight edge, and slowly took up drinking towards the middle of the school year, and he tried pot a couple of times. We rearranged our furniture, so our room wasn't divided in the middle, instead our computer desks were against the wall and the room was open. Towards the end of the first quarter, I picked up an ounce from Dave in I.V. and I showed it to Jeff just to see how he would react. He was mildly intrigued by how it looked and smelled. After the start of 1999, he started going out with another Jewish girl named Orly and they would hook up while I was out partying.
Towards the middle of the Fall quarter, I started getting high with my neighbor down the hall, Joel Bueno. He was a short Asian, Filipino or something and was a raver type; loved Surge cola. I had some honey oil, which was honey with the crystals from a large bag, usually a pound mixed in it. It was crap, it made me cough up flem. Anyways, I also had some pot so we started smoking the pot with honey on it. After a couple of months, he started selling weed and wanted to know if he could borrow my triple beam, because I was rarely using it. I said sure. I found out a method to smoke pot in our rooms and not set off the smoke detectors. I would take a small trash bag, and place it over the smoke detector, secured with a rubber band.
Fall quarter was promising. I studied relentlessly. I didn't want to fuck up college, and have to leave early for partying too much. At FT, we had a couple football games on the fields outside our dorms with some of the bigger fools. I impressed a couple of the bigger Native Americans who were playing with us, by catching a few touchdowns. Towards the end of fall quarter, I had green tires on my Schwinn Bike, and somebody slashed them. I didn't know who did it at the time, but I knew I had made an enemy.
Come Winter I took an ROTC course; Basic Survival. I would go up to Fort Hunter Liggett and train with the Army for 4 days. I also took weight training classes, swimming and would go 5 days a week to the UCSB rec center.
Joel was selling weed like I used to. Buying an ounce or 2 and selling eights and grams to the other kids. I was very in shape at the time, intense, and I think Joel used me as his muscle or back in case anyone tried to rob him. I would have intervened. Joel had several sources for weed, one of whom was a guy named Luke in the South Tower. Luke had to leave around winter quarter, because the Resident Assistants, RA's and then the police tried to enter his dorm to confiscate the 2 pounds he was holding. His dad was a lawyer and told him that they would need an official search warrant.
I still had a lot of money left over from working and selling pot the previous year. I spent it on alcohol and weed. I acquired the worst fake ID from another kid on my floor from Santa Monica. It was from Connecticut and the signature was different from the name on license. It was nothing more than a credit card type backing, with type and then lamination. I would go out and get drinks for the other kids on my floor. By now, the 60 or so people on my floor knew who I was and as far as I knew, all liked me. I managed to acquire the biggest collection of empty beer bottles, trying a different kind every time I got beer, and putting the empty bottles on the shelf above my computer.
