ENTER SHAKTI

Back in San Francisco things never quite got back to normal. I did keep up with a class or two but Santa Cruz became my main focus. My great friend Joel Roberts who was a commercial abalone diver rented an apartment in an old Victorian house on Beach Hill where we had center meetings. Nirbachita and I made the old apartment into a divine respite from the world. We also rented a room at the local community center as we had for years. A transplanted Hiedleburg disciple, who was the defacto singing group leader and music director in SF, and I would poster for the class that me and Nirbachita would give on Tuesdays. My sister and I drove down there 3 days a week with some moderate success. At the restaurant I was still working full time and on the weekends Nirbachita and I were having our lucrative garage sales. Guru at one point gave us money to buy a car after Nirba's got wrecked so we could continue our center building.
I was doing deliveries 6 days a week at Ananda Fuara restaurant in downtown San Francisco as I had been for 3 years running. I loved San Fran with its old back alleys named after mistresses of long forgotten mayors and its gritty and visceral big city nature. the bike deliveries was a job I pretty much created and ran and loved. The manager there at the time was the usual petty tyrant. Controlling micro manager that was sure that everything would fall apart if she wasn't there. She also had a knack for "loosing" large amounts of money at Costco. I had to constantly and instinctual growl at her so that I could continue to love my job. I knew it was just her nature to rob everybody of their creative freedom. I wouldn't let her have mine. I noticed how guru systematically put those types in charge. I observed that a powerful happy center was not so much the goal as an atmosphere where people had to seriously overcome a daily petty tyrant. It made sense in an evolutionary sort of way but it was not the way I would have run it. It seemed that disciples were always kept at the boiling point and for this stage of learning it was necessary, it had a Utility as my brother Yogaloy would say. Things after I got back started to become burdensome for me. Before everything was easy and I was happy. Slowly but surely everything that use to give me joy and energy started to take it from me. I live with disciples went to center meditations with them, sang with them, ran with them, worked with them etc. This use to be a joy and now it began to feel like a prison. I felt watched and fet a true need for my own space. My hip began to feel odd about this time and I began getting chiropractic work done and started becoming interested in bodywork, massage; Feldenkrise and Cranial Sacral Therapies in particular. These were total taboos in center life. Any touching of anyone else or being touched by any one else.
On the road I was a madman, I rode fast and hard and was out of control on the bike. I truly loved riding with the messengers. They were cowboys, the ones that were actually athletes. The Goth delivery guys dressed in mid 90's irony didn't inspire me much. I liked the hard riding seriously not serious delivery guys who had good bikes painted with neon spray paint or covered in electrical tape that loved hills almost as much as they loved going through red lights or secretly hanging onto car fenders. They locked their bikes to pipes sticking from walls or railing as a statement and I could see It had a mystic with all the suits in the financial area. Part of them, their very DNA wanted the cowboy like off the grid freedom of messenger life. Red light green light all the same. Side walk, street, one way or two all of that was meaningless. The art( and it was an art) was don't get hit and don't hit anybody. I was in super shape and was also swimming everyday before work as my mom was working at the central YMCA in downtown ( word of advice about the YMCA in San Francisco...shy away from the steam room ) I was also starting to wonder what it would be like with a girl friend. One day out on my ride I past a 20 year old prostitute who was tight bodied, fresh and cute. She was high and happy and had her shirt on backwards and inside out, with the nipple of one of her small breasts poking out of a hole in her shirt. Next thing I knew we were in someones yard away from the world making out like demons. I almost tore her shirt off I wanted her breasts so bad. It took all of a second fully clothed for me to finish after her pants came down. I didn't want sex as AIDS was at its height in San Francisco at the time. When she said: "fuck me" that was the buzz kill for me and I quickly paid her and finished my delivery ( food delivery). When I got to the restaurant again I felt what I can only describe as being flooded, no, blasted with love from an external source. The next few weeks were like I was waiting for the axe as I knew Guru was aware of my dalliance. Guilt and fear in a very basic crude form were beginning their end-game with me. " I should have taken the Blue pill'