Lambda Rising

[rm]

A few months into my freshman year of college, I got a job at Lambda Rising, a Washington DC GBLTQ bookstore that has been in business since 1974.

Despite my hope of working on the floor and maybe meeting some people and getting some play that way, I worked upstairs, in the back, in the warehouse dealing with the mail orders.

And they truly were mail orders. People sent us letters or called in with what they wanted and a boy named James (that we all called Millie) and myself spent the day being the first line of contact for the far-flung queers of the world.

As with any customer service job it ranged from ludicrous ("hi, do you have any books about cross-dressing foot-fetishists interested in incest play?" -- and no, I am not making that up, I remember that call!) to heartbreaking (people told us things on the phone: a call about a dying partner would be followed by a call from some virgin teen nervously ordering an anal-sex how-to guide and some lube).

Often, we could only infer the narrative of the orders we packed and shipped, like the man in Alaska who ordered 50 books every six months: we pictured him rationing them in the dark season.

Sometimes the shop manager would buy us ice cream from the gourmet shop downstairs, and we'd take a break from committing evil with the shrink-wrap gun to sit out on the curb and watch the world go by.

Millie introduced me to woo-woos (good drink, bad name) and he was part of a group of boys I ran around with that year, most of them were older than us. I remember one, short and blond and impeccably dressed who when dancing to Deee-lite's "Groove is in the Heart" would change all the lyrics and say "deeee-gusting! deeeee-capitate!" But I don't remember his name. There was also a man in seminary who was our friend, funny and fey Frabrizio with whom I talked Jesuits and Latin.

None of them really knew what to make of me. I wasn't a fag hag. And I wasn't a lesbian. I was a doll they could dress up and make pretty, and I was a girl with little oxblood loafers who desperately wanted to be one of them.

I'm sure they talked about me behind my back: was I secretly straight? was I trans? was I just waiting to actually have sex with a woman before my fashion sense got really bad? Yes, they were those sort of catty gay boys, and it disappoints me now.

But they were my friends. We went dancing together, and they often picked Millie and I up at the store, with a "come, we've been invited to such and such and so and so, and you have money to get home if I get lucky, right?"

It was an amazing life, in the backroom of that bookstore, Millie and I convincing ourselves that we were saving the gay population of isolated states all by our lonesomes.

Things like Amazon have largely obsoleted stores like Lambda Rising (New York, for example, has lost its gay bookstores) and lives and jobs like the ones Millie and I had back in 1990/1991.

Blushing virgins no longer have to make embarrassing phone calls (but oh where shall people confess so to anonymous strangers? the Internet is not the same). Queers in Idaho no longer have to send handwritten notes on lined paper to place their yearly orders. But in the world of Amazon.com's we've lost something, and it's also why #AmazonFail hurts so bad.

Comments

[coriander.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes and yes.

("hi, do you have any books about cross-dressing foot-fetishists interested in incest play"

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I have fielded enough calls that the words "not specifically as such, I don't think so..." arrived at my lips without having been summoned.

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

Back when I was active in the SCA, any of the male rapier fighters who wanted flat-heeled over-the-knee boots had a difficult time of it. Finding such things inexpensively in womens' sizes was easy, but for guys it was problematic, as they would have to have them custom-made at a minimum of $250 a pair.

I stumbled across a Web site -- www.cubanheels.com -- that sold shoes for TV guys. Inclduing the much-coveted boots in Guy Feetsie Sizes at a bargin of a price.

Being the Helpful Sort, I posted this to the SCA usenet list. Because, yanno, guy boots at decent prices.

Dear Sweet Zombie Jeebus, the hue and cry! ZOMG!! It's for guys who dress ans girls!!! I can't shop THERE!!!

This coming from guys who would wear LACE as part of their period garb.

I finaly got so annoyed that I responded that it was highly doubtful that whoever took their order at that site was likely to e-mail *the entire world* about who had just bought a pair of boots there.

It was to laugh, I tell ya.

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

I lurk here a lot. You are much braver than I. Someday, maybe I'll be half as brave. This made me cry. It's hard to make my non-queer friends understand why it's so important.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

You know, my first response was to tell you I'm not brave, but I worked that job when I wasn't out to my family and had to go through all these contortions to stay not out to my family with my taxes that year. So maybe I was, just a little, but I'll tell you, I thought I was a coward about it at the time.

That the thing, we never know when we're brave, at least if we're lucky, we're just chugging along.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

There are many kinds of bravery, and realizing that one does what one must precisely because one must do it is the highest form. It's about living the life you have the best you can.

I'm not brave either, but I endure. I can say that much of myself. And that takes bravery too.

Millie and I convincing ourselves that we were saving the gay population of isolated states all by o

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

In some measure, I'm quite convinced that you were. *salutes*

Re: Millie and I convincing ourselves that we were saving the gay population of isolated states all

[tommx.livejournal.com]

I completely agree.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

It's a little like Wal-mart(spits) wiping out all the local retailers in a rural area, and then closing every other store.
It's a betrayal of a trust we didn't want to give them in the first place.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Lambda Rising is near one of my favorite music shops and dance studios. Dupont Circle is only three metro stops from where I work. I need to make a concerted effort to go there, the next time I'm looking for something more interesting than what I can find at the local Barnes and Nobles (as the local Border's closed and I'm not certain we've got a local independent bookstore that isn't either religious or in a language other than English).

