"Is this your first Jack-and-Jill party?"

It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I got up an hour ago. I've drunk two cups of coffee, swallowed a couple of Tylenol, and put some food in my stomach. And I just finished scrubbing the red wine residue out of the toilet, where I threw it up last night.

That was some party.

Jack and Jill moved in next door, maybe three weeks ago. I met them while they were unpacking, and we chit-chatted a bit. She's a pathologist at the local hospital; he just finished a tour of duty as a Navy pilot. They're young and friendly.

Last week, Son 2 was visiting me for a couple of days. Jill was putting out the trash and we talked for a couple of minutes. Afterwards he said, "My God she has a lot of energy."

And last night they held a costume party. They invited me, which was sweet of them since we'd only talked for a few minutes. I went dressed as Number 6. (Nobody recognized the character.) And because I live next door I was the first one there. Jack handed me a glass of wine, Jill let me help put a few last decorations in place, and I got to make polite conversation as their friends trickled in.

And trickled in. And trickled in.

Soon the only way to make any conversation at all -- polite or otherwise -- was to shout, or else step out onto the front porch. The small house was full. Conversations were squeezing past each other. The music was loud, the fog machine worked fine, the lasers were dazzling, and the wine flowed endlessly. There was a cheese board out for a while, until the ants found it; then Jill whisked the cheese away into the refrigerator and all we had was more wine.

Everyone was friendly. Most of them were a lot younger than I am, of course, but they were fun and pleasant to talk to. One guest -- who had already made plans to stay the night -- cautioned me about "Jack-and-Jill parties". She said she had made sure to eat a full meal beforehand, and was pacing herself deliberately. She warned me that these parties were known for getting crazy.

If this had been a horror movie, that brief exchange would have been the scene where the main characters stop at a gas station to ask directions to the lonely old house, and the grizzled station owner drawls, "You folks sure you want to go out there?"

Mind you, I thought I was pacing myself. At any rate I felt fine. I could talk clearly (or rather, shout clearly) and I was walking with no trouble. When Jill pointed out that they had cleared away the furniture from half of the living room to make a dance floor, I shook my head and said, "I'm not nearly drunk enough to try to dance."

So maybe I should have been paying attention when I found myself, a few hours later, shifting back and forth in time to the music and edging onto the dance floor. Maybe I should have reflected that there might be something not quite sober about bouncing to the music with a glass of wine in one hand and somebody's foam light saber in the other. Maybe I should have noticed that something had changed in the party when Jill dumped the scary black robe she had been wearing and started dancing up a storm dressed in only a leotard - a low-cut, sleeveless, legless, bright pink leotard.

In fact it was only when I went to the bathroom and got away from the noise and movement for a minute that I realized just how funny my head felt. Coming back out I also realized that most people had left. I think Jill was asleep. Jack was still putting on more music, but I thanked him for his hospitality and excused myself. Then I made my way, slowly and carefully, back to my apartment. I got undressed and got almost as far as my own bathroom before I had to drop to the floor. I crawled the rest of the way down the hall to the toilet and started throwing up. I think that was about two o'clock this morning.

The next time I saw the clock it was four. I was still on the floor outside my bathroom, and it was very cold. So I crawled to bed, turned out the lights, and wrapped myself in my blanket. When I woke up at seven-thirty I walked to the bathroom to pee, realized I still wasn't walking very well, and fell back asleep for another four hours.

Today is sunny and bright. My head mostly feels better. I can walk in a straight line. So I wrote a quick "Thank You" message on a note card and walked over to leave it for Jack and Jill. I met the guest who was staying over. She called out cheerily, "Hello Hosea!" and then asked "So how are you feeling this morning? Fresh as a daisy?"

Ummm, ... more or less, I guess. It's one o'clock by now, isn't it?

"I'm feeling pretty good. But then, I approached the whole party with a strategy."

A strategy?

"Yes. Oh, was this your first Jack-and-Jill party?"

Yup.

"You'll find you need to have a strategy to get through them. I ate well beforehand, drank slowly, and I had some Pedialyte. Do you know what Pedialyte is?"

Yes, I think so.

"Well it's a great help for parties like this. Keep it in mind."

I will, thanks.

Of course, I don't know if I'll be invited to another one. A bare acquaintance who's the first one there and the last to leave? By the light of day it sounds pathetic and desperate. I guess I can always hope that Jack and Jill were too drunk to see it that way.

Because I did have a lot of fun. It was really out of character for me, but oh yes it was a lot of fun.