THE TRICLINIUM (BANQUET ROOM): Clear the biggest room in your house of furniture and throw down rugs and cushions. Leave a stage space for performances. Each guest will need a small table for plates and bowls for washing hands and feet. Cut the lights and decorate with scented candles and incense. Flower petals on the floor are a good touch, as is light music, like Kronos Quartet's Early Music.

THE MEAL: There are three main courses. Gustatio, or hors d'oeuvres, consists of small finger foods, like olives, grilled sausages, and wildfowl (try quail), followed by honeyed wine. The main meal, cena, should be served in at least three sections. The initial focus should be on offal, game, and unusual cuts of meat, the more exotic the better--camels' feet, flamingo brains, fried testicles. (If you have trouble finding anything out of the ordinary at your local butcher, try an online supplier like dartagnan.com or exoticmeats.com.) These plates should build to a central, climactic dish like suckling kid goat or boiled whole pig. The final course is mensasecunda, an overindulgent variety of sweet pastries, cakes, oysters, and snails. Intersperse eating with poetry reading (Bukowski would be proud), drinking, arguing, washing, performing (karaoke), drinking, debating, washing, singing, screwing, game playing (Jenga, Twister), washing, and, at long last, passing out.

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