I was back in San Francisco and I was ready to do music. When we restarted SDH after my time away from the band it seemed to be a perfect time for us. we had our first practice and all were happy to be playing again. During out time apart not only did i go my thing, but Ben had stopped drinking and other getting high stuff. he was healthy and he and i made new efforts to get along and work together. He and i were as different people as anyone could imagine. we both had a lot of respect for each other and this made it possible for us to play together.we never really socialized at all. i remember once thinking that it might be nice to hang out sometime and try to cultivate out friendship. this is before he stopped drinking so i called him up one after noon and asked him, "hey. Ben what are you up to?"
:Oh, gary....uhh, well nothing"
"I was wondering if you wanted to go get a beer somewhere"
all he sad was "why?"
i said "well, i guess just to get a beer. nothing else".
"well, i don't understand...why?"
ok...so i just got pissed and we never went for a beer. i realized we would be band mates and that's all and that s the was it was for out entire time in the band. this does not mean we were not close, but it was close in a guarded way. we laughed and fought and created what i think was great music together. I found Ben the best at listening to my ideas of what i wanted to hear on guitar and playing it for me exactly as i heard it. he would very patently listen and put it to music. Mikey was still playing great but bigger problemms were touching his life. He really was one of the sweetest people i ever met but some inner saddnes made him look in the wrong places to fill up the sad spots. i feel no need to go deep into the problems Mikey had except to say i loved him and he played bass better than most people i have ever heard. He defined out sound during this peroid.
Lynn Perko. My sister. my dear friend. when Lynn joined the California version of the Dicks she was still a bit of an awkward girl growing into a woman. and did she ever grow. i watched Lynn become one of the most beautiful women i have ever seen. One of the most dedicated musicians and hardest pounding, or gentle drummers ever. we love each other till this very day.
The other member of the band was Debbie Gordon. my best girl friend and one time manager of the Dicks. Debbie and i were a crazy sister and brother-best friend pair. during the time i had left the band Debbie had not only been the manager of Alternative Tentacles records, or as i call it...Jello's label. She had gotten a job at Warner Brothers n LA. Funny how one of her so called best friends denounced her for selling out and going to work at a major label. This same phony soon became a millionaire running her own record label. Creating a punk rock empire firmly cracking the whip to keep her myrmidons in order. People are funny.
Debbie could not be our manage anymore because she was a Warner employee. but i did ask her advice now and then and she was helpful when she could be. We were playing and writing and would practice at least three times a week. People started acting real nice when they would recognize me. During this time i met up with a nice guy who tole me to check out a bar south of Market called My Place. i had lost some weight but was still looked at as a fat guy. My friend told me My Place was very friendly to big guys and i would like it. well i told Phillip and that night we headed to My Place and it was pretty cool. the best news though i found out about was the Lone Star saloon and the Bear movement. ah--the Bears!
I had never been a popular guy in queer bars because either i was a hippie looking long haired weird-o back in the day, or a punk Mohawk haired wild nut or fat. fat being the real reason. the main stream queen worked 24 hours a day to look the right way. a way to attract guys who looked like himself. the fat queer spent years dealing with being either the super cattie sharp tonged queen or some lonely chub in the dark corner or the bar. finding a fat fiendly gay bar was rare. Phillip and i loved hanging out and drinking together but i hardly ever went to a gay bar with him due to me choosing the weird punk looks i came up with and being fat. not just fat, but more like in your face fat. so when we found the extreamly welcoming Bear culture growing on Harrison St. in the Lone Star i was thrilled. The bartenders, at the time were the nicest guys in the world. as Sister was in the papers a lot people there recognized me and that was a plus. going from ugly fat ass to a welcomed popular item was unbelievable. this pretty much meant i was there every night. when SDH did shows around town lots of the guys would come. once when we did a show at the Great American Music Hall one of our roadies came back to tell me "Don't be nervous, but there are lots of pretty rough bikers in the crowd...right up front". i went to peek and it was about 30 or more of the Lone star guys i had met or seen hanging out there. i told Kyle, the best roadie in the world, " i think things will be ok". i was never a big "fuck everybody in the bar" type so i was able to keep things friendly and easy. I was getting drunk at least 4 or five times a week. but loving it.
