#when I say alan adopted them I mean in a gang housing kind of way and not literal don't make this weird please

[scarefox]

That's in my head when I think of the Pit Babe polycule pack

and Alan in the middle is so on point because he adopted all of them

[fereality-indy]

Revenant Falls

I don’t really know how this all started, I mean I can tell you how our bit pf the story happened but not how the whole story started. I mean it could have been a lab accident, a miscast spell (not me this time), or even a sick cdc agent who went missing. Who knows.

As for us well it was our fifth summer here and we were staying at the Shack with Soos, Melody, and lil Mía. Abuelita was spending the summer with family in Florida. Stan and Ford were due back sometime after our second week but they were delayed, something to do with a customs hassle at their last port of call. I was ok with it though as it gave me more time with Wendy. Her dad was working at his brother’s site upstate and had taken the boys with him, so she was home alone this summer.

We finally decided last year to go ahead and take the plunge and started dating. Heck most of Gravity Falls had thought that already were. According to some they already had wedding gifts bought for us, just waiting for the date to happen. Mabel and Tambry kept playing Ro-sham-bo for the privilege of being Wendy’s maid of honor everytime the whole group got together.

And just cause I was spending so much time with Wendy, that didn’t mean that Mabel was left lonely. Nope. She spent time with her girls; Candy, Grenda, and particularly Pacifica. That one was a surprise. Not that they hung out, they had become great friends during our second summer in Gravity Falls. No the surprise happened during one of the gangs parties last year, during a game of truth or dare, Robbie dared Pacifica to kiss Mabel. Now I knew that Mabel had come out as Pan and that she thought Paz was cute, but apparently Robbie had known that Pacifica had a crush on Mabel and in his own way decided to try to pay Mabel back for setting him up with Tambry. In his defense it worked like a charm. The two of them begged out of the next round so they could talk. And the rest is history as they say.

Every once in awhile the four of us would go out exploring, visiting Multibear and what not. It had adopted Several Timez after finding them foraging in the woods after Weirdmageddon. They all helped each other expand their taste in music and two of them (Mabel could tell you which but not me) even joined the Gravity Falls workforce. One became a dispatcher for the Sheriff’s office and the other got hired on by Thompson to run the projector at the theater.

But during the week that this all started Candy had went with Grenda to visit Marius (yeah, I’m surprised that they were still together myself) and so Mabel was spending most of her free time with either Pacifica or doting on lil Mía like a good godmother should (oh yeah I forgot to mention that, Mabel and I are lil Mía’s godparents). But where was I, oh yeah. We were alone in the Shack and I was running the last tour cause Soos and family had driven up to Portland that Friday for Melody’s mother’s birthday. I wish we knew what happened to them, but I digress. Right now it really won’t help us much.

Like I was saying, I had finished up giving the last tour and Wendy was cashing out the suckers’ (as Grunkle Stan calls them) purchases while Mabel was discreetly showing them the door. She had a date with Pacifica and she was ready to leave. After we shuffled the last customer out Mabel was already on her phone talking to Paz.

I was locking up when I heard one of the tourists say ‘Look honey, one of the animatronics got loose.’ Looking out the door I saw one of the gnomes coming towards the Shack. Yeah Soos hired some of the Gnomes to act as animatronics during the tours to help ‘Make the display look more lifelike.’ And he pays them a pie a week for each working gnome, it’s a good deal all around (Geoff makes sure to get his cut of one slice out of each pie earned even though he doesn’t work any shifts). But the thing is the gnomes we had working today left right after the tour finished in their area. Well that and this gnome was coming from towards town. As I got a better look at it I saw it wasn’t one of Soos’s regular crew. I think this one was named Carson or was it Henry.

I walked outside as the tourist started to head for the gnome saying ‘I’ll get and take it back into the giftshop.” As I headed over to the gnome myself I got an even better look at Alan or was it Jeremiah, I saw that it’s complexion had soured. I tried stopping the tourist before he got to Kevin, Ezekiel, well whatever it’s name was but I was too late. As he had bent down he said “Honey it looks like this one was damaged, it’s leaking fluid… AAAAGGGGHHHH!”

The former gnome had taken the opportunity and took a giant (well for a gnome at least) chunk out of the man’s hand. As the guy pulled back the gnome scurried forward and climbed up his clothing before going for his jugular. I quickly hurried back towards the Shack and tried to bring his wife with me but she rushed forward to try and help her husband. I heard her screams as his died out. Locking the door I told the girls what had happened and to make sure the doors were locked tight. Well that and assured them that it was not my fault as I no longer had access to that spell anymore.

