I had two older brothers while growing up. We would wrestle in grocery lines:
“I call ‘Mr. Perfect!’”
“Then I’m ‘Macho Man!’”
“Then I call ‘Andre The Giant!’”
It was a matter of time before gum racks, substituting for ring ropes, would spill rows of Bubblicious and Big Chew. We oftentimes would pants each other. For retaliation, we’d shove dirty-bunghole fingers into unguarded nostrils.
Once, before I outgrew my older brothers, they gave me a beat-down in the driveway.
“Wiffle bats don’t hurt, dummy,” my older brother claimed. “We can swing as hard as we want.”
I wanted to cry. The rage built inside me. “Stupid faggot assholes!” I screamed.
One brother held my cheek against the oil-spotted cement. The other yanked my sore arm behind my back, forcing my hand between my shoulder blades. Any higher and I knew something would tear; I tapped for mercy.
Through the back screen, Dad barked, “Cool it.” He stifled his laugh. “Mom’s home.”
Mom called us the cross on her back. She cried plenty. Mom pleaded to ceilings and skies, “Why? Why no girls?”
Now, I know how she felt. I have three daughters, ages thirteen through seventeen. From stolen barrettes to a captured cell phone dropped in the toilet, they bicker constantly, shrieking who’d done it. When upset, their flushed faces resemble mine. The winner boils down to who can yell the longest with the highest pitched voice. The family counselor said I was teaching them ineffective anger-management by jamming their hands into each other’s hair and demanding blood. Susan, my wife, said, “You lack any understanding of these girls.” We were spiraling towards a divorce. To ease the stress at home, I switched to graveyard hours at the docks. Still, on my days off, I had to deal with Susan and the girls.
Then the real estate boom hit. We refinanced and built a second-story addition. Susan and I have everything up there: half-kitchen, bathroom with jacuzzi, master bedroom, comfy living room. The new couch has reclining seats. On the back wall, the techs secured my top-of-the-line, high-definition, flat-screen television. Only casino lounges have larger.
My dish antenna catches stations from anywhere in the world. The resolution is clear, accurate. Every detail is bright, lifelike. I taped directions to the back of my remote so Susan wouldn’t screw anything up. She loves pausing DVD’s and pointing at the facial flaws of each actress—large nose pores, pocked foreheads—made undetectable by the limited picture quality of a standard set. It’s through this TV that I met Homey. We’ve been buddies ever since.
I remember the morning it happened. I had been at work beforehand. Hours before dawn, an offshore storm had rocked the Pacific Ocean, tipping freight ships side-to-side.
I was at the end of my shift when Boss rolled up.
“Get in the goddamn truck.” His voice was raspy from parking-lot gin drinking.
Shit, I thought. I’m almost out of here.
The week before, Boss noticed my attention had been absorbed elsewhere. I told him my difficulties in the home. Boss strongly suggested time-off.
Following that morning shift, I had been scheduled for a two-week hiatus. I planned to see old friends and watch football. I also wanted to repaint the bathrooms away from pink.
Boss sped us to another landing dock. A damaged cargo container sat in an unusual spot, its metal sidings gouged. Pelicans dove for the refrigerated goods spilling out.
Boss chuckled, handing over an empty garbage bag. “Take as much as you please. Enjoy your vacation time.”
Soon afterwards, I was home stacking a hundred packs of imported hot dogs in the fridge. I nuked a dozen but forgot to place them in water. By the final beep, they were twisted and split open, wheezing high-pitched grease. For the next batch, I brought out the croc pot. I set it on the coffee table strewn with chopped onion and ketchup. Relish and sauerkraut. Paper towels, mustard. I was starved.
Waiting for the water to boil, I put the TV on. I flipped past the weather channels, checked out some porn. Then I switched to midget ping-pong. But that got boring too. I kept flipping. Flipping-flipping-flipping-flipping. Nothing looked good.
I settled on Les Simpsons. The white clouds had just parted above Springfield. Homer parked his car for Bart to skateboard over and dodged Marge as she sped into the garage. Homer jumped toward his spot on the family couch; his big behind did not fit. Wiggling his bottom down with force, a popped-cork sound was made. Marge flung her hands up uncontrollably. She threw Maggie through the ceiling, her star-shaped head platter’d in the middle of Lisa’s carpet. Maggie batted her gapped eyelashes. She sucked her binky and fell back down. Marge caught her. The theme music ended. She was upset. “Homey, tu es trop gros! Tu dois commencer à maigrir. Non plus de nourriture industrielle. Plus Résonnez non des Dongs--.”
