LOST IN A KALEIDOSCOPE

Thursday night I was the feature reading at ANGER MANAGEMENT, a poetry reading at THE KALEIDOSCOPE. I realized, before we left my driver was drinking more than he should have been. I ask my driver to let me drive. I couldn't fire my driver as he was carrying the video camera that was going to record my performance. I tryed not to say much as I knew my driver had had a bad day. He had a conflict with the thief who is trying to steal his $100,000 movie. That could drive anyone to drink and possibly even out of their mind after working on this movie project for the last five years. He told me earlier that he was ready to move on...MOVE ON...ON,ON,ON!!!
We had a terrible time finding parking, but we finally found a spot. I gathered my poems and hurriedly made it to The Kaleidoscope, which was a full house. I was the first reader after the band played a few numbers. My driver headed to the bar for more to drink. He was the only one in the place talking loudly through the music. I tried to catch his eyes, but by then he had the attention of a beautiful brunette with long legs.
The band played their own music, which I thought was funny and original. The two singers were comic and good singers.
I was the first reader and had picked out what I thought was my best anger poems. I did alright until I got to the one I had just written earlier that day and I didn't have it under my belt yet and kind of stumbled and read it badly. They had told me 15 minutes and I had to cut it to 10 when I got there. There are many poets in San Francisco just waiting to read. I said, I had found it a little hard coming from Phoenix where there was a drought of poetry to San Francisco where that was a flood of poetry. I got some laughs and some claps. I was happy.
The poetry reading went on and Jessica read and she does performance poetry. I thought she did very well. Most of the poets only read one poem, but my driver,S. D., was getting restless. Poetry sometimes seem to get him a bit uinhinged. He feels like he is getting peppered by words like tiny bullets. He can't take too much, too long, especially when he had had to much to drink. Maybe he has not been subject to the written word long enough. His own words would probably entertain him more.
I agreed to leave at the half, even though I didn't really wanted to. I wanted to make a night of it...as long as I was there and I was the feature reader, but, I had had one other bad night with this same driver when he had too much to drink. I didn't want a scene.
We went out to our car, which I was sure we had parked on Mission between 24th Street and 23rd. The car was not there. We went looking for the car on other streets for the next two hours. My driver blaming me and I blaming him, as he was too blind in his state to see where we were. As it was close to midnight the vultures of the night started circling. When he was off on another street looking, I called and I begged him to come back to where I was as I was getting a little nervous with all of these circling vultures. Finally, we decided to go back to the Kaleidoscope and we, by luck, caught the anger manager on the way to his car. He gave us a ride back to my daughter house where we called the cops and waited another hour or two for the cops to come for a stolen car report. I had already called to find out if it had been towed. It had not.
The next day, after driving my grandkids to school, I stayed in bed for twenty-four hours, with my head covered, because I knew I had already caused my daughter countless tickets, towing fees and other San Francisco craziness and now I had lost her car altogether. I didn't have good dreams. God, I didn't want to get up again.
She came home from her trip across the big pond and for some reason her and her husband went down and started cruising around The Kaleodoscope. Somehow, they found their car on a different street South Van Ness between 23 and 24th Street.