I then ran into the Shack’s office to grab the wireless microphone for the outdoor PA system. As I reached into the drawer where Soos kept it I came upon one of Grunkle Stans pistols, I grabbed it just to be safe. After going hunting with Wendy’s family a couple of times last year, I know how to use a gun but I really hoped I wouldn’t have to.

I met Wendy and Mabel back in the gift shop and after a quick debate over everyone’s taste in music we settled on a jingle from tv ad that we all were certain we knew. We gathered around the mic and harmonized perfectly. All it did was attract the, well, zombies towards the speaker on the totem pole. We belted out the song and tried a couple others and still there was no change in the now three zombies. Finally we gave up. I asked the girls to stay inside and I stepped out with the pistol pulled out. The two former tourists were quick to take out but the gnome was harder due to his size. He was only five feet away from me when I finally tagged him.

After Wendy let me back in we locked the doors and headed into the living room where Mabel had turned on the tv. After we watched the breaking news story it was apparent that whatever had attacked Rico, oh hell, the gnome had done it somewhere in town. There was already panic in the streets as people were being bitten and converted. Mabel was already on her phone checking back in with Pacifica. She gasped right in the middle of her conversation and I turned to see what had caused it. Right in the middle of the gang of ghouls was Preston Northwest. I really should have felt remorse for him, but to be honest I felt it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,

While Mabel talked to Pacifica, Wendy and I rushed around the Shack gathering up supplies. After the Weirdmageddon incident Mabel and I began making ‘bug-out bags’. I currently have two here in the Shack, one out in the compartment where I found the journal, one stashed with Multibear, and we all have one down in the Blind Eye room at the museum. I also found seven more of Stan’s guns plus some ammo. I tossed a baseball bat and a shovel into a gunny sack I found in the office and met back up with the girls. Wendy had gathered up a collection of can goods and her bag she had here, while Mabel had two bags of her own.

Mabel Said that Pacifica barricaded herself in her room at her parent’s ranch house and was packing a second bag of her own. We headed out and remembered that Wendy had rode her bike to work today. So Wendy grabbed the keys from the corpse of the zombie and we took their SUV. While Wendy drove I called the phone I had left with Multibear in case something happened to one of Several Timez. One of the band answered and handed off the phone to Multi, I warned him about what was going down and told him to be leary of any of the Band that may have been in town.

Next I started calling the gang. Tambry was at Robbie’s so that was a two for one call. They had been listening to some music when her phone started going crazy. At first they thought it was a joke until her Bumbl feed starting sharing stories of zombie encounters. I told her to warn Robbie that the three piece harmony defense I told him about after spotting one of the old style zombies trying to escape their graveyard after Weirdmageddon.

I didn’t reach Thompson and when I called Nate I found out that he had left his phone at home when his mother answered it. She said that as far as she knows he was with Lee & Thompson at the theater. After I tried to convince her of what’s happening but she just thought it was some kind of hoax. Calling Lee and the theater got no results.

Wendy had skirted around the outer edge of town on our way to pick up Pacifica. We pulled onto the grounds of the house and it was eerie. Normally there is some type of sound coming from the house. I stayed with the SUV while the girls went in to get Pacifica, Wendy went prepared taking not only her ax but one of the pistols. She also handed Mabel the baseball bat. From what they told me the house was trashed. Mabel said they found Fredricks, the Northwest’s only remaining in house servant, in the kitchen crouched over the remains of Priscilla. Mabel froze seeing the once gentle butler munching on his former boss. Wendy went to act but Mabel stopped her and walked up to the former butler and swung her bat straight down on his head. After he was done moving Wendy said she had to hold Mabel for a bit to calm her down.

While they were inside I was still outside trying to figure out why (besides the whole zombie outbreak) the quiet was bothering me. I looked around the property till I saw what it was, the stables. There was usually some type of noise coming from the stables when we visited Pacifica in the past. I was torn, I knew I needed to stay with the vehicle for when the girls got back but I was curious. It would only take me a moment.

