Disclaimer: I do not own anything. I am a bum. I live in a cardboard box. I own nothing except my box. And my computer. But nothing else. Especially not Gilmore Girls. Or Cher.
Synopsis: A collection of one-shot portraits of some of the Gilmore Girls' minor characters. Like it or not, that is up to you.
1. Tramps and Thieves
What can I say, my mom was into Cher. It was the sixties, after all. My mom smoked weed, dropped acid, and listened to Cher. By '69, the year I was born, she had pretty much given up the weed and the acid, but she could never give up the Cher.
And so she named me Gypsy. That's right, folks, it's not a nickname.
It wasn't long after I was born again that my mom's old habits reared their ugly heads again, and so I was pretty much raised by my dad. When I was seven he moved us to Stars Hollow. He'd had enough of New York and wanted a little peace and quiet. Later he'd say that it was quieter in New York. Go figure.
Surprise, surprise, my dad was a mechanic. If it had an engine, he could fix it. He'd gone to Korea the day after his 18th birthday, towards the end of the war. He liked to joke about being the mechanic who fixed the tank that single-handedly won the whole war. The fact that no one actually won was insignificant to him.
Physically he'd returned in once peace. Mentally, the war had taken its toll. In the few short months he'd spent on the front lines he'd seen things that he would never talk about again. But that's what war does to you, he'd always say.
He came home in '53, to a girlfriend who had gotten married to another man. Personally I think that this was harder on him than the war itself. He never married. My mom was a fluke. He was already 35; she was only 18. They met, casually dated for a month or so, and nine months later there was me. My dad may have been screwed up but he was still a "real man," as he would say, and "real men" don't back out. So he supported my mom at first, and eventually took over for her altogether. She would visit when she was in town and not too high to remember that I existed. Sometimes we'd get a letter from Reno or Vegas or LA. But those were few and far-between.
So is it really any wonder that I ended up the way I did? With rough, veteran mechanic father and no mother, I think I was destined to be a tom-boy. My dad taught me the only thing he knew well, and that was cars.
Let me tell you, dumb people have the dumbest ideas sometimes. Ideas about why someone like me (the looker that I am) is unattached, for example. The word 'lesbian' has been used more than once. I'll tell you straight-up that that one's not true. I've dated and even been in love with men. Did you ever wonder why Andrew and I seem to have such great chemistry? It's not exactly public knowledge, so don't go spreading it around or anything. He's a little older than I am, and I was still in high school at the time. My dad disapproved of every man. He didn't want me to be like my mother. He was the perfect cliché, kept a shotgun by the door and everything. Andrew would park his truck three blocks away, sneak up and hide in the bushes behind my house, and do a bird call…can you imagine it? Of course I was also the perfect cliché. I would climb out the window onto the tree and meet him in the backyard. Then we'd run to his truck, drive to the outside of town and spend all night alternating between talking and…and not talking, if you know what I mean.
We don't talk about those days anymore, Andrew and I. He's married now, and to him I was just a fling, something he did because he was bored and I was easy. We ended it "mutually," or at least that's the way he saw it, because things just weren't working or he was getting bored or something. It's funny, he seems so innocent now. He found Jesus again a couple years later and cleansed himself of me, like I was some sort of stain on his shirt that was easily taken care of with a little bleach. It's been a lot of years, and he treats me as though nothing ever happened, which for him is the truth, since all of that stuff is forgiven and forgotten. Literally.
So maybe I never really got over him. My dad died only three years later, so I didn't have him to worry about anymore, but after Andrew guys just didn't interest me anymore. I found Jesus too, although my Jesus was more comfortable in an auto shop than a church. I read the Bible and pray. I even go to worship on Sunday, but that's mostly for the other people, not for Jesus. There's something they like about a mechanic who can clean up and come out of his (or her!) shop once a week and put in a good social appearance.
Don't worry; I get my share of vicarious romance. I pay a lot of attention to the town gossip, although I'm not as verbal about it as Patty or Babette. I cheer for Luke and Lorelai, laugh at Kirk and Lulu, and secretly hope to see Jess around occasionally because I love the drama between him and Rory. The truth is that I wish Andrew had tuned out to be a little more like Jess. He really ended up as more of a Dean. Except that he really does love his wife, which is good for him. I'm happy for him. Really. I promise.
So what else do you want to know? I'm a Leo but I don't think that that means anything, I like peanut butter ice-cream, and my favorite show of all time is the Mary Tyler Moore show. I wear as little makeup as possible because it just gets sweated off anyway in the shop. Jewelry is just as impractical. I read when I feel like it. I don't watch the news because I think that it makes you bitter.
Life has made me cynical, but being a cynic has made me happy. So in the end I guess you could say that life has made me happy.
-Gypsy.
A/N: So what do you think? Any requests as to who I should portrait next? If any one chapter gets a lot of positive attention I will consider turning it into a full-fledged fic. Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for reviewing. You know you want to…