"The Blonde Lady"

By kiki

In the late '50s, when we were young, a friend, who shall remain anonymous to protect his good name, and I had been nightclub hopping in East Los Angeles. At about 1:00 AM, an hour before the clubs closed, we walked into Bradley's Nite Club. Sitting at the bar in the dark club was a lady who looked to be, at first glance, a blonde, but after a close-up-and-down examination, I could tell that her hair was gray and not blonde. 

Having live music on the weekends, the Whittier Blvd haunt, with its dance floor dark and stained with decades of spilled drinks and dancehall sweat, was a favorite of the in-crowd. People from far and wide used to find their way to East Los Angeles to dance and fall in or out of love at Bradley's back in those gentler and simpler times.

"Would you care to dance?" my friend asked the lady.

"Yes, I would love to," the lady answered.

After they swayed to a few slow numbers, my friend said, "I'm going to leave you here. I'm going with the blonde."

"She's not a blonde; that's gray hair, man! So she has to be over 50 years old! But do what you have to do," I said.

My friend, somewhat inebriated, was seeing blonde. "I'll see you tomorrow," he told me as he winked his eye at me. They both had big smiles as they walked out holding hands.

Later that day, he came to my house and said: "Let's go see the blonde lady."

"I'm telling you, she is not a blonde; it's gray hair!"

"She is a blonde; you are just jealous," he retorted 

We got to her house, he knocked on the door, and an elderly gray-haired lady dressed in an old flannel nightgown opened the door.

"Holy shit! It is gray hair! Let's get out of here!" said my friend.

On the way back to my house, I asked him, "Couldn't you tell she had gray hair and not blonde when you arrived last night? Okay, early this morning."

"No, I was drunk, and she never turned the lights on!"

"Gray hair and a flannel nightgown! Man, I need some pisto, stop for some," were the following words out of his mouth; I stopped because I, too, needed pisto!

So much for the blonde lady. 

The moral of the story? is "trucha con el pisto."