I grabbed the shotgun and headed towards the stables. As I neared the doors I saw that one was pushed inwards, almost broken down. And then I finally heard some noise. Cautiously I peered through the open door and I saw it. Standing outside of the stall was one of the manotaurs, Beardy, and he had a big chunk torn out of his side. And it appeared as if he had just finished eating Pacifica’s horse, Cappuccino. I apparently gasped or something as he turned towards me and began to charge. I barely had time to bring the shotgun up and fire. Whoever loaded the chambers of this thing did not load buckshot. It was a slug shot and when it hit, it certainly did it’s job. Beardy dropped like a puppet whose strings were cut.

During the time I took to check the barn the girls had convinced Pacifica to let them into her room and once she saw the state of Mabel’s clothes she knew something had happened to the other’s in her house. For some reason (I believe it was in an attempt to have some type of normalcy) she insisted that Mabel change out of her bloody sweater. She had just finished when they heard the shot. Pacifica grabbed her stuff and they rushed out (Wendy guiding them away from the kitchen to spare Pacifica from seeing her mother). We all made it back to the SUV at about the same time. After they saw that I was ok and I explained what had happened, Wendy volunteered to go back inside to grab any non perishables that the house had in case we needed them. Pacifica also told her that her father had a satellite phone in his office incase of a power outage or phone line problems.

Once she was back with us we discussed where we were going to try to hold up for the night. We thought about heading back to the Shack and even staying here for the night but decided against either as the bodies at both locations may draw straggler zombies towards us. Finally it was a call from Lee that set our course of action.

Apparently a group of bikers from the Fractured Skull had tried taking up refuge in the theater and when Thompson attempted to stop them they threw him and Nate out into the arms of the oncoming horde. Lee was currently hiding out on the roof of the theater scared out of his mind. We told him to keep his phone on silent and to be ready to run once we called him. We planned to drive as close to the theater and try to get Lee out of there. From there the thought process was to try and find some sort of gated property for the night.

We made it into town with little hassle thanks to Wendy knowing the town like the back of her hand. As we got closer we saw that while the front of the theater had zombies milling about, the alleyway looked clear. I dialed up Lee and told him to head to the back of the roof and to look out for a blue SUV. As we pulled up I saw him hanging from the edge of the roof. Thanks to his lanky frame and the dumpster under him, he didn’t have that far to fall. He had made enough noise though that I climbed out of the SUV with one of the pistols drawn as Mabel and Pacifica helped him into the vehicle. The soft spoken giant was visibly shaken up over everything that he had seen in this short time. As I was heading back to the SUV the theater’s emergency exit opened and one of the bikers (he actually looked like one of Gideon’s old henchmen that had stayed in town after they got their pardon for their help during Weirdmageddon) had came through the door. Upon seeing us said something about stealing the SUV and getting out of town. I was hit by a thrown bottle as I started to climb into the vehicle. Wendy grabbed me and peeled out.

She ended up heading back out of town and pulled into the first place with a tall fence and a strong gate, Gleeful’s Auto Lot. It was Sunday so while Pacifica and Lee checked my head (still hurt like a dickens, apparently the bottle first connected lip first before rotating and finished hitting me so I had small gash near the base of my skull in the hairline), Mabel picked the lock on the chain holding the gate closed. After we were in the lot we closed up the gate and chained the lock on the inside. We pulled the SUV into the bay were bud has his mechanic (Ghosteyes usually) whatever minor work needed to be done to protect him from the town’s lemon law. In the office we found the keys to the rest of the vehicles on the lot and moved a panel van in front of the gate. That and the barbed wire on top should make it harder for the zombies to get in.

We set up camp inside of the office and mechanic’s bay and took inventory of out situation. We had the eight guns (three rifles, three revolvers, a semi auto pistol, & the shotgun), about a box of ammo for each, the baseball bat (Mabel had washed it after Fredricks I guess as it looked fairly clean), the shovel, a couple of weeks worth of canned goods (more if we ration), another two to three days worth in our bug out bags, Mabel’s grappling hook, Wendy’s ax, another hatchet she had in her bag, a hand crossbow (another of Wendy’s items with fifty bolts), two magnet guns, six flashlights (two with growth/shrink crystals, but I don’t see how they will help against the zombies. The only thing a shrunk zombie will be is harder to hit), approximately three outfits each (except for Lee), bandages (one of which is adorning the gash on my head), three machetes, a bowie knife, a stun gun (the only weapon Preston would buy Pacifica to defend herself), a large pocket knife (with a silver inlay in the blade that Pacifica bought herself last year after the werewolf transfer student incident), and thanks to the vending machines Bud had on the lot we now have cola and candy. There was more incidental items (like matches, toiletries, water filtration, etc) but this was the important stuff.

