Party for the Vernal Equinox

"We must have hats," Julia said.

"Hats?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, her eyes shining. "This is a very big party we're throwing, and if we have hats, everyone will know we're the hostesses." Julia, my roommate, was a tall, willowy redhead. She was the the Irish rose found blooming in Midwestern America. As beautiful as she was, she wasn't the most forward-thinking young woman.

"This is maybe a dumb question," I began, "but since we're doing the inviting, and since we know everyone we're inviting, won't they know we're the hostesses?"

"Oh, right, right, right," she said. "But we need hats. They're going to add something to the fact that this is a very special theme party." She had me there. If the party went off well, it would be, perhaps, the beginning of something annual.

We made flyers and sent emails to our friends. It was the Vernal Equinox Party.

The hats. We found matching hats. Julia, always and ever was a girl who could pull off any fashion statement whether it was on or off trend, had the perfect shaped face and head for a hat. I, on the other hand, had a cement brick of a head and very round face. A hat wasn't my friend, unless it was a balaclava. However, this cement brick-headed young lady would rise to the occasion. The hats were made of natural fibers, maybe jute or hemp or straw or something like that…maybe seagrass? The brims gently turned up. We found grosgrain ribbon. I chose kelly green, my favorite color. Julia chose orange. When we chose the ribbon, I thought I had won the battle of color choice…but one never wins with a cement block sized head. We found fake flowers, and Julia wove her fake blossoms throughout the band of her hat and covered the plastic stems expertly with her orange ribbon. I, however, had no talent weaving fake flowers into anything, especially not a hat with tiny little crannies that seemed to be perfect hiding places for wired plastic stems. But, undaunted, I carefully tucked the ends of the flowers into these little hidey holes. When I put my ribbon around the hat's band, it seemed to hide the flowers. I then tried to wind the ribbon around the flowers to make them visible, but it made the ribbon look scrunched and like a project my 4 year old niece had made in pre-school.

We bought matching shoes. Simple flats with flowers covering the tops. And then we also wore sundresses. Maybe not the smartest choice…in March…in Midwestern America. Julia's dress, though, was long, flowing, very boho chic, and paired perfectly with her hat and flowing red hair. I'd say, "What a bitch, and I hope she gets hypothyroidism," but she's the friend who brings you the picture frame from your dresser that has your ex-boyfriend, and offers up token curses and a ridiculous ritual of burning the photo and scattering the ashes the next day on the front seat of his car (because she's the friend who goes with you to stalk his car, and jimmy the lock). She's the friend who finds the other girl who your ex-boyfriend cheated on you with and puts dog shit in a paper bag and lights it on fire on the new girl's doorstep after she's rung the bell. She's the friend who hides in the bushes with you and laughs when the new girl and your ex-boyfriend are stomping out the flaming shit.

My dress was a short, sleeveless number in black and white checks. Where Julia was all long lines, I was compact, with a rack that wouldn't quit. Where she was the earth mother, I was the former bombastic cheerleader with the banging ass who refused to give up short skirts. Strangely enough, I could not pull off a hat, and my head was huge, but it was proportionate to the rest of my body.

For the Vernal Equinox Party, we made white sangria and filled pitchers full of frozen fruit to keep the wine cold without diluting it while it melted. We also spiked it with a healthy dose of vodka. We were not urbane party throwers. We only had matching hats. We were throwing a party because we felt like throwing a party, and the Vernal Equinox shared the date on the calendar…and if we could have rounded up some Wiccans or Druids or something, we would have invited them to lend serious authenticity to the night's festivities.

We pasted plastic glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of our apartment, and then right before the party started we took turns shining the flashlight on them to get them to glow in the dark. After the ceiling shenanigans, we donned our hats. I wore my hat for about two minutes because the stems from the plastic flowers were stabbing me in my scalp and forehead. "Julia," I called/whined. She was queueing up the playlist, because we weren't deejays, but we were damn good at curating party music.

"Yes?" she answered.

"Can you fix my hat? It's stabbing me," I said. And she isn't magic, but Julia knows her way around fake flowers and hats made of natural fibers. After she did her thing with my hat, we took some selfies, and damn, Sheila, I looked good in my hat.

