Content Warning: This episode contains violence against children and explicit language.
Cambodia1975
Set list:
Simon & Garfunkle, The Sound of Silence
After a moment, we compose ourselves and muster enough courage to stand around the crater that used to be a dog and a land mine.
“Goodbye, Samnang. You were a good boy.” Meng is crying, leaving the eulogy to Siem, who is wringing sweat from his black pajama top. I peer into the hole and direct my flashlight to its center. There, shining bright in the reflection of my beam, is a bit of riveted metal. It’s round and reminds me of a submarine hatch in a James Bond film. I drop down into the hole.
“Pannah! What are you doing?”
“What? It’s not like there is another mine under this one. This might be the safest place in this whole field. I need to look at this.”
I brush away moist soil and roots from the wheel and discover that it is some kind of door. Siem drops down to help me clear away the debris. Meng is still crying. After a concerted effort, we uncover a hatch wide and tall enough for a person to crouch through.
“Well,” says Siem, “what now?”
“You open it,” I say.
“No. You are the one who spotted it and came down here first.” I shine my flashlight at the metal of the door. The reflected light illuminates Siem’s face. He looks mad, but he’s always squinting like that, so it’s hard to tell.
I grasp the thick metal rods in the center of the wheel and pull down, wrenching counterclockwise.
“It’s no use. I’m not strong enough.” I look back at Siem, who sighs and grabs the rods with me. We strain against the metal, but it’s still stuck fast. We are blinking sweat from our eyes and breathing too hard to notice Meng as he slides down the bank of the crater. He places his hands on ours, and together we give it one last try.
The wheel gives slightly and we lose our balance, falling into a muddy heap. I hear the hiss of released air as I wipe mud from my eyes. We pick ourselves up and stare into the open door of a bunker. Flickering light strobes out of the aperture. Our mouths hang open in surprise and wonder. I step into the hatch and shine my light around. The walls are lined, floor to ceiling, with tins of Oscar Mayer Cocktail Weenies.
“We’re rich,” I say. Meng sniffles, mumbles something, and rubs his nose with a muddy sleeve. “What was that, Meng?” I ask.
“I said, thank you, Samnang.”
All three of us sit together in the hatch wearing only our underwear. We left our clothes, smeared with dog guts, on the roadside. Siem wears his glasses now.
“Do you think they will believe that we’re dead?” he says through a mouthful of wieners.
“I doubt they will spend much time making sure,” I say. “Come on, Meng, eat the food!”
“I don’t eat meat,” Meng says quietly.
“You can’t possibly care about piety now! Besides, I’ve seen you eat crickets,” I argue.
Siem chuckles. “Yeah, are you a monk, Meng?”
Meng starts to cry again.
“No,” he sniffles and wipes his nose with the back of his skinny bare arm, “but my father was.” We stop chewing. “He was, until they killed him.” Silence falls between us.
“Well, what do we do now?” I ask.
“Isn’t it obvious?” shouts Siem. He doesn’t squint anymore, now that he has his glasses. “There’s no going back now.” Siem stands and scratches his crotch. “If the Khmer Rouge finds us with this, they will kill us,” he says.
“We can stay in here and hide until—”
“Until when, Pannah? Until all of Kampuchea is one big farm? Until Pol Pot and his thugs kill everyone they don’t like? People who wear glasses and go to school? Priests?” He glances at Meng.
“I am hungry,” admits Meng, and he reaches for a tin.
“I suppose they were going to kill us with these mines anyway,” I admit.
Siem’s face is red with anger. “This is a way to fight back against them!” he says, gesturing at the sting rows of tin.
Meng’s hands are shaking as he pulls the ring tab off the wieners.
“Fight back? How?” I ask, standing up to face him.
“People are starving, Pannah! The Organization doesn’t care about us!”
“But what are we going to do, Siem? We are just teenagers—not even. I’m twelve.”
“I know why you’re afraid, Pannah.” Siem steps closer to me. “You’re from the country. You’re scared to act because you are one of them! The Angkar is for people like you. Your people helped put them in power!”
