"Meat" by Susan Kim

From TRUTH BE TOLD's June 10th, 2025 show ("First Love/First Lust") Susan Kim's "Meat" is a story of how a little girl glimpses her future in a bag that contains a terrible secret...

Susan writes plays, books, documentaries, and quite a bit of kids' TV. A flaneuse who fortunately lives in Manhattan, the best city for that kind of thing, she loves animals and funny people, and really wishes we could all just get along. 

TRUTH BE TOLD was created by Susan Kim and David Zellnik and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svejcar. Logo designed by Joseph Zellnik.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the podcast Truth Be Told, Season 1, Love and Monsters. Each of these 14 episodes will feature one story performed at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City as part of the live event Truth Be Told. This story night was created by Susan Kim and David Zelmick and features members of EST and friends who tell heartbreaking, embarrassing, hilarious true stories, all based on a theme. This seven-week season draws from our first two sold-out evenings in 2025: First Love, First Lust, and Scary Monsters. And now, without further ado, a story in which a little girl glimpses her future in a bag that contains a terrible secret. Written and performed by Susan Kim.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Here's a confession. The story I'm about to share is not really sexy, although it is about sex, kinda. And while it is definitely a first, an awakening, for me at least, it wasn't exactly of love, but of something a little more. Well, you'll see. So this happened when I was in the fourth grade. I was what you'd call a young nine in that I was pretty much obsessed with animals. I adored animals. I made little outfits for my cats and would cross the street to pat a dog and always carried sugar cubes and carrots in case I ran into a horse or a camel, which I never did. I read books about animals and wrote and drew little stories about animals. It was all very Beatrix Potter in a Korean New York suburb kind of way. My friends were like me, girls who were happy to spend the weekend trying to get a chipmunk out of a drainpipe. I loved my friends. As for boys, well, they were just boys. They were always around. My brothers, their friends, boys at school, boys at church, boys at camp. I was used to boys. Some were funny, some were smart, some were cute. Some even liked animals. So we all had crushes, which involved a lot of pushing and giggling and calling boys by their last names, which we thought sounded very badass. Of course, we all went for the same boys, the smart, funny, cute ones who liked animals. And then there was Bob Whitnick. He was weirdly burly for nine, squared off and blunt, but not in a hot way, with heavy set features that already told you puberty was gonna be rocky. More to the point, Bob was not a great thinker. Then again, he didn't really say much, so it was hard to tell. Maybe he was a secret genius. God knows what he thought of me, when he did, if he did, which I doubt. Let's just say I don't think that we exchanged three words since fourth grade started. Anyway, so it's winter, maybe early December, and it's a Monday. Latecomers are still tromping in, trailing snow because there was still snow in early December back then, and everyone is hanging up their coats and pushing and giggling and calling each other by their last names. Our teacher, Mrs. Bernstein, is taking attendance, her eyes flickering up and down the rows. One seat is empty. It's Bob's. Mrs. Bernstein makes a note, closes her ledger, and is about to move on when suddenly we all look up. Bob Whitnick stands in the doorway in a swirl of cold air. He looks even more block-like than usual thanks to his outfit. He's not dressed like the rest of us in a colorful nylon ski jacket or a cute Eskimo amorak trimmed with fake fur. No. Bob is dressed like a man and not in a good way. Kind of like Henry Fonda from an old movie with an oversized felt hat with ear flaps, a muffler and a thick red checked wool coat. He's carrying something in one hand, a bag of some kind, and he clumps up to Mrs. Bernstein and hefts it onto her desk where it lands with a thud. The object inside is roughly the size and weight of a bowling ball bulging through the clear plastic. From where I sit, even I can see this is no mere baggy. The plastic is industrial weight, something you'd use for yard work or waterproofing a boat or disposing of a body, and it's bound tightly with a thick knot. And this bag is filled almost to bursting with something large that is grey and milky white and veined with blue, only partly visible through the bright red liquid that is leaking out upwards through the knot. Me and my dad went deer hunting, says Bob to Mrs. Bernstein. So I brung you some meat. My memory? Everyone in the room immediately loses their shit. Even Mrs. Bernstein recoils. How could she not? But she was a pro. Thank you, Bob, she says bravely. She somehow picks up the bag without getting blood all over the place and hoists the whole thing into the bottom drawer of her desk. Then she slams it shut with a clang, clearly indicating subject closed. It doesn't work. Around me, everyone is still shrieking and jumping up and down in that horrified, I can't believe that just happened way. But not me. Yes, it is truly the saddest, most horrific thing I have ever seen. But everything is suddenly very far away. It's as if all of the air in my lungs has been forced out, and I'm also being squeezed upwards out of my body like toothpaste. Like I'm watching the whole thing from above, but I'm not, like I'm about to faint, but I don't. And while this is happening, all of the bright noise and commotion kind of dims, and the whole world shrinks to a single spot. And that spot, I'm stunned to say, is Bob Whitnick. I watch as he makes his way to his desk. And remember, I was someone who stopped eating hamburger for a year when I found out it came from cows. I held funerals for lizards and spiders. And that thing with Bambi's mother don't even get me started. So what was going on? Years later, I think I understand. As awful as that moment was, and trust me, it was silence of the lambs awful. It was also my first moment of primal emotion. It wasn't pretty, and it sure wasn't comforting. But it was exciting, horribly so, in a way that I can only say resembled lust. I don't mean lust in the grown-up hormonal sense, the lust that brings joy and connection or anguish and pain, or at the very least helps pass the time until we die. It was also love, or at least love adjacent. Because I think I saw Bob for the first time that morning, really saw him. And isn't that a kind of love? So what did I do after that? Well, obviously, I trailed Bob. For weeks, I tried to flirt with him or at least strike up a conversation, which in fourth grade meant offering him one of my ring-dings or trying to show him a dead bee. Reader, I was unsuccessful. Bob found me and my chatter as boring as ever. After a while, he started skirting me when he saw me coming, and after a month or so, I just gave up. All of this was a really long time ago. And of course I know that as a couple, Bob and me, even being wildly optimistic, total non-starter. But still he was my very first something. Because what was that bag of meat but a gift to not just Mrs. Bernstein but the whole class? In the crudest, oldest language possible, he gave us a glimpse of not just death, but the future, with all of its blood and sex, birth and organs, sickness and teeth and vitality, and yeah, disgust. Of all of us, Bob Whitnick alone had killed, making an animal sacrifice to some weird pagan god I didn't even know existed. It's as if he had captured the meaning of life and was handing it to us. Mysterious and only partly visible, bobbing in blood like the plastic message dice in an old magic eight ball.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Susan Kim writes plays, books, and documentaries, and quite a bit of kids' TV. A flanes, who fortunately lives in Manhattan, the best city for that kind of thing. She loves animals and funny people and really wishes we could all just get along. Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zonlick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Spaghart. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening. More stories of love and lust will be released every Monday and Scary Monsters every Thursday. And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps. Till next time, remember, Truth Wants to be known. Yours too.