One day Debbie called and tole me one of the A abd R guys at Warners was interested in coming to see us play. he had heard a tape and out first album and wanted to see how we played live. we were ral excited and since we had a show coming up we spent extra time practicing and getting into the mind set of beint 'watched' by a record executive. i thought back of a show the Dicks had done in Houston way back in 81. i was hailed as one of the best hows ever at the island...so said Ronnie Bond of Really Red...Glen broke a string on th first song and was so drunk he sat on the stage for most of the show trying to change it. Buxf had a beer bottle and was running it up and down the bas neck over and over and over while Pat was doing the 'naw-jaw' speed clenched teeth and beating the drums out there on his own....i walked around on the stage cussing and blabbling about the communist and queers and so on. th entire show was nuts and we had a great time. oh, how times had changed. now one guy in the crowd was someone who could change our lives. if he had seen the Dick's in Houston he might have been a different kind of guy. a few diffrent a/r people came during this time to see us. one from Rough Trade, one from somewhere else....i thought most of them were big headed and on power trips to promote themselves and really could not care less about us or music. that night Kevin came into Laffee came into our lives.

I've had people ask me how i could become religious? I don't know the real definition of the that word. I feel 'spiritual' suits me better. although that's just me. I always had a feeling with in me that a bigger 'thing' was somewhere out there but also with us. It was the same thing in and out. Our being able to tap into that 'thing' was a two way street, It was always the same--ready to take us to It's center and be our guide, but only if we took a step or two to realize it's helping nature.. the steps are what i call our own personal path. Some are taking the steps by following the Pope and going to a Catholic church, others are hooping and hollering in the Pentecostal church. I do think it it is helpful to find, as the Buddhist say, a sanga---a community of 'like thinkers' to unite with. Of course i would like to believe no one would expect or even want to be a clone of his
church or sanga fellow member. The "I am right and you are wrong" attitude is the element that has fucked up how so many of us feel about God and the path to enjoy what God is. When I hear people snarling and denouncing god and religion with much unhidden hatred i laugh to myself and think how they mush have been made to go to church and endure either the screeming preacher sending everyone to hell, or being tortured and forced to get up early on Sunday mornng and dress in clothes you hate to ware. Setting in a ritual of things you neither understand or even want to. some of the very few fights my mother and i would ever get into were the ugly Sunday morning clothes war. i would have gone easy if i could have just picked out my own clothes! not some fucking white shirt and tie and dress slacks. even to this day the very words 'dress slacks' send a chill down my spine. this has nothing to do with whatever god mght be. Jesus in dress slacks. the Buddha in a tie! Krishna in a JC Penny's summer suit. never happened. My point being we miss so much of the good and fullflling elements of God because of out past dealings with religion and church.
The great Swami Vivekananda said if there is really a Heaven there will be more atheist than belivers because theist did good for no reason...while belivers did good for the reward....(paraphrased). I love that.
I was looking for something to fill the gap i found in my life when i found Ramakrishna and the Vedanta. I knew what i was looking for but hqd no idea where to go. at the risk of sounding silly, i just let the faith of going where IT lead me tke over. All of this was much less mysterious, and more down to earth than i might make it sound. no angles singing in the background. I was lookiing though. this was my taking the steps i talked about. if you want to catch a fish you have to go to the water and put your pole out. sit and wait but at least bait the hook. you don't catch one usually by jumping in the water and hysterically grabbing. calm and steady is the way. when i first went to the little bookstore at the temple i loved it. when i first got Christopher Isherwood's book on Sri Ramakrishna and how wonderful His crazy life was. I felt like it was a personal, ongoing party for me. none of being Queer was going to stop this from moving me onward. no communist, punk rocker, dressed in drag and singing about being dead in a motel room made any difference to anyone. reading about the funny and loving and, to say the least, bazaar life of this God-man and his young followers, i fell in love with it all. this was no cult love because if you couldn't think for yourself and be a 'stand on your own two feet' person....well, you might move on. My heart had been pretty hard due to life being a rough row to hoe, but as got stronge in the ideals of these teaching my hert became softer and more loving and excepting. it can be a little hard to sing about hating people when really, i don;t hate anybody. i try to love everybody, although lots of people i love from a distance. being spiritual shouldn't make you a dumb ass...so don't go hugging stinging scorpions and kissing madmen. thinking and moving in a calm inner mode can keep you grounded and let you act like a human. meditation , or just setting down and being silent for a while is great. shut up for a few seconds...is the world going to fall apqrt if you are not talking? i offer no blue print of how to do this. you can find 10,000 other people to tell you how to meditate. of just find it out for your self. you can start with the simple method of just being alone with in your self and being quite. O million pages have been written and millions of dollars made by teachers when this first step is the mail lesson to follow. believe me, it's hqarder than you might think. me, being quite? me?