Before I know what I’m doing, I push him in the chest. It was a feeble push, but something softens in my friend’s face.
“So, you can fight.” He steps closer and places a hand on my bare shoulder. “They took away my family. They took away my dreams.” Siem takes off his glasses and shakes them in my face. “They would have killed me because I got good grades and wore glasses. What did they take from you, Pannah?”
I search his brown eyes. I know the answer, but I’m afraid to say it.
“They took away his singing,” whispers Meng, “and his music.” Meng drops the empty tin, looking up at us. I sit down heavily next to Meng and hand him another.
“What are you suggesting exactly?” I ask. “That we sneak around the labor camps and compounds delivering tins of wieners to our starving countrymen?”
We all three look at each other. Meng’s teeth sink—with no resistance—into the meat, and his face melts with happiness. He stands, mouth full, and says:
“Let’s do it.”
Chicago late August 2025
* I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor
* There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back, Shawn Mendes
* Semi-Charmed Kind of Life, Third Eye Blind
* Yesterday, The Beatles
I’m in hell! Saturday night with three pre-pubescent furries!
All her friends, they wear animal tails. I thought I told her no weirdos. The worst part is meeting these girls’ parents. You think there’d be some sort of organic camaraderie, a sympathetic half-smile, like yeah, we all have to forgo Saturday nights to drive our weird kid around to do weird things. Tonight is just your turn. Maybe they feel this way—no one treats me badly—but I feel a creeping, subtle judgment. It makes me feel gross and self-protective. I wonder if they think I like spending my time toting twelve-year-old girls around to karaoke bars.
I’m not the creep.You are.Sperry-dad.
I’m not pining for lost youth.
You are.Hipster mom with bird tattoos.
Yeah, we were all cool once. Get over yourself. I scratch my scalp through my cap and turn down the blaring K-pop my daughter and her friends are blasting into my stereo from their phones.
It would have helped the optics if my wife had actually come with us. She got called into work for an “emergency.” It may be better this way. Now I don’t have to explain Mr. P’s presence.
“Mr.!” One of her weird friends pokes my shoulder. She is wearing sharp triangles of pink makeup on the sides of her eyes. How did that become popular? It’s like if Elsa from Frozen got pink eye.
“Did you use to play in a band?”
I eye my daughter in the rearview. “Yeah, I did for a bit in college.”
“Did you play with anyone important, like on-the-radio popular?”
“Some. I doubt you would know any of them—” They are not listening anymore. The other friend is showing them something on “her” phone. Kids today are so free to express themselves–which is great–in theory, but they are so weird. I honestly don’t know if I envy them.
After filing into the Karaoke bar, we are ushered into a small private room by a very young Asian man wearing a white shirt and black tie. The girls rush in and grab the remote and tambourines, and the young attendant hands me sticky laminated drink menus. As he turns to leave, I look down the narrow hall and see Mr. P entering the building. He sees me too.
Who the f**k is that behind him?
A young man is following beside him. Is this dude his agent, lawyer? The young man overtakes Mr. P in the hall and offers me his hand. He is handsome, with soft features, clear dark tan skin, and a streak of blond in his straight black hair. They are both holding motorcycle helmets.
“Hello, I’m Koeh, Mr. P’s son. I hope it’s okay that I’m here. My father asked me to come along because, well—” He turns back to his father for a second, as if to ask a silent question. The boy continues, blushing slightly. “He said that while he’s impressed that a twelve-year-old white girl can speak any Khmer, it was still hard to understand her.”
Mr. P bows and smiles a conspiratorial smile. This makes sense. I nod and shake his hand.
“That and his van broke down, so we rode here on electric scooters.” says Koeh with a smile full of straight white teeth.
“No, that’s fine.” I answer. “The more the merrier. Come on in.” I open our door, and the girls have already turned down the lights, turned on a disco ball, and my daughter is belting out the chorus of some Japanese pop song.
I give the two Cambodians a withering smile. We sit in the corner.
Koeh is polite, and his English is excellent.“I understand you want my father to sing on a record,” he says.