I squeezed mayo into the first bun and read the translation: “Homey, you’re getting too fat! You need to start losing weight. No more junk food. No more Ding Dongs--.”
“Awwww, Marge. No more Ding Dongs!” Homer complained.
“Yes,” Marge continued. “No more Ding Dongs. No more donuts. And no more Moe’s!”
Speaking in French, when her accent could have been foxy, Marge still irritated me. Her voice whines like scratched chalkboard. Like Susan, they both nag! nag! nag! I hate naggers. If the chance arrived to vote a character off the show, I would dial whatever number plus pound to have Marge Simpson erased.
What will Homer do next? I wondered. I continued prepping my first hot dog. Sliced dill pickles, soft butter. Excess ketchup fell from the long bun. I licked the edge of my palm.
Homer sniffed. “Mmmmmm.”
I searched the screen over. There were no wavy sections to indicate what he smelled.
“Homey, look at me when I’m talking to you!” Marge screeched.
Homer’s back was turned to her. He reminded me of when I tune out Susan.
I took a big bite, followed by another.
Facing the audience, Homer’s five o’clock shadow was drenched in purple drool. His tongue mopped his jowls. Homer looked desperate. I’ve been there before. You’re at the cliff of your life, staring down at the rowdy waters spraying off the razor-sharp rocks below. You know you shouldn’t jump, but still, you want to feel that weightless sensation of youthful freedom. No wife. No kids. No nothing.
“I love hot dogs!” Homer said.
Homer swiftly whirled his hand at the bottom of my screen. He rearranged the pixels for a hole to step through. My wide-screen television was too high off the ground. Homer’s swollen black shoes, followed by his plastic jeans, dangled above my carpet. His entire body then fell through the opening. Standing on my living room floor, Homer brushed himself off. His shirt was stiff as if starched with cement.
I sat dumbly, half-eaten hot dog in hand.
Marge demanded, “Homey, get out of that nice man’s house!”
Homer grabbed my remote. He turned around, frantically hitting buttons. He punched the language selector:
--“¡Homey, salgate de la casa de ese hombre bueno!”
--“Homey, komm raus aus dem Haus von dem netten Mann!”
--“Домашний, выньте дом того хорошего человека!”
Marge stormed to the foreground. Her features inflated across the screen.
Homer tossed me the remote. I hit Mute. The black hole of Marge’s mouth hinged silently. She bounced the corners, searching each pixel for an entryway. Her yard-long blue hair protruded into my living room.
Homer cried, “Ahhhh!” He looked from flat-screen to me. “Turn her off. Turn her off.”
I pressed the red button. The screen darkened.
Marge was gone but her cut-off hair remained. Homer picked it up.
“Ooooh!” he said accusingly. “You’re gonna be in big trouble by Marge.”
I returned, “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are!”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Nuh-uh. I’m not the one married to her.”
“Doh!” Homer yelled.
From inside my bedroom, Susan said tiredly, “Dan, you’re waking me. Turn it down.”
I motioned for Homer to stay quiet. I replied to Susan in practiced husband-voice, my throat clenched, “It’s…it’s okay. I’m sorry, sweety. Promise to keep quiet.”
Susan said nothing more.
I shook the remote at Homer. “If you wake her one more time, you’re going back in there. Understood, Homey?”
“Hey! Only Marge calls me ‘Homey.’”
I slapped together a dog for him. He reached for it. I pulled back. “Understood…Homey?”
He quickly agreed. “Homey it is.”
Homer swallowed the entire dog. The bun was visible as it slid down his throat. “Marge won’t let me have fun anymore.”
“Homey, that’s their job,” I told him. “Sit down. Kick your feet up. Have another.”
Homer tossed Marge’s hair on the couch. When a cartoon sits next to you, you notice things about them. Homer had wax in his ear. His chest looked waxed. His forearm slid directly into his hand, no wrist. He grabbed the tongs with three fingers and a thumb, each missing a nail. He fished around the bubbling water for the next dog.