After the inventory check and a call to check on Robbie and Tambry (and to let them know about Nate and Thompson), Wendy and I walked the perimeter to look for any weak links in the fencing. It also gave us a chance to be there for each other and make sure we were not in shock over the days events. While walking the back fence we found out that Bud had installed a fifty gallon gas pump. We filled up a couple five gallon cans he had on site and topped off the tank in the SUV.

I decided to take the first watch and let the others sleep (I’m a night owl anyways). Wendy stayed up with me for about a half hour and we comforted each other. I took another walk around the perimeter after she went to lay down. About a hour later I started working on this journal entry. Till tomorrow.

Dipper Pines

June 18th, 2017 The first day of the zombie apocalypse.

With that Dipper closed the blue journal he had been writing in and stood up. he had been at this for a bit and it probably would be best if he did another perimeter search before he went and woke up Mabel for her shift. He had already let her sleep an extra hour more than was planned. ==================================

Well hello there, welcome to Revenent Falls. This is my take what would happen to the Gravity Falls crew if there were a zombie outbreak. And as we have seen these are not the same type of zombies that the Pines family have dealt with in the past. But after surviving Weirdmageddon and instances that have happened since then (it is Gravity Falls) the Twins and their friends are a little more hardened to the towns supernatural weirdness.

My story is set five years post Weirdmageddon. if you want to read a great take on what would have happened if the zombie apocalypse happened before ‘Not What He Seems’, I suggest you check out Dead Falls by @samuel-sadi. it is an excellent story and I highly recommend it.

Also remember to check out my other Gravity Falls works: Gravity Heroes - A few months after the Mystery Twins head home from Gravity Falls Mabel receives a call from Soos telling her that Dipper was found turned to stone out in the woods. The problem is that Dipper is standing next to her when she received the call. This leads them off to a new adventure. Gravity Heroes: Sidetracks - A series on one shots & drabbels that are stories that are in the Gravity Heroes-verse but aren’t necessarily required to read the main story-line. It’s essentially my take on the classic Marvel Comics Presents. Valor Force - During his time on the other side of the portal Ford encountered several people. One was name Zordon who shared scientific knowledge with him. After the defeat of Bill and seeing exactly what McGuket was capable of, Ford decided to use what he learned to create his own team. In 2016 a new threat arises and following Zordon’s advice Ford recruitsa team of ‘Teenagers With Attitude’ to create the Valor Force Rangers. Welcome To The Gravity Falls Region - My take on the Pokemon AU. Follow the adventures of the potential Pokemon Master Dipper Pines and his sister Mabel, Pokemon Coordinator extraordinaire, while they travel through the Gravity Falls Region. On hiatus. The Curse - Thanks to a misunderstanding Wendy is targeted by a fairy curse. This is a short story following what happens afterwards. Chapter 2 coming soon. Wrasslin Wendy - After Wendy’s brothers learn that Dipper’s Godfather is a former pro wrestler and beg him to introduce them. A few years later Wendy and her brothers are now working for Global Championship Wrasslin. that’s where our story begins. Camping With The Corduroys - Two quick little journal entries Dipper writes after he gets invited to go camping with his girlfriend’s family. The Geek Gets The Girl - The Friday after their 21st birthday (a party he had to miss thanks to an early starting college course), Mabel drags Dipper to a local bar where it appears her girlfriend Pacifica may have been trying to set him up with a blind date. Songfic without being a songfic (Follows the title and premise of the song without any of the lyrics) Fereality’s Gravity Falls Short Stories - My collection of shorts and drabbles that don’t fit anywhere else in my writings. Usually either Wendip or Mabcifica stories

Baby It’s Cold Outside - Wendip songfic written for the 2017 holiday season. Opposites Attract - Mabcifica songfic written to get the song out of my head.

I also would feel honored if any of my works inspire any art. If the do I would love to see them. Thanks again to all who have read this far. I’m happy to see different interpretations of the characters from the GH AU. Let me know by PM if you do and I’ll send out a list of the full descriptions to you. The art is now up at fereality.deviantart.com/ .