Mr. P gets up and waddles toward the girls.“Mr. P!” they scream and wave him closer. His waddle becomes a playful waltz, and he doffs an imaginary cap. My daughter hands him the remote.“Sing! Sing! You pick next!”
“There’s something you need to understand about my fath—” Koeh starts. I put my finger up to silence him.
“Sorry, one sec,” I say. “I know this song.” The tell-tale piano intro makes my spine tingle in anticipation. Great choice, Mr P.
“First I was afraid, I was petrified!”
Perfect English. Did the lights dim lower on their own? Jesus. This guy’s voice… It’s not Gloria Gaynor, but it’s just as haunting. I feel a lump starting in my throat, and I blink back tears.
“I should’ve changed that stupid lock, I should’ve made you leave your key…”
He’s legit angry. This man has lived a life. He has survived.
“If I’d known for just one second, you’d be back to bother me!”
The girls squeal. They can barely keep their phones up to record this potentially viral video due to the giggling. If he’s offended by their laughter, he doesn’t show it.
I steal a glance at Koeh. He’s giving me a knowing smile. Once the song is finished, I get up too quickly to make an order. I need to keep Mr. P around, keep him singing. Each time I hear him, I get a clearer vision of what he’s capable of—and my place in the dream. I order bottomless Cokes and, at the insistence of my daughter, some kind of nasty seaweed crackers.
The night passes in a blur of screaming, giggling, and arguing over who’s next and what song. I find that I’m actually having fun.
Koeh sings a Shawn Mendes song. He’s done this before. The girls feign a swoon as he shimmies his shoulder and leans in singing:
“Oh, I’ve been shaking, I love it when you go crazy. You take all my inhibitions. Baby’s there’s nothing holding me back.”
The girls clap to the beat. He’s good, but not as good as his dad. Mr. P seems to be having a great time. I sing Semi-Charmed Kind of Life, by Third Eye Blind for old times sake. My daughter sits next to me; she leans against me as Mr. P closes out the night with Yesterday by the Beatles.
“I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday…”
We sit in reverent silence for a long, slumped moment. The attendant comes in and turns on the lights.
“Time to go. Arigato!”
In the parking lot, the girls push past me and race to the van, their animal tails flow behind them. I walk slowly with Mr. P and Koeh.
“As I said before—” Koeh skips ahead of me, turns, and places a hand on my chest. I stop. “There is something you need to know about my father. He has a history with singing.” Mr P. is off to the side, casting a faraway look out at the night sky.
“He is willing to sing for your recording…”
I am elated. My daughter leans out the driver’s side and yells:“Dad, can I drive?”
Koeh grabs my hand.“He will sing, if you’re willing to hear his story.”
Cambodia 1975
Stand By Me, (cover) Florence and the Machine
They call us the Weiner Man.
Reverent whispers among the people reverberate off the brutal walls of the killing camps. For the past two weeks, the Establishment has been moving people into death camps and killing families in open fields.
We wait until the dead of the night, and with a satchel of wieners, we creep out into the countryside. Aided by our map and flashlights, we visit each settlement and distribute the goods to the needy.
The Khmer Rouge think we are Vietnamese spies. According to reports, battles have taken place near the border. The common people think we are a benevolent spirit or the reincarnation of their deposed king. If we were to visit more than one community in a night, folks may figure out that there is more than just one “Weiner Man,” but as it takes all three of us to do the job right, they may never know.
The rumors of the Weiner Man grow and grow… until we get caught.
I realize, as they march us up onto a raised platform in front of a crowd of emaciated townsfolk, this could never have continued. It was honestly a miracle that we hadn’t been caught sooner.
The flabby-faced commander looks skinnier now. His black shirt is ripped at the top and his skin clings to his rib cage. His eyes are dead. He pulls out a pistol and walks behind Meng. I squeeze my eyelids shut and start to sing.
“If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, and the mountains should crumble to the sea.”
BAP!—I keep my eyes closed.
“I won’t cry. I won’t cry. No, I won’t shed a tear, just as—”
BAP!—I keep my eyes closed.
“Just as long as you stand, stand by me.”
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