Dodgy Drunks & Pissed up Wankers. 2nd Installment

This morning I locked up my bike a couple of posts from a parked pick-up truck with the engine running.  I thought nothing of it at the time because the newspaper delivery guy drives the same truck and in my groggy 6am head I didn't even see the guy sitting in the front seat, and I didn't put much together very cognitively, I just assumed.... 

Almost an hour later I was bringing the out the patio furniture and was surprised to see this truck still out there, and still running.  After a brief consultation wit the famous Welmon Sharlhorne, whose artwork you can see at the Smithsonian, or here; who just so happened to be walking by, and which went a little like this:  "Can you kill yourself sitting in a running car if it's not in a garage?" and ended with Welmon, who looks like the spirit of the Saints barfed black and gold pimp glitter all over him, and is also one of my most favorite Frenchmen Street people, looking down at me from his lens-less gold rimmed glasses stating pointedly, "Oh, he's goin die".

After my co-worker and I knocked on the window for almost three minutes the man began to move as if coming out of a coma.  What looked like his attempt to roll down the window or turn the car off, I'm still not sure, he went on to run his hand into the radio like a blind zombie.  It was like watching life is slow motion rewind.  Three times he reached toward the radio but with no actual button triggered.  He then found the window lever and rolled it down a half inch and back up.  This guy was so wasted.  All the while he comes off as being completely oblivious to our yelling at him through the window, "Your car has been running for over an hour!" and  "Turn your engine off and sleep it out!".  He was moving around inside the running car with his arms and wobbling head, but denied us any response, much less a turn of the head to even look at us. 
 
Welmon said, "fu*% it, you woke him up.  You tried."  It was time to open the cafe so after a couple more attempts to get him to turn his engine off we went back inside, checking out the window every couple minutes to see if he was still there.  After a couple glances out the window, the truck was gone.  Vanished. 

The moment he was gone I didn't know what I regretted more, waking him up, or releasing this man to the world--in a vehicle. Shoulda called the cops, but it all felt like it happened so fast and even if we did, they would have never gotten there in time.

Fifteen minutes later in walks this sparkle faced, top hat wearing, vaudeville slaps the face of burlesque looking man. He was rather lively, his face was covered in red glitter, and he, being the only other person in the place at that time, went on to regal us with the stories of his night on mushrooms in New Orleans, starting with him in a nice suit and tie, and ending with him in a top hat, a burnt off tie (the knot and neck part still intact, and on him), a dirt covered blazer with matching tattered pants, and ridiculous sparkly red heeled man boots.  He apparently got slapped by a hooker, lost all his friends, found new ones, swapped shoes with a transvestite, rode a bike to the beginning of the Industrial Canal at the tip of Bywater across from the lower 9th Ward, was taken under the wing of Amzie Adams, the famous Frenchmen Street Artist and Spiritual Mentor, whose Art can be seen here, and caught a metal show at Hi-Ho Lounge.

His visit ended with us all dancing in the middle of the cafe to The Temptations.