“Fuckin’ love your show!” I told him. “I remember when you first started as a skit for Tracy Ullman.”
Homer chewed. No response.
“Then you had that Christmas special. I had a VCR at the time. I taped it. Man, I must’ve watched that thing a million times.”
Homer layered the condiments faster than a short order cook. His blurry movements hovered above the table in a heap of yellow wisps. He ate ravenously, wolfing down four in mere seconds. He hadn’t heard a single word I had said. His skin felt like Nerf-material.
“Ouch!” Homer said with a full mouth. “What’s the pinch for?”
“Shhh,” I reminded him. “Susan would raise hell if she knew you were here. She thinks you’re stupid and that your show brainless.” I had Homer’s attention. “But no, what I was saying is that I’ve been watching you forever.”
Instantly donning black sunglasses and a flipped collar, Homer appeared very Hollywood. He boasted, “Yes, I have been successful, haven’t I? Hundreds of episodes in the can, over a decade of seasons, viewed the world over…”
For a moment, my concentration lapsed. I thought of work, the cargo containers stacked high like apartment buildings. I drive through miles of them and wonder what they contain. Could be computers. Or maybe arms. I figured 4,000 of Homer’s posters could fit in one.
Homer was still bragging. “Everyone knows Homer. In fact, I am one of the most famous characters in the history of characters. But in regards to your wife’s opinion of me”—Homer dropped his chin, letting the sunglasses slip forward, showing me his beady eyes—“my wife thinks you’re an idiot too.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“She watches you.”
“She watches me?”
“Yup. We all do.”
I sat stunned.
Homer’s glasses disappeared. He explained, “At the beginning of each show, we hop on the couch and watch TV. But our set is different; it shows us what you’re doing too. We don’t miss a thing. Why do you think our eyes are so big?”
“Marge…the Marge Simpson…thinks I’m an idiot?”
“Well, for one thing, you pick your nose too much. But what really turned Marge off—I think it was during our third season—was when your wife left you in charge of the girls. The youngest one was sick, throwing up all night. You were obviously desperate to sleep. We watched you pour that Smirnoff Ice into her cupee.”
I had never told anyone that. “You know Susan wants to have another one?”
“Yes,” Homer answered.
“But Susan hadn’t told any--. Oh yeah.”
“Overall,” Homer said, “Marge thinks you’re a horrible father. She thinks you don’t pay enough attention to them.”
“Look who’s talking?” I snapped back. “You have a vandal for a son, a smart daughter retained in the same grade each year, and a baby you refuse to hold. I should switch to pudding soon and watch reruns of The Cosby Show.”
“Mmmm. Pudding.”
To shut Homer up, I put on my TV. It was the time of morning when SportsCenter replays highlights three times in a row.
Homer marveled. “It’s like we’re sitting front-row!”
We finished off the rest of the dogs. My stomach was stretched with warmth.
Homer widened the tongs. He placed the open end to the back of my head.
“The hell are you doing?” I said.
“Seeing how smart you are.” Homer spoke like a professor. “In the early-20th century, a group of psychologists named phrenologists believed they could measure intelligence from the shape of one’s skull.”
Great, I thought. Science lessons from Homer Simpson.
I confiscated the tongs. “Now, your creator,” I said, “he’s smart. He keeps the show current and never runs short on material.”
“He is,” Homer replied smugly. “But first he asks our opinion before he makes us do anything.”
“That’s strange,” I said.
“What’s strange?”
“That he asks your opinion first.”
“You should talk to yours more often,” Homer said. “Maybe he’d let you make some changes.”
“We rarely talk,” I said.
The conversation had become a strain.
Downstairs, an alarm rang. My oldest daughter has Driver’s Ed for zero-period. She wants a new car for graduation.
The skylight above was light blue.
“Don’t you need to return to the show?” I said. “Huh, Homey? Don’t you think it’s time to go back?”
I flipped to the French station where I had found him. Marge was standing there. Her arms were crossed, head bandaged.
Homer stood up. “Time to make-up to the Misses.”
“See you later,” I said.
“Not unless I see you first,” Homer muttered. He smiled lamely and grabbed Marge’s hair that was flat as a plate. I boosted him back into the screen. He was light as a cardboard cutout.