Again I’d like to give a shout out to @fullmetalkhaos, @geekngroom, @nautiscarader, @dusk4224, @mrdaxxonford, @castleoffiction-tokumoron, @stansmanhands, @silversoul596, @samuel-sadi, EZB, SuperGroverAway, ddp456, & A Pleasant Dream. Please check out their stories if you haven’t already.

Please review, I do read everyone. I’m always open to constructive and helpful criticism, though if you’re gonna troll please move on.

[jasonmcgathey]

DiMarco’s

Concerned the draft reserves in our keg might not hold through morning, we start marching, up Bethel and across a deserted bank parking lot to the nearby neighborhood watering hole, DiMarco’s. A divided, four lane concourse of revving engines and weekend mad revelers, strip mall facades on both sides lit up indexing, variously, every known shade of the rainbow, this stretch of Bethel still sizzles with a heat only unexplored turf can sustain. Not only this stretch but the wealth of Upper Arlington beyond where, having conquered campus in our peculiar slipshod way, which is to say incompletely, but the best we’re ever likely to, may very well stand my next great project. Cataloging this terrain, or any fraction of the buffer separating their world and ours, or another series of blocks entirely. We cavort in myriad clusters like zoo animals gone AWOL, and I’m suddenly reminded of those January nights scouting out High Street for the very first time. The feeling that anything can happen and you’re on the edge of some tremendous discovery, a sensation you can never explain, nor one you’re ever capable of replicating on command.

DiMarco’s is a simple dive bar with a pair of real dartboards along the back wall, one pool table near the front picture window and not much else. Booths around the rim, and wobbly mismatched tables in the middle, square and shoved together in blocks of two or three. Jukebox topheavy with 1980s hair metal the clientele has never stopped listening to, one large screen television between the pool table and the entrance. This place might not have much of that elusive element, class, but enough that nobody’s cracking someone else over the head with a pool cue. Everyone here’s a friend, including the squat blonde middle aged barmaid Jan, quick to smile, her slightly pudgy right hand man Zerby, wiry black curls distributed sparsely across his prematurely balding pate, large black eyeglasses lending him the appearance of an owl. They are always here, I’m told. A schedule as religious as the price slashes they apply each trip to the bar, just because we know Doug and the Yanik sisters.

DiMarco’s has at no point ever been my favorite bar in town, but I sure have spent a ton of time here, nonetheless. Enough friends who lived up this way did consider it their top spot, to where the rest of us wound up here constantly by default. There’s so many random memories swirling around my head about this place, as is often the case, that it’s difficult to determine what episodes or details to share.

I know I’ve spent at least two Halloweens here, in part, of which that photo up top documents one. This would be the year that a really sharp looking brunette flashed her tits at the entire room, and Miles – though dressed like a doctor – raised both of his arms like a football referee and announced, “that’s a field goal!” This makes the highlight reel, to be sure, and is also a great example of the classic Miles comment, memorable despite or because of not making 100% perfect sense…even though you basically know what he means anyway. Otherwise, on this particular outing, I’m going with the self-explanatory bathrobe and pipe look, while Lisa, though she’s removed it by this point, had earlier adopted some sort of slutty kitten mask.

As far as other memories are concerned…Roy, Doug Fogle and I once caught a ride here in a pizza delivery girl’s pickup, in an absolute downpour. A bunch of us had been at Polo’s and virtually everyone else in our crew already left on foot for DiMarco’s. By virtue of hanging around just a smidgen two long, the three of us are caught up in this rain, though we don’t know it until stepping out the front door.

“Hey,” Roy says, spotting a pizza joint next door, “let’s wait in there until this lets up.” 

We walk over and begin rattling the locked glass door. The lights are still on, there are two girls working behind the counter, and an Asian couple is milling around in the lobby. So what gives? Finally, the Asian lady strides over and unlocks the door, to the visible consternation of both employees. 

“We’re closed,” one of the girls calls out as our motley trio staggers in. Apparently, the two ladies were making up one last order for this couple, and that was to be the end of their night.  

“Here,” the other, nicer girl offers, a modest looking brown haired chick, “we’ve got two whole pizzas left over – you guys can have them.”  

We thank her in an appropriately profuse fashion, and Roy hands a pie each to Fogle and me. Then he lays three dollar bills on the counter before we leave just as abruptly as we came, and in no better shape. The rain hasn’t abated any yet here the three of us are standing beneath the same awning, except encumbered now with the additional weight of two pizzas.  

