Striking a Pose at the Matt Gala

Monday evening, I attended The Matt Gala – not The Met Gala, but The Matt Gala, hosted by the Mattatuck* Museum and Greater Waterbury PRIDE. 

“Enjoy an evening of music, dancing, drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and of course fashion. All guests will have the opportunity to walk the red carpet, strike a pose for photos, and view a live stream of the Met Gala.” My attendance was courtesy of Stonewall Speakers, which made a donation to the event.

I didn’t have a thing to wear (LOL) and spent a an hour Monday morning modeling dresses for my wife’s opinion. She has great taste and we agreed on a dress from Venus, a “twist front maxi dress” that I purchased recently, but had not worn out yet.

Worrywart that I am, I was concerned about parking. The museum is located in downtown Waterbury and has three parking lots – one right next to the museum and two remote lots that are nearby unless you are wearing 4-inch stilettos. So I left home early in order to get a parking space as close to the museum as possible and I wore short heels instead of my skyscrapers.

It took 20 minutes to drive to the museum and the closest parking lot was far from full – there were only two cars in the lot, so I had my pick and just had to sit in my car for 20 minutes waiting for the event to begin. While I sat there, other attendees arrived and I noticed that they were all female or presenting female… not a guy in sight. As it turned out, there were about 100 attendees and most of them were either female or presenting female; there were perhaps 15 to 20 males or presenting male.

I knew only one person and only knew her via emails – Lynn Discenza, who heads up Stonewall Speakers. But that did not stop me from socializing and socialize I did meeting a lot of new people in the process. Everyone dressed up for the occasion in one way or another – a few dressed to kill like the women you see on the red carpet at the Met Gala, some came in costume and the majority were in their “Sunday best.”

The wine and hors d’oeuvres were excellent, but the PA was too loud! The folks who spoke were usually unintelligible (to me) because the PA was so loud that their voices were distorted. And when someone was not speaking, the music drowned out any attempts at conversation, so we sat at our table looking at each other and occasionally shouting out a comment that most people could not hear.

There was a HUGE screen streaming what was going on at the other Gala and it was interesting seeing the “competition.” I thought our Gala was more interesting. Miss Connecticut USA even showed up! (She is first openly queer woman to win that title.)

They took photos of us posing on the red carpet and the photographer promised that all the photos would be posted online, but I have not seen any with yours truly yet.

I was running out of gas and left about 20 minutes before the event ended. I have been staying up late reading Faithful by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan, but still getting up at my normal wake-up time, so the shorter sleeping hours were catching up with me.

I had a good time and learned how my old home town is becoming more LGBT+ friendly, (there was even a representative from the Mayor’s office in attendance.) There will even be a Pride parade in June! 

And so it goes.

* The original Native American inhabitants called the Waterbury area “Matetacoke” meaning “the interval lands.” Thus, the settlement’s name was Anglicised to “Mattatuck”in 1673. (Source: Wikipedia)

Wearing Boston Proper

Canadian soldiers, known as the “Dumbells,” femulating to entertain the troops during World War I.