Marge flung her hair to the side and shook Homer by the neck. His eyes bulged out. She released Homer and pointed to the couch. As Marge walked to their bedroom, the theme music began, signaling the end of the show. I turned off the tube. The screen went dark.
“Babe, I can hear you’re still awake,” Susan said from the bedroom. “Did you remember to pay the mortgage yesterday?”
My daughters’ voices then entered our bedroom:
“Daddy, can I have three hundred dollars for the Justin Timberlake concert?”
“Dad. You’re a guy. Why did Tommy break up with me yesterday?”
“I need help me with my science project. It’s due in an hour.”
I zapped the TV on. I TiVo’d back to Les Simpsons.
“Homey?” I said.
Their living room was dark. Homer opened his bright, round eyes.
“I need your help,” I said. “They want too much from me already.”
Susan and the girls pounded on the door. The doorknob jiggled. Inside the thin space between the door and the frame, my Platinum credit card appeared. Susan worked it down like a saw, going for the lock.
“Open the screen, Homey. I’m coming in!”
Homer flipped his light on. He rapidly swirled his hand at my screen, working overtime to make a hole for my size. I grabbed the tongs and the remote, then pushed the coffee table against the wall.
Click.
The credit card had unlocked the door. Susan would walk in and yell at me for the mess on the carpet. She would remind me of doctor appointments, dinner parties, anniversaries.
I hopped up. Half my body was suspended above my busted coffee table; the other portion was crawling onto Homer’s carpet. “Brother,” I said with my head through his screen, “you need a bigger TV!”
Homer tugged me by the hips into his living room. He pointed. “Here she comes.”
In the upper-left corner of his TV, I saw the door to my living room was opening. The movements were stilted like surveillance footage.
I fastened the tong’s metal ends onto my remote. I extended my remote into my living room and squeezed the tongs with all my might. The red button was pushed. My TV turned off. Homer turned his TV off, too.
“Thanks man,” I said.
We shook hands. I noticed the hair on my arms had disappeared.
“Why am I so yellow?” I asked Homer. “I feel like a giant highlighter.”
“The ink has to dry,” he said. “My creator must like you.”
I flipped my arms, blowing. “He did a good job. Even on both sides.”
A thought hit me. “Does this mean--?” I hesitated. “Does this mean I’m part of the show now?”
Homer nodded.
My insides wiggled like an excited kid at Disneyland.
“Let’s go celebrate!” I yelled.
“HOMER SIMPSON!” Marge screamed from their bedroom. “You’re in enough trouble as it is. Turn down the TV.”
Homer winked to me. “Yes, darling. Yes, sugar dumpling. Yes, lemon merrange pie. Yes, apple bottom. Yes--.”
I gestured overkill.
We waited for Marge to respond. It never came.
“I don’t wear a watch,” Homer said. “What time do you have, Dan?”
“Six.”
“Moe’s Tavern is open.”
Beer sounded good.
“I’m buying,” I declared. “A delicious pitcher of Duff’s.”
“WOO-HOOO!!!!!”
“That’s it!” Marge roared from their bedroom. “I’m fed up with you, Homer! I’m grabbing the huge eraser from the laundry room and smudging off that big mouth of yours.”
I looked to Homer. Desperation had returned to his eyes. He was scared, lips tucked in.
“C’mon Homey,” I said. “You need that mouth for Moe’s!”
We raced down his block like first graders towards recess. The sky then parted, shining a spotlight of morning sun on me.
A large voice inquired if I’d like to stay as a resident of Springfield.
“Yes,” I screamed back. “Yes!”
BIO: My name’s Max Evans. I was born, raised, and educated in Long Beach, California. I attended Long Beach City College before attaining a B.A. in Psychology at California State University Long Beach. I was previously published in a literary publication called Children, Churches, and Daddies. Currently, I am in the MFA Fiction program at CSULB. After graduation, I plan to teach. Also, I hope to publish a book of short stories—primarily from the perspective of single, young fathers—entitled “Pops’ Stories.” At present, I live with my parents and eight-year-old son. He likes me to read fishing stories to him, as written by Hemingway and Carver. I still need to learn how to tie on a hook.
