Somewhere, Martha Stewart is Crying

In my early twenties, my good friend Jill and I liked to throw parties and my friends liked to attend them. Jill lived in a small but really party-conducive third floor apartment overlooking Salem Street in the North End. We didn't need a reason, or a theme but by god we tried to think of one whenever we could. The following represents a true list of some of the theme parties we threw.

Come As Your Favorite STD - Everyone had to come as their favorite venereal disease (i.e. make a shirt with the name of it spelled out) and then give a brief, cheap-vodka fueled presentation to the rest of the party on their assigned disease. Jill and I were Team HPV, complete with matching black and gold tanktops. Jenny was Chlamydia, and chanted the opening line of her presentation all night "Chlamydia is not a flower" and I believe gave out stickers that said the same thing. Later in the night Jill and I went clubbing still wearing our Team HPV shirts and you would be amazed at how NOT a deterrent that is to men.

Temptation Island - When this show first premiered, we were OBSESSED with it. The Mandy/Billy debacle captured our hearts (and, let's face it inspired the first party I listed). Jill and I bought a kiddie pool for her kitchen and filled it with water. We decorated with tiki lights and drank roofies punch out of fake coconuts. By the end of the night the entire contents of Jill's fridge were floating in the kiddie pool. Initially we had planned to bring the kiddie pool up to the roof and use it to hang out in when it got hot, but seeing American cheese, pickles and assorted lunch meats floating in it pretty much made us want nothing more to do with it.

Cinco de Mayo - Not as original a theme, but we did buy and serve for the first time MEZ-CAL which made nearly everyone vomit and made Jill's apartment and our bodies smell like burnt rubber the next day. HOT. It was during this party that I dissapeared for an hour and was later discovered playing stickball down the street with some neighborhood kids.

Bean-party- Succinctly, everyone was encouraged to bring a foodstuff that had beans in it (including but not limited to burritos, baked beans, kidney beans, black bean soup, etc). I have no idea why we did this, maybe because of Boston being Beantown? In any case the night ended when people (read: me) got rowdy and started chucking refried beans out the window and we all decided to order pizza instead.

Tacky Yet Formal Christmas Party - This one was actually at my house. My friend Kate and I bought an obscene amount of fake snow and covered the entire office in it, purchased an abundance of obscene light up decorations and glittering abominations and encouraged everyone to dress like drag queens. Kate's boyfriend wore a red bra stuffed with candy canes. Kate and I wore matching red leopard dresses with black fur trim. I have a picture from this party (which I believe was in 2000?) of Jenny wearing a boa and being a little obscene with a banana.

I'm sure there are more that I can't recall. Suffice it to say that for a brief time in the earlier part of the decade, if you saw someone in the North End dressed as a hawaiian tropics girl, or wearing a shirt that proclaimed "Syphillus is Cool", or dressed like a drag queen...they were probably on their way to one of our parties.