I offer no paths to you follow or anything for you to do. being happy and feeling whole within your self is the goal. if you are, stay there. i moved only when i felt the need. never aking if it was right. it was right---for me, and i live it now.

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i was looking for a spiritual path. i would always call my self a 'small c" communist, but to hell with 'religion is the opiate of the people' crap. i was not into that thinking. as a matter of fact, i had always felt if the communist leaders had allowed the people to practice spirituality ...have the gathering places of the church, not having a state religion but a flourishing of different paths the communist political system would never have fallen. If you remove the spiritual freedom from people's lives you soon have a deflated people. the proof has happened--there is no argument. i certenly think the two could have mixed. It also seemed to me as soon as one communist leader died very soon he was not only replaced but denounced....so whatever -- i loved the idea of keeping a socialist world overview with a path of god-consciousness. as usual i felt a 'fuck you' to the few people who gave me any grief for my beliefs. i was looking and knew the Christen path was not gong to work for me.Prue Christian folks were wonderful...if they really followed the teaching of Jesus. i loved Jesus. but that type of Christian was hard to find. usually a lot of judging was found toward my own experience. so i was looking for another way -Buddhist teachings were next and i looked deep into the Buddha and found a lot of different thinking and so many variations i became a bit confused and kept moving. although now i am as Buddhist as i am anything. i had though the years seen many times the book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. i had often made fun of his looks--a sweet faced, androgynous holy man from India. i felt ashamed for laughing at his looks as i opened the book and found him a wonderful teacher and the book itself a fascinating story of his life. i was reading the book one night after the kids had gone to bed at the shelter. I was working with a great guy named Ishmeal. a really sweet and super smart man who late, sadly, died . his spirit was funny and loving and giving. when he saw the book he sad he had been instretedin some eastern techers...and knew of Yogananda. a few says later he bought three little books to me when we were both at the shelter again. from the Vedanta society. 'Thus Speak Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Mother, and Swami Vivekananda'. A picture of the three Indian teachers were on the front of the little pocket books. and quotes from them made up the books. he gave the books to me and told me he had gone to the big temple on Vallejo St. that they had a book shop. That i should check it out. At once i felt a attraction to the books and the pictures. I couldn't wait to go and see the place. I had found out a year before that i had diabetes. it ran in my family and the dr told me to loose weight. yeah, right! however it seemed to be the time for me. i had started riding a bicycle and walking all over SF. it was a good time for me. popular band, good job hat i loved, and the adventure of a spiritual life looking at me. i was happy. when i first went to the Vedanta i found a lot of old women working at the book shop. and nuns...not the catholic type but still nuns. i loved it. i would go every other day and hang out reading and buying books. asking the women tons of questions. the first book i bought was by the great writer Christifor Isherwood. Ramakrishna and His Decipeles. Isherwood was a follower of Vedanta. being gay and excepted into the Vedanta Society in LA i was happy to start showing up at the Sunday lectures and even meeting the Swami in charge. i was even loosing weight..about 80 lbs. in all and the diabetes had 'gone away'. soon i got the swami to become my teacher by giving me initiation into the followers of Vedanta and Sri Ramakrishna.
Around this same time i left the shelter. the 'burn out' factor had et in and i had to move on. i would miss many of the friends i had made there, and keep seeing many who i am till friends with to this day..truly the best job i have ever had.
but leaving the shelter and not being able to shake the problems and nightmares of the kids who were getting more and more heavy was too much for me. so i left. as alwys the good and the bad run together like twins. bad comes with good and good with bad.
my mother was sick...cancer .
a few months earlier i had quit SDH. it made the other folks in the band pretty pissed off at me. we had just recorded our first album...on SST. it only took 48 hours to record nd mix. great music, but i wanted out..i wnted to join the monastery and be a monk. yes. me--a monk.