Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag – A Memoir

by Kevin Wolf

Content advisory: Graphic depictions of animal slaughterhouse, human amputation, war surgery

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m a vegetarian. I’ve been one since August 1980. I’m not vegan; I still eat eggs and dairy products. I do my best to not hurt animals, down to the insect level. I grew up in a meat-and-potato family. My mom did most of the cooking; and her most common meals were roast, pork chops (though Jewish, we were obviously not Kosher) with lunches including bologna, tuna fish, sardines (around age 7 I badly cut myself trying to recover the key from a sardine can and earned five stitches in my finger), chicken salad and so on. In high school one teacher read us the short story “A Mother’s Tale” [i] by James Agee. When in college I slowly acclimated myself to a meatless diet and lived in a vegetarian house/co-op one year—sharing in cooking duties. Post-college I briefly went back to eating some meat. Finally, on an August 1980 vacation to Seattle I bought and read the book The Vegetarian Alternative – A Guide to a Healthful and Humane Diet by Vic Sussman (Rodale Press, © 1978). That book convinced me to quit eating meat. I’m what is called a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (or lactovarian) who still eats eggs (not often) and dairy (mostly non-rennet cheeses, and home-made yogurt). I’m not vegan (completely animal-product-less). Unlike Coconut, one of the two protagonists, in Just another Meat-Eating Dirtbag—memoir of Michael Anthony with art from Chai Simone)—I don’t try to recruit others to change their eating habits, though I also don’t change my eating habits regardless of who I’m with. I enjoyed and recommend Just another Meat-Eating Dirtbag for Michael’s secret battle to convince Coconut to become a meat-eater again while Coconut openly tries to convince Michael to be vegetarian, then vegan. The debates on both sides are solid ones.

At the end of most chapters sits a spiral notebook page—a couple of examples shown here a little later—discussing or summarizing the topic covered in the chapter. Dominating the writing are Michael’s arguments with himself in narration boxes. There are some conversations between characters using standard word balloons. Simone’s colorful drawings are fairly realistic but with simplified line drawings of people and scenery. Facial expressions match the lightness or seriousness of the topics.

Michael’s indifference to slaughtering animals for meat-eating comes because “I’d simply seen worse. Like working in the operating room of a hospital during the Iraq war [was] worse [15].” One of the notebook pages provides one reason (prevent cruelty to animals) why someone might become a vegetarian:

Page 23, Just Another Meat-eating Dirtbag.

And here’s a more positive reason by showing vegetarian protein sources:

Just Another Meat-eating Dirtbag, page 46.

Michael is a meat-eater and has fallen in love with “Coconut” (his pet name for his girlfriend and the only name provided by Michael for her), who is vegetarian but later becomes vegan—no animal products—and an animal activist over the course of the book. Through deception, Michael wants to convince Coconut to eat meat again. His deception is to not eat meat and “pretend” to be vegetarian, but only temporarily, in order to convince Coconut to become a meat-eater. Michael wants to reverse his feeling that their relationship “went to Hell [5]” because of Coconut’s animal activism and his need for deception to bring his relationship back to where he thinks he wants it to be. Michael had paid for a Pick-up Artist class which provided some useful lessons (mostly confidence-building and rejection-accepting), but “none of it came with advice about actually being in a relationship [70].”

On two pages (4 – 5), Michael presents Coconut (“loves to eat chocolate chip pancakes for dinner,” “fat-shamed by mom … survived several eating disorders,” “first degree in marketing, but after … hospitalization for an illness, decided to become a nurse and help people,” among other descriptions (4)) and himself (“loves to eat chocolate chip pancakes for dinner,” “six years of army reserves,” “deployed to Iraq as an operating room technician (assisting doctors during surgery),” “formerly abused drugs and alcohol,” among others (5)).

Coconut attends a lecture about “how meat is murder [6].” Her notes from the lecture, include a definition of speciesism: “when one species discriminates against another because of perceived intellectual + emotional superiority [12].” For example, “It’s illegal to rape a human, and it’s illegal to eat another human; HOWEVER, it’s LEGAL to force-inseminate an animal, and then eat the resulting offspring [EMPHASIS in original,12]” with suggested reading of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.  

Michael has his circle of friends, mostly male veterans; and Coconut’s friends are mostly women. Coconut’s and Michael’s conversations with their friends often revolve around Michael becoming vegetarian and how to convince Coconut to not be a vegetarian, respectively. Their friends overlap at dinner party get-togethers. Michael is always on the prowl for why people became vegetarian (“Animal sentience—,” “Health issues—,” “Cruelty—,” “Seemed like the right thing to do.” and asking their advice on what would make them eat meat again (“Uhhmm—,” “Why would you ask that?” “What would make me turn back into a murderer!? Nothing!” “Who are you again?” (69)). Apparently, Michael’s pick-up lessons don’t help with learning how to convert vegetarians back to meat-eaters. Michael eventually connects with Veterans who are vegetarian resulting in questioning his meat-eating faith and a final confrontation with Coconut about honesty and deception, which brings their whole relationship into question.

I don’t know that this book will change anyone’s mind about meat-eating vs. being vegetarian/vegan, but it’s a great discussion starter and a way to learn about both sides of this divide. The book closes with nine books as Recommended Reading, including Eating Animals by John Safran Foer, The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff and foreword by Jane Goddall, and The Joyful Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. To this non-comic list, I would suggest the graphic works of Sue Coe (e.g., Dead Meat (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996), The Ghosts of Our Meat (The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, 2014), The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto (OR Books, 2017), among many others).

[i] You can find this story in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, & Shorter Fiction (Michael Sragow, ed.) (Library of America, 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-81-5. Stories include “Death in the Desert”, “They That Sow in Sorrow Shall Reap” and “A Mother’s Tale.” “A Mother’s Tale” is an allegory of a mother cow in a field responding to questions from calves. One calf asks, where are all those men on horseback taking those other cows? And the mother gives a story that had become legend about a cow, near death, that escaped from a distant place and returned to tell their tale. The mother learned of this story from other cows and wasn’t a witness to any of these events, so she had doubts about how true this story was. The surviving cow’s story was one of horror, torture, and slaughter, but also seemed so distant that it could be hyperbolic. The calves were left to decide for themselves, if there was any truth to it.