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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - SAVAGE CAMPING

When I was younger, I read in some magazine that Lord of the Flies was teen sensation Corey Haim's favorite book. I checked it out at the library and I'm pretty sure that it made me become possessed by the devil. I became so obsessed with the idea that if left unsupervised—or un-governed by the enforcement of societal norms—pretty much anyone would eventually turn into the sort of person who would kill pigs and then put their heads on sticks outside of someone's tent. My mom eventually took the book away from me and hid it somewhere, but now I collect copies of it. This was all on my mind when I went camping for the first time last weekend at Queens County Farm and found myself tearing the charred ear off of a roasted pig and gnawing on it in the middle of a crowd of strangers.

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This event was supposed to be $80 but my friend and I didn't pay anything and I don't think anyone else did, either. People were just strolling in off the street and waiting to be served food. As soon as we crossed the threshold between city street and campground, I suddenly felt the urge to rub mud stripes on my face and kick a chicken.

We made our way through a cutesy farm area and headed straight for a thick blanket of smoke near the orchard that contained a massive pig carcass, roasting crotch-out like a floozy in a brick pit. More campers trickled through for a while, and then the main gates of the farm locked us in for the duration of the night. People sucked down free beers and made a short list of who they could possibly share underpants with that night. And then the butcher guy brought the pig out of its hole and everyone lost their shit.

Skinny people and their dates who work in small boutiques in the city, fat families in Crocs who came here to "get away from it all" for a night–every freshly washed face and time-clocking citizen fell upon that beast with fingers out like claws to pinch the flesh right off its still smoking body and shove it in their faces. Stomach filled with swine, the rest of the camping excursion was filled with hay rides, a very confusing game of Capture the Flag, during which I never once knew what was going on and kept grabbing people on my own team and trying to run with a cigarette in my hand, and a trip to the liquor store for a jumbo-size bottle of whiskey.

In the morning, our advertised breakfast of farm fresh eggs and coffee almost turned into a riot when the food ran out before half of the camp got served. "I'm not even hungry, but I'm gonna wait right fucking here until I get some eggs!!" Some lady yelled to her boyfriend. Then on the bus ride home an 80-year-old man called a Hassid a son-of-a-bitch for hitting him in the knee with his backpack. There's a common theme here. Something about holidays and meat and people being assholes.

KELLY MCCLURE