The nice girl bursts through the glass door, jogging to a nearby truck, expertly toting a piping hot pizza bag in one hand which bears the well known company logo. One last delivery, it seems, before her night is through, before she can wash her hands of fools like us – that is, until her next shift in hell comes calling. 

“Hey, can you give us a ride up to DiMarco’s?” Roy shouts across the parking lot, long after she’s passed us. She’s standing beside her truck now, fishing for keys, and offers no immediate reaction to the question, or whether she’s even heard it. 

“I’m not supposed to,” she shouts back to us, “but okay. Come on!” 

Sprinting over to join this chick before she changes her mind, Roy jumps into the shotgun seat while Fogle and I are left sitting like a pair of rain drenched idiots in the bed. She tears out of the parking lot and only then do I realize we’re still holding the pizzas, also, too moronic to keep them inside the truck with Roy. Still, weighing the pros and cons of this arrangement stacks up well for us, better than walking, and the cardboard boxes somehow fare better in the rain than we do.  

Two minutes later, we arrive at DiMarco’s. Roy and Fogle sprint inside, while I stop to have a few kind words with our driver. Inviting her to either come in for a drink or else swing by Doug’s apartment later, though she laughs off each suggestion before driving away. I have no choice but to join the others, now, and meet them inside. 

II.

I happen to remember the night Damon first met the Yanik sisters, too, for whatever reason, even though nothing about it is all that remarkable. I think this is because we’d been in town for almost a year, and Alan and I both had already enjoyed some scattered bedroom adventures with Lisa, not to mention partied with these people an unholy amount for months on end. Yet here our third roommate had somehow not even made their acquaintance, not only the sisters but this entire crew.

Then again, our lives are often more compartmentalized than we think. Coworkers we’ve worked beside for years upon years, though they’ve never met our families, to give one example. Or, like how this particular gang never really ventured down to campus or Grandview much, just as my campus and Grandview friends were almost never up here.

Bored on some random winter weeknight, I decide to call them up, having not seen these folks for a number of weeks myself. Since Doug moved away and I left Kroger, that outrageous era had ended and I hadn’t been on this northwest end of town much. Learning now that a bunch of them are heading to DiMarco’s, Damon and I decide to ride up there ourselves.

Their younger brother Tommy now occupies Doug’s old couch, and Dane, who’s gotten into one bad situation after another over the course of a few weeks, has wound up getting fired from his most recent job, at a department store, for not showing up and dicking around when he did make it in. Then he busts out the windshield of Maria’s car during a nasty fight, and Mike Nelson drops him to the ground with a haymaker and he’s kicked out of their pad as well, exiled from the charmed circle of friends.  

I introduce Damon to everyone – seated at one table in the dimly lit other half of DiMarco’s, the half away from the bar, is the cool but somewhat spacey Charlie, a part-time drummer, his stringy black musician’s hair now almost as long as Damon’s; the ever talkative and impossibly busty redhead, Jen McBride; Lisa with her admittedly comparable breasts, dark blonde locks currently worn straight and halfway down her back; and her sister Maria, a brunette, whom we are fortunate to catch in a really vocal mood this time around. The two of us squeeze in beside them and brace ourselves for this conversation. 

Junior, Tommy, and their preppy jock friend Cooper, who I remember from one other party back in the spring, are playing pool nearby, while the girls relate to us the latest adventures and trending gossip concerning everyone else. Meanwhile, Damon sits looking bored and sipping on a beer, or else trying to strike up a conversation with Lisa and Jen, even though they didn’t know what to make of this longhair character in horn rims. 

Although, it is possible he’s having a better time than it appears. “I knew I’d be in trouble meeting these fat girls with pretty faces,” he whispers to me at one point, after downing a couple brews. Even if Lisa’s ruining the good cheer by bitching incessantly about her roommates. Finally, the clock reaches two thirty and house lights are coming on, as we pay the ever present bartending duo and head for the doors.

“Jesus Christ, Dude!” Damon exclaims with a sigh as we steps outside, “they seem like nice girls and all, but man, that one was getting on my nerves.”

“She’s usually not that bad,” I explain, which is true.

“And what about that other one, the redhead, what was her name, Lisa?” 

“No, Lisa was the blonde,” I correct.

“Well, whatever, she was the one sitting on the outside, right? I couldn’t believe she was bitching about everyone not cleaning their rooms! Maaaaaaan, I’d tell that bitch to fuck off!“

“Well, they’re usually not that bad,” I tell him, “especially after you get a couple beers in them. They throw good parties though, and they do have some nice looking friends.” 