Our apartment was in a complex with a large population of senior citizens. Our building had a tiny Greek woman, a tiny Jewish woman, and a tiny Polish woman. They were very good bartenders on any given weeknight during Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. They showed up for the Vernal Equinox Party in caftans and wore floral wreaths on their heads. We made them special necklaces, which someone later pointed out weren't so special because they looked just like leis. But the wreaths were a spectacle. They seemed to hover just over the lofted clouds of hair on their heads. We put out camp chairs that we covered in sherpa blankets and heaped the seats with throw pillows. They could have been the very weathered handmaidens of Persephone. They couldn't be mistaken as crones because they were adorable, delightful sprites filled with mirth and mouths of sailors. The guy who delivered our newspaper had just turned 21, and we invited him to the party. He stood behind our neighbors, hand-feeding them grapes from silver-plated bowl we bought at Goodwill. We told him he could only come to the party if he wore a towel. He could wear underwear and flip flops, but that was all we allowed him to wear. We didn't feel bad about being dicks to the paper delivery guy.

Our apartment was around 800 square feet—two bedroom, two bath. Quite a coup, and rent was cheap because there were so many senior citizens in the complex. In the summer, the pool was almost always a ghost town, which was lovely and relaxing, and a true bonus was when Persephone's handmaidens brought out 32 ounce tumblers of vodka tonics while we sunbathed.

Close to 1 a.m., the party had broken up. The neighbor ladies were still in residence, and they had chosen to blast Jimi Hendrixx, The Wind Cries Mary.

Julia said, "Hey…do you guys want to try out a spell or something? It could be fun. I mean, it wouldn't really be real. I don't think it would anyway."

I said, "Yeah, sure. Sounds like a fitting ending to the evening."

There were eight other people left in our apartment, and they were probably going to stay the night…and then there was the newspaper delivery guy, and Julia and I hadn't decided who would get him. He looked good in the towel. Julia ran back to her room and came back with a recipe card. "Do you all remember that accountant I was dating a few months back?"

Tiny Greek lady said, "Mr. Tall, Blonde, and Viking?"

Tiny Jewish lady said, "Mr. Bond Villain?"

Tiny Polish lady said, "Mr. F1-Pro Soccer Player?"

"Yes," Julia said.

"Mmmm," I said.

"Well, he left me a little breakup gift of the itchy scratchy variety," Julia admitted.

Aghast, I said, "Little, living critters?"

Julia nodded.

Newspaper delivery guy said, "What a piece of shit."

Everyone nodded in agreement. Julia read over the recipe card and ran back to her room, returning with a toothbrush. "DNA from the CPA," she said proudly.

The thirteen of us sat around the living room and we each took a turn reading from the recipe card. We burned the toothbrush in the silverplated Goodwill bowl. After it was all said and done, Julia felt vindicated for putting some bad juju into the universe.

The following morning, Julia knocked on my bedroom door. Newspaper delivery guy had stolen all of my blankets and had become a mountain of bed linens lying next to me. Julia poked her head in the door. "Girl, you have some gravity defying tatas."

"That's only because I'm flat on my back," I said.

"The CPA called me," Julia said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Apparently last night, he had a relapse of pubic lice—an infestation. He went to the ER, and they said they'd never seen anything like it. He wanted me to know, in case I needed to get checked out."

"It would have been nice of him to tell you two weeks ago," I said.

"Wait. It gets better. He had a reaction to the medication for the varmints, and he's now in ICU with a penis the size of a watermelon."

"No," I said. "Whoa." Julia and I stared at each other. "Do you think the recipe card spell worked?"

"Who knows?" Julia said. "Maybe my grandma was just looking out for me, God rest her soul."

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe it had something to do with the equinox?"

"Maybe it's cosmic retribution," Julia answered.

"Maybe that the guy is an epic douche canoe who doesn't glove up on the regular," came the utterance from the newspaper delivery guy, buried under my bed linens.

"Maybe," Julia and I said.

Persephone's handmaidens never went home, even though they lived in our building. They poked their heads into my room, stared at my exposed jugs, and tiny Greek lady said, "Maybe you needed some epic juju from some ethnic elderly ladies who've seen a thing or two." Tiny Jewish and Polish ladies each touched their index fingers to their noses.

Before they ducked out of my room, tiny Jewish lady said, "See you for liquid brunch in an hour. Bloody Marys in my apartment."