There's no vanity in Halloween

The people at my open pit hell had a Halloween party today complete with a costume contest. Halloween is a trigger for me. When I was a vulnerable, tender 23, I got invited to a costume party hosted by some frat pigs I'd gone to college with. I dressed as a hobo, which is what we used to call homeless people. I messed up my hair, rubbed dirt on my face, put on a baggy, old coat of my dad's, and carried a big bag of empty beer cans. (I know it doesn't seem very politically correct -- I was young and it was a LONG time ago, back when being a hobo and riding the rails was kind of romantic.) There were a lot of other girls at the party and not one of them thought to come as a hobo. Whatever they did come dressed as, "sexy" was in front of the title: sexy nurse, sexy witch, sexy vampire. I never felt so ugly in my life and, although it took me a while to figure out, I smelled bad, too. Apparently, my dad's old coat hadn't been laundered since he shoveled truckloads of horse manure in it and my cans still had beer in them which hadn't finished fermenting. Ever since then, I've never wanted to be the ugliest, smelliest girl at the party and must dress as something sexy, or at least pretty, for Halloween. And yet, I hate girls like me. (The ones who put on ears and tape a tail to their black bikinis and go as cats. Cats don't wear bikinis.) There's nothing amusing or charming about sexy Halloween costumes. It's just vanity.

Also, I think that the way people dress for Halloween is an expression of their true, inner self. Do I want people to think my real self desires to be a sexy cheerleader/geisha/go go dancer? I don't think so. And yet I absolutely couldn't bring myself, no matter how fabulous the results, to glue on a beard and chest hair and go as a hairy lady which a friend of mine did last  year. Come to think of it, I don't want people to think I even think about any of this. Here's what I'm considering for this year's costume:

sexy sixties Mad Men character
sexy hobo (brown bikini, dirt on body, bag of washed-out empty diet coke cans)
sexy dead poet Sylvia Plath (just have to chip a tooth)