FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE DEERFIELD FAIR

(Published in The Berkeley Beacon Magazine)

Holy Jesus, everyone here is ugly. This isn’t actually an insult. 

I’m shuffling down the main causeway of the fairgrounds, a senselessly crowded strip of dirt road crawling with unsightly New Hampshirites. Bloated, sclerotic faces are beginning to shift, sprouting third eyes and becoming vaguely fluidlike. 

Rednecks and goths are passing by, twisting into grotesque caricatures of themselves. A veritable catalogue of labrets, snake bites, and tragus piercings. An incredible survey of swelling potbellies, veterans’ caps, and acid-washed jeans. It’s already too much for me. 

The year is 2025, I am at the Deerfield Fair, the psychedelics are just starting to take effect, and everyone, in their own unique way, is perfectly ugly. 

My friend, a veteran drug fiend, tells me that we should head into this trip with crystal clear intentions. For what it’s worth, this is generally decent life advice regardless of one’s propensity for drug-fueled stunts. But there seem to be no intentions that could reasonably explain embarking on a serious psychedelic trip in the middle of New England’s oldest family fair. That might well explain the distantly agitated feeling growing in my gut for the better half of my come up. Best to not mention that feeling to my friend. Why ruin his trip when it’s just getting started?

No purpose, no intentions. It’s entirely possible I’m just looking to get fucked up in an absurd spot for the sport of it. If that’s the case, I think about looking to the champ for advice, searching the rafters for the retired jersey of a real legend: American journalist Hunter S. Thompson. The doctor of debauchery. That high priest of harebrained schemes. Maybe this is all just a cheap attempt on my part to replicate the spirit of Gonzo journalism. 

If it is, I think Thompson’s own words ought to set a decent enough precedent: 

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Thompson must have had more experience with things like this. It’s a damn hard thing to remain professional when everything around me is somehow brighter, faster, and hopelessly more obscene than it was just a day before. The barrage of whirling neon carnival rides, the perfume of deep-fried everything lingering just beneath an ongoing sillage of manure, the ax throwing, hog scrambles, tractor pulls, and alpaca costume contests. The hordes of distorted people that dutifully crowd around each passing sideshow. How can a journalist honestly be expected to distill such an utterly depraved scene?

From somewhere, a disembodied voice rings out, statically informing lost children to report to the “kiddie korner.” I find myself briefly weighing the possible merits of trying to get the voice to call for my friend. But could I do it in this state? Sweat is still pouring from my brow. My eyes are wide and furiously rolling. The people in charge at the kiddie korner would see right through my prank. Or worse, they might summon a whole legion of state troopers to make an example of me. Holy Jesus, there goes one now. He’s got to have the ugliest face I’ve seen all day. 

This is patently untrue. At this year’s Deerfield Fair, there is one face that is somehow uglier, and more ubiquitous. That same face grins smugly from dozens of identical stalls, above shirts emblazoned with the word: Freedom. Words cannot begin to describe the carnal unease of watching Charlie Kirk’s face warp hideously above the numbers 1993-2025. 

Considering the bastard had just been shot two weeks ago in Utah, it’s actually a remarkable feat of coordination for hundreds of these shirts to subsequently appear at a family fair in southern New Hampshire. I can only guess as to the complex network of child labor and express shipping required for these shirts to arrive on time. 

“Bad vibrations,” as Thompson would say. Things are suddenly getting very heavy. Sticky. Wet. State trooper paranoia is setting in just in time for the snotty stage of mushrooms to take effect. Hot tears welling, and a distinct need to blow my nose. I’m certain that my friend was with me at some point but now I am totally alone amid the crowd. This is an entirely different brand of terror: becoming a human pinball, ricocheting between strangers.  

My friend finds me hunkered near an exhibit that boasts a prize-winning gourd.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he says. “That bathroom is vile.”

My friend looks about as nauseous as I feel. Or maybe I look that way too. His deathly pallor is a totally rational response to what I already know is a nightmarish restroom. I don’t envy my friend in the least. Pissing into the communal trough was one thing. I can’t imagine the hellish visions that might descend on a person after several long minutes trapped in a stall. 

Determined to change the course of this rapidly spiraling trip, we make a break for the barns. It’s wordlessly understood that we are looking for a place far from the skirling rides and largely removed from the worst of the crowds. This rules out the swine house and dairy parlor, and results in us nervously staggering into a massive industrial-looking space filled with nothing but sheep. 

Dorset, Hampshire, Suffolk. Every conceivable breed is represented, segregated into dozens of hay-filled pens. Some wear thick canvas coats to protect their wool. Others lounge in a state of dishabille, dimly acknowledging onlookers. For the sheep, this is just one of more than 30 high traffic stops on the New England fair circuit. Naturally, they are all supremely uninterested in anything — calm to a point of catatonia.  

Curiously, I remain on edge. Even buried wrist-deep in Cotswold wool, my heart rate hasn’t slowed in the least. Something is wrong about this particular barn. It’s too big. Too commercial. There is a sense of slaughterhouse despair hanging in the rafters. A grim energy. Fear and loathing in the sheep barn. 

We escape that scene largely unscathed, retreating to a tent beside the main barn. Here, sunlight pours into a singular pen housing only four Nigerian Dwarf goats. I imagine these must be petting zoo celebrities — the elite entertainers, genetically stalled at 20 inches tall and permanently sleepy. We take refuge for a while, just watching the fairground divas lazing around in their private green room. 

By now, the hours have melted together. As with any decent trip, time has successfully congealed itself around me, to the point where it is a relief to feel the come-down finally encroaching. I can sense minutes passing again. There are fewer exaggerated features now — a definite lack of third eyes and engorged limbs. Things are starting to make sense.

At 5 p.m., we are sitting on the top row of some bleachers, allowing the last vestiges of psychedelics to flush from our systems. Presumably, there will be a show happening in this amphitheater soon. A trapeze rig sits dormant in front of us, alongside a number of easily-juggled props. 

I’m watching Explodo the Clown smoke a cigarette. He’s off-duty, but still in full regalia. Red nose. Floppy shoes. Painted face. My friend and I are failing to suppress a wave of laughter, just from watching the man exist. Explodo isn’t even doing anything particularly funny, but the mere fact that he is halfway through a Marlboro Red while dressed in polka-dotted pantaloons is enough to set us off.

Explodo sucks his cigarette and I see he’s watching two kids playing nearby. These are the children of the other carnies — the progeny of performers. If there is a moment when I can clearly tell the drugs have left my system, it is this one. All at once I am aware that there is an entire microcosm contained within the trapeze rig. It’s cogent thoughts like these that make me thankful not to be hallucinating anymore.

At the moment, I just feel exhausted, totally drained of any possible desire to repeat this gloriously frenzied day. It’s a wonder that Thompson managed it for so long. How any one man could purposefully send himself headfirst into such grisly encounters on veritably inhuman dosages is beyond me. Maybe it's masochism. A crossed wire? A loose screw? It's got to be something.

Is there any lesson to be learned — any discernible moral I can glean from this aimless afternoon? If I’ve come to the Deerfield Fair to play “Doc” Thompson, it is safe to say I should’ve accounted for inflation. These are stranger times; stranger than even Thompson could have predicted. Nothing has been spared. Drugs aren’t the same as they used to be. Neither are county fairs. The entire American freakshow has become too vast, too universally deranged to be meaningfully navigated by an amateur journalist armed with a handful of mushrooms.

Some things are just better left to the pros, if there are any left. 

Signing off. Pure Gonzo. Full Stop.