Category Six Books

I guess it's been well more than a decade ago--possibly two--when almost any city of any size had at least one gay bookstore.  For Denver it was Category Six Books.  They were first located on Capitol Hill on 10th Street.  Armistead Maupin drew crowds when he showed up for a book signing, most memorable was his signing for Significant Others, his breakout title.  The store was in the first floor of what had likely once been a large house and then, probably, an apartment building after it was cut up.  One guy who initially worked there in the 1980's recommended that I read Maupin's Tales of the City series and handed me the first four volumes, the only four that were then in print.  Eventually, the series ran to nine volumes, but the store had closed long before the final three appeared.  I would acquire Sure of You at Category Six Books' next location, along South Broadway.

At this point, James Dovali had purchased the store from the original owner not long after the move to the South Broadway location.  After my series began to be written, naturally the first owner and James were kind enough to carry the several volumes as they appeared.  And, even more fortunately, I was able to hold several book signings over the years, especially before Christmas when everyone was doing his holiday shopping.  (I say "his" because while Category Six carried current lesbian titles, they rarely sold because the store had few lesbian customers.  Eventually, a lesbian bookstore would open on 13th street, east of Josephine, making the segregation complete.  When I approached the manager of that store to carry my novels since there were prominent lesbian characters, I was flatly dismissed.)

The 1980's were the heyday of gay bookstores around the country.  That would continue into the 1990's.  But before that decade was over, the Internet was beginning to make serious inroads into sales.  James knew that the closing of the store he loved so much was going to occur, he just was not exactly sure when he would be forced to close it.  I knew that the closing would likely be the doom of my series, as well.  Independent book stores of all varieties were also closing.  As my series hit its stride, all over the country gay book stores were shutting down.  Stores that had been in existence for years were forced to face the reality of amazon.com especially and self-terminate.  Whereas I had once been able to send notices of the first volume to so many stores around the nation, I was getting more and more returns of notices sent to smaller towns and cities, and then bigger ones as well, when the subsequent novels were published.  My list of potential stores to carry my books was dwindling fast.

At Category Six Books, I had sold between 300 and 400 copies of all volumes in the series.  James was always very helpful; and the sales helped him, as well.   The seventh volume in the series even has the main characters visit Category Six Books as part of the plot.  

I used to visit the store most Saturday mornings after he'd opened the doors.  Since business was sometimes slow at that hour, we'd chat about everything:  music, book sales, whatever.  He admitted on several occasions that it was the porn section in back that was keeping the store afloat when regular sales began to slow.  Even as we would chat, a few customers would enter, stride through the interior of the store, and take up station in the very back, partitioned to keep the porn magazines separate from the rest of the store.  But, of course, as the Internet broadened, one could get his active porn there rather than just stare at a motionless photo on a page.  

Although he warned them not to, a gay couple badly wanted to own the store.  Despite repeated warnings, they finally bought him out for a tidy sum they really could ill afford, changed so much about the interior of the store that it looked like someone's grandmother's living room, and wasted money on such unnecessary purchases as a new cash register, among other items.  The sale of my books cratered--they were not at all as helpful as James had been.  Old customers who had hung on also seemed to disappear (though many had already abandoned buying books there).  

The other issue was that the original owner had believed that the South Broadway area was going to bloom as a new gay mecca in Denver.  And it appeared at first that it would.  There was a Heaven Sent Me novelty store a block or so away.  A pan-sexual café was a few doors down.  But even some of those places eventually died, and it really never became that gay area everyone would want to visit.  The rent at the original location was going up prohibitively, so he had to move somewhere; and this had seemed as good as any.  But the locale became not an oasis but a desert that was drying up after the relocation.

Unfortunately, for the newest, and last, owners, the landlord was redoing the front of the building a year or so later, which would have further discouraged the few remaining customers from entering the front door.  They simply sold out everything at a massive discount.  I got a call to pick up my remaining books that had always been on the shelves on consignment anyway.  They slipped away in the night and that was the end of a bookstore that had been around for likely more than 20 years.

A few months before they closed, they held a memorial for James Dovali.  He had drifted from one improbable occupation to another after he'd sold the store, but none seemed to suit him.  I had entirely lost touch.  Before he moved on, I had given him a spare carpeted cat tower since he'd acquired a stray he'd named Slim Shady.  This energetic cat that used to live at the bookstore, as well as the carpeted tower, were acquired by an older couple who had known James.  Rootless now with the store he had cherished gone for six months, James died of AIDS.  I saved his obituary from the newspaper for several years, but it may have gotten lost in my move to California.  I liked him, and I missed our morning conversations at the store.  He'd done what he could to push the sales of Rainbow Arc of Fire, and I appreciated that very much.

By the way, the title of the bookstore referred, if I am remembering correctly, to a category of books that were deemed gay, as well as controversial.  It was not a positive description but almost a clinical definition.  The first owner used to say that they probably should have changed the name at some point during its heyday but never got around to it.  Most customers had no idea what the name referred to even when they knew of the store itself.

Besides the gay bookstores closing, gay magazines and newspapers were also ending as the 1990's came to a close.  Gay novels and other titles were also either going mainstream or diminishing in number as major publishing houses were no longer making the kind of money they'd earned in the late 80's and early 90's promoting gay titles.  That's why my books did not get picked up by St. Martin's press, and I was eventually forced to self-publish.  And, of course, so many who likely supported gay stores and books and magazines and other gay-friendly businesses were dying off, of old age and AIDS, until the life-saving drug cocktails became available from 1995 on.  

But while the store still endured, as you can see by the Top Ten book shelf I photographed above, one week my first novel was #2 to Maupin's The Night Listener.  Especially after a signing, I might have two or three books on the Top Ten shelf.  But now that is becoming so many years ago.  

James and I would put out a coffee urn filled with hot cider, cloves and cinnamon, which gave the store a warm aroma, we'd lay out Christmas cookies and other sweet treats, and watch the numbers of customers increase as the days before the giving holiday dwindled to a precious few.  Usually, it was the weekend before Christmas that would be the most busy and I would do a signing both Saturday and Sunday.   

I think we lost something very precious and community-building when the gay bookstores closed.  Frankly, I wouldn't hear about new titles that I might be interested in reading, especially gay biographies and histories that I liked the most.  An owner like James who loved books and loved to read was always a good source for what was worth reading.  But those days are gone now and likely never will return.