III.

They used to keep decks of cards behind the bar here and DiMarco’s, and possibly still do, as we’ve played many a game of euchre here. There was a long running tradition, and may still be, of pool tournaments played blatantly for cash in this bar, and nobody batted an eyelash. Then again, I don’t remember ever seeing law enforcement around these parts, and the help situation was always remarkably consistent, with Jan and Zerby here just about every night. So you weren’t going to catch any heat from them, either.

That TouchTunes jukebox at the very least had an REO Speedwagon album on it. This I know because Lisa, who I constantly berated for her somewhat horrible tastes in music, was particularly fond of that one, would play it here often. At some point along the line, though sleeping together off and on for about a decade, we did try actually dating for approximately an eight month stretch there in the middle. One night she was at this juke and that infernal Speedwagon disc was blasting Time For Me To Fly, while Lisa and Jen F stood there still picking out further tunes, and Jen told her, speaking of me, “Lisa, this song is for you. It’s time for you to fly.”

Despite this period (or maybe because of it, as the more Lisa would yell at me, the more inclined I was to laugh in her face), I always was and continue to be thought of as somewhat of a zany, hopeless goofball with this crew. It’s funny how you get off on a certain foot with various scenes, be it socially, or with work, or with family, and nothing much can ever really change this. You begin to realize it’s a combination of elements contributing to this phenomenon: a little bit of people only seeing what they expect to see, a little bit maybe of you falling into your familiar role with each circle, but then also, I half suspect sometimes, it almost seems like life is throwing events in everyone’s lap to bolster these impressions. Even one night here in DiMarco’s where Lisa’s been screaming again and Tommy’s threatening me with, “don’t do anything stupid!” won’t change the dynamic, is pretty much forgotten about five minutes later.

“She doesn’t listen to anything, dude,” I tell him.

“It’s my fuckin sister – you think I don’t know that?” he retorts.

Perhaps riding around with pizzas in the rain isn’t the best idea, if you’re trying to dispel some image. Even so, in the late 90s I was dating this perfectly fine looking brunette named Stacy, however briefly. I’m pretty sure that the first time I ever came out with her around this group, we were at DiMarco’s. At any rate, it was one of the few occasions I was ever with her, around this bunch. We’ve been here a while and she says something about wanting to dip over to Polo’s. So the two of us say goodbye to everyone, climb in my car and drive over there. Stacy and I sit at the bar and order one beer…and then she completely disappears. She saw somebody she knew across the bar and was going over to say a quick hello, and this was the last I saw of her that night.

I was more than a little embarrassed at the time about my pathetic glasses, thus would never wear them. So my eyesight wasn’t the greatest to begin with. Nonetheless, I did sit there for quite a while, nursing my beer, and even made a cursory lap or two of the place. May have possibly ordered a second brew, even. In this pre-cell-phone era, this basically represented the extent of your options. Therefore, despite not exactly rushing into this decision, I eventually shrugged it off, hopped back in my car…and returned to DiMarco’s alone.

“Where’s Stacy?” everyone asks, baffled by this turn of events.

“I have no idea,” I tell them.

Of course the entire mob – which, now that I think about it, was fanned around one of those larger central tables, itself a rarity, instead of spread like normal all over the bar – is howling, clapping their hands together, pretty much on the verge of spewing beer out through their noses. I was unwittingly playing the same old part as always. I guess it’s somewhat amazing that Stacy and I actually went out some more after this. But I never quite lived this one down. Nor did I ever bring her to DiMarco’s again.

IV.

Though pretty much everyone else has moved on, we do still swing by here from time to time, of course. It was here one night that it became obvious Damon was really hitting it off with this Maryland chick, who worked with Tommy, and the two of them soon turned into a serious couple. At some point, a window was installed connecting DiMarco’s with the Ange’s Pizza next door, and there became even less of a need to leave your barstool than before. Fluke reunions across the years have almost always meant a pit stop in this place is required, if it involves any of this old gang. Like for instance, the last I’ve seen of such disparate characters as Miles or Jen McBride, these occasions have transpired right here. I seem to remember hearing something about Jan and Zerby buying the place, even, though I’ll have to research that – but either way, I like to think that the two of them are still behind the bar, every night, just like always.

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