TRETierney, Multimedia Artist

How Do You Get Back to Westbeth? You Just Write, Right?

In Pratt Institute’s darkroom, I met Westbethian Nick Gardner, who proposed an offer I couldn’t refuse. Could a straight chronic(led) stoner make my gay dreams come true? He’d built a “back room,” measuring the full width and about a window’s worth of depth. We had a gentlemen’s agreement that started the summer of 1980. I’d be in, but out after graduating. His mom was due back.

Living in Westbeth’s mansion was magical, including my first Halloween Parade. Nick was a two-spirit Native American shaman. Our Pratt gal pal, Mary, was Miss Maidenform. I was Mr. Calvins. A new metrosexual cosmetic, Clinique’s Bronzer, saturated our skins. The once white bathroom and the living room’s shag rug looked like a bloody crime scene. Being Pratt punks, we didn’t care, nor did we want to be too fashionably late for our faux wedding in the courtyard. To parade pridefully and dance half-nakedly was heaven on cobblestoned streets.

Apartment #906 didn’t have glamorous windows. Other west-facing windows had stunning views of the mighty Hudson River bathed in gorgeous sunsetting colors before disappearing somewhere over New Jersey. On “my private night” with my A-list art fags and hags atop the now rebleached rug, we watched TV’s Dynasty. We felt like kings and queens of an art castle. But by summer’s eve 1982, I got canceled and left Bethune Street’s beautiful building.

I attempted to return in 2019, but had missed the deadline. A sassy security guard said, “Nope! That wait list closed a while ago!” I was bereft, but left, yet again. Took myself down to the river, crying misty water-colored memories of the way it was—but now wasn’t. It really hurt. Westbeth had inspired my brain to think big and surround myself with (he)artful tribes.