Last year, when I went home for Christmas, I insisted on setting the table for dinner. I pulled out our mismatched linens and a few not-quite-the-right-height vases and started poking, prodding and arranging while my father cooked, wary of foisting my ideas of propriety down anybody’s throat before we’d even had appetizers. It’s not that I want the dining table to be restrictive, a place where manners trump mood, but I want it to be more than it is, as much as it can be — a special place for a special night, at least once a year, where we can associate “entertaining” with actual entertainment. We had my aunt and uncle over for the occasion; while everyone noticed the decorations, I still felt like a kid asking for a gold star. My efforts weren't in vain, they were just beside the point.This year I was lucky — and my parents might consider themselves lucky, too — to be able to take my more extreme impulses to a different stage, one where my family wouldn’t be directly affected. I was asked to host a dinner party this season by a nice group of people with a nice new line of dishes that are meant to be eaten on, not stashed away or used so sporadically that it’s easy to forget they exist. I got the chance to carefully consider every detail of the evening, from the florals for the 21-foot table (for which I requested they make a custom linen table runner, which they obligingly did) to the 20-plus-person-strong guest list.In the weeks leading up to the event, I fretted and fidgeted in a way my mother would loathe; the party perversely offering me a sort of cathartic Stepford-ian high to which gay men and Gwyneth Paltrow are uniquely susceptible. I found a sense of purpose in the pageantry, a calling to some higher majesty that eluded my mother — like Ina Garten had taken me under the wing of one of her signature blouses and anointed me in EVOO.