Here’s what I can remember being for Halloween: Spider-Man, a detective, a kind of large mutant insect with an inflatable head, a robot (I wrote about that one for The Morning News), a pregnant lady, an Australian cowboy (?), Andy Dick, and then a mad scientist for like six years in a row.

The past few years I’ve dressed up as Me Except Fatter, where I just buy way more candy than trick-or-treaters and eat it all night. But this year I was Invited to an Event and needed an actual Costume, and man I do not know where my bloodied lab coat got to, I’m sort of upset about the whole thing but oh well.

So for the first time ever I went to a real live costume shoppe. And I guess this is where rich people get their gear for high-end role-playing sex sessions? Or something? Because I’ve never seen normal people wearing costumes with such excessive and pricey detail. Like hand-tooled chain mail and real-fur gorilla suits and actual diamond tiaras?

Lady behind the counter was bulbous and smelled of artificial potpourri. She was decked out in full Ren Faire regalia. Things would get Lost indefinitely in her cleavage, I warrant. She knew I wasn’t serious clientele from the second I walked in there. She was halfway to giving me directions to Walgreens when I said I wanted to dress up as Prince.

She said: Which prince? I said: Prince. The one in Purple Rain. You know. Long purple coat with chrome thing on the shoulder, frilly shirt, high-heels. I will provide my own eyeliner and faint mustache. And I guess make my own Cloud Guitar out of papier mache.

She said: We can do that, but I really don’t think it would fit you. I said: Are you calling me fat. She said: I don’t think you could successfully embody the role. I said: Oh really. She said: I’m just saying. I said: You’re just saying I don’t have the necessary funk. She said: I’ve got something else in mind. I said: What. She said: A stormtrooper. And disappeared behind a heavy fog of curtains.

OK, I got excited. Because seriously I remember being a kid and wanting so bad to have a full-on stormtrooper outfit. I loved the whole shebang — the white armor, the scary mask, the utility belt, the intercom, the clacking of the boots. And maybe it says something about me that I didn’t want to dress up as Darth Vader or Han Solo or anything, I wanted to be one of the faceless drones that basically just got shot or fell off things. Fine. It says something, then.

Anyway this final thought was still lingering in my mind when the lady returned and whisked the plastic off a vintage Schutzstaffel uniform, complete with black cap, double Sig Rune insignias, shiny boots, the works. She said she could let out the waist a little and it’d be a perfect fit.

And so here I was in the throes of an awkward social situation for the one billionth time. It’s like when someone assumes they can say racist things around you — they just figure you feel the same way, and you have to stop and wonder why that is. Except in this case she wasn’t really being racist, per se, she just happened to have an actual SS uniform in her shoppe and thought I was the kind of person who would enjoy wearing it. This was an even worse scenario because she could get away clean, just shrugging and saying all she does is provide the public with what it wants. Nothing about this was fair.

My voice was shaking with rage as I said: That costume goes against everything that Prince stands for! She shrugged. As predicted. I said: I am going to report you. She said: Of course you are, that’s your nature.

What the hell did that mean. I ran out of there and went home and read twelve pages of The Diary of Anne Frank, which I own.