Category Six Books

Most large cities had at least one, if not two, gay or lesbian bookstores, typically founded sometime in the 70's or early 80's..

I first became aware of Category Six Books in Denver in the mid-80's when it was located on 11th Street, near Downing. (I was told that the store had originally started out on Colfax.) I road up to Denver one fine, sunny spring day, possibly 1985, with a friend at the time. We parked near the store and hiked around the corner and up the front steps..

Once inside, I noticed carpeted stairs that led to the top floor of the building--they were modestly blocked by a rope that prohibited climbing them to the living quarters above. To the immediate right inside the front door was the checkout counter. On either side of those interior stairs were the two halves of the store. Fiction and picture books and magazines were located on the right. Non-fiction books and other, miscellaneous items such as pins and flags and CDs were to the left. My friend had a good friend who was a flight attendant but who also periodically worked in the store when he wasn't flying the Friendly Skies.

On one of my early visits to Category Six Books it was this guy, upon learning that I had never heard of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series, who walked over to the main shelf, grabbed the first four volumes (the next two volumes were yet to appear), handed them to me, and sternly advised, "Do yourself a favor and buy these books.".

An avid reader of histories and biographies, I didn't see how I would ever find the time with my part-time evening teaching for Pikes Peak Community College at Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base during the week, and sometimes on Saturdays, as well as my full-time job at Kaman in Colorado Springs during the day, to read this series of novels. But I bought them anyway because the covers were colorful and they were "gay books," something I had not previously owned or even been aware of..

For many of us in the 80's, or definitely the 70's for that matter, it was only in these specialty independent gay book stores where we could find gay books (the Internet as we know it today was years in the future). This was also a few years before the chain stores began to feature a specific, typically small, GLBT section. In addition, whereas you might not be comfortable buying a gay book or magazine at Barnes & Noble, most of us had no problem buying from a store that was usually gay-owned and gay-operated. We were among friends in those stores. They became comfortable hangouts, possibly even pickup places if the mood were right and the stars properly aligned..

My good friend Bart worked for a guy whom he was roommates with in Colorado Springs. Bart's roommate owned a porn book store on Platte Blvd. But that was porn, straight and gay. While Category Six Books also carried gay porn magazines in the back, their primary mission was to provide an outlet for GLBT writers and books that had few other places where they weren't marginalized, if they even were carried at all..

Category Six Books was also located in a prime area: Capitol Hill in Denver, the gayest part of The Mile-High City. Most residents could simply walk to the store. It was there that I bought Maupin's last two volumes in the series (at that time). In fact, I drove to Denver when Maupin was doing a book signing for Sure of You, the final volume, at Category Six Books. When my friend Dino and I arrived, the line to meet Maupin snaked around inside the small store and out the back door. There was sweet and welcoming atmosphere inside the store (I was told the owner sold dozens and dozens of books that night). Perhaps some of us were particularly sad since Maupin had announced that those six books would be all that he would write about the delightful denizens of 28 Barbary Lane. One woman ahead of us in line actually wept openly when he confirmed that there would be no more tales..

Toward Dino and me, Maupin was particularly friendly and confirmed that, if we went to San Francisco, Macondray Lane was the setting he envisioned for Barbary Lane. (Four years later, we would fly to San Francisco, rent a car, stay at a local gay B&B, and find Macondray Lane, the highlight of the trip. We even heard that we had just missed Maupin, who had been in the Castro a couple hours before we arrived there.).

This synchonous relationship between gay bookstore and GLBT authors was what kept each afloat and financially viable for several years. And it was the existence of such stores, as well as my enjoyment of Tales of the City, that stimulated me to write my Rainbow Arc of Fire series. The night that we met Maupin and attended the book signing made me realize how special, how significant, was the relationship between these authors and those specialty book stores..

Sadly, though, that relationship wasn't to last. I think our communities, such as they are, or such as they have become, are the poorer for that lasting change.

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