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Good idea indeed. I seem to remember that Kramerbooks, if you want to support another local indie, was a must-see when I was in the area of Dupont Circle Metro station as a tourist. That is English, and holds all manner of printed matter. (I bought Connie Willis' Doomsday Book there.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

When I was just starting to figure out my queerness in the early 1990's, there wasn't a whole lot of Internet to be had. I lived in a tiny town with just one bookstore (Heritage Bookstore, hidden in a St. Robert mini-mall). Every once in a while I could go to Rolla or Springfield, but until I was 14 or so that had to be with my mom, and until 16 it had to be with friends.

And yet, somehow, I found two gay books there. They didn't explain everything to me, but they were something. If I had been a little braver, I might have found the magazines (hidden, as they were, in with the porn).

The Internet is a lucky, brilliant thing, but you're right. #AmazonFail is a powerful reminder that the niche isn't what it used to be. I'm phenomenally lucky to live in a town with a non-profit shop that sells queer books. Not everyone, even in big cities, is that lucky.

[mellacita.livejournal.com]

Lambda Rising! ♥

My hood. Literally. I've worked or lived within two blocks of that store for ten years. I love going in there. I love watching Washington Hilton conference attendees' eyes widen when they walk by that store and the Leather Rack. Most of all, I love that I can spend a day between Lamdba and Kramerbooks and not collapse with the bad back, because they are so nearby.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Almost all my queer books have come from on-line purchases, as there are no specifically LGBTQ book stores in my country - we're lucky to have as many second hand book shops as it is.

Reading about this kind of makes me yearn for a real community venue that doesn't revolve around around clubs and parties - I'm much more of a cafe/book store/Jazz club kind of person, as I'm quite shy, but alas... those places really are dying, if they even existed for some of us in the first place.

Yeah, Amazon!Fail hurts like hell.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

I wish I had known about such mail order options back in the early 90s when I was living in KS and trying to figure out how to come out to my friends. Thank goodness I lived in a college town, because I may not have otherwise found people who understood me (not that they wouldn't have been there, just that I wouldn't have known where to look).

Amazon has long been my source for non-mainstream books (including pagan books, too) that I couldn't find elsewhere, or couldn't find w/o very high shipping costs. I have to say, I am really unhappy with their lack of apology and the heavy implication that they do not approve of the books they are selling. :(

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

I've never had that kind of bookstore (I relied on libraries), but reading that, I so wish I had.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

http://duskpeterson.livejournal.com/40483.html

See my long comment. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Trying to keep the facts "straight". ;)

[rm.livejournal.com]

No actual connections, just knowing how to work their system what with the whole ex-PR person thing.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

When my big sister, who lives in a more remote area of Alaska than I do (I'm in Anchorage, the "big city" here) came out in the mid-nineties my mother and I ended up going book shopping for her at the local "women's bookstore" (which has also, sadly, closed). It is one of my more bizarre and pleasant memories.

[weirdquark]

There was a store in town where I grew up that sold overpriced long flowing skirts, incense, jewelry, and statues of gods. I remember they had a necklace with a silver ball with a pink triangle on it; they had another one with rainbow rings. When I was in junior high I had never heard of pink triangles or rainbows being symbols of the queer community; I thought the silver ball looked kind of dippy and the rainbow rings were kind of cool. But I didn't really wear jewelry so I never bought that necklace. Now, looking back and knowing what it meant and what people would have assumed by it, I'm not sure if I should be sorry or glad.

There was an alternative local bookstore that had a large gay/lesbian section. I'd go there sometimes after school and flip through things, but I never thought much about people being gay other than to wonder why anyone would care. Our sex-ed class talked about how to be supportive if a friend came out to you -- we never talked about how to get up the courage to come out yourself. I did a report on gays in the military. I picked the topic off of a list of suggestions.

This summer I'll be moving to Texas because one of my roommates got a job teaching at the university there and our household wants to stay together. And there are ways in which I don't actually care how it looks when I'm moving across the country to continue living with the woman I've been living with but not dating for the past eight years, but then there's the way in how it's Texas and while this doesn't really make me care more, it does make me more aware of it. The queer community is very tight there we're told -- you don't get that thing where you have the gay men over here and the lesbians over there and people who are trans or gender queer over here and here... They've said they don't have much trouble with harassment, but it's Texas, so you feel like you're all in the trenches together.

I don't know what the queer sections of their bookstores will be like, or even if they'll exist at all. But they sure don't have any alternative local bookstores there. So that will be ... not what I'm used to. On the other hand there is a store that sells overpriced long flowing skirts, incense, jewelry, and statues of gods, and behind it, there's a bar called Revolution, so it can't be all bad.

[evil_plotbunny]

Thank you for writing this.

This is why I've spent my entire career as a YA librarian jumping on whatever GLBTQetc. books I can find for our collection. It's gotten much easier over the years and the mainstream books have expanded to cover a wider variety of topics. I've never been an activist, but I feel very strongly about having books available about a variety of lifestyles. (And I think that's very common in YA librarians these days.)

I think the worst part of the whole #amazonfail for me was seeing what came up when you searched "homosexuality" after the deranking. As a librarian dedicated to making accurate information available to the general public, I found the search results very disturbing.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

...me too. That's the problem with that sort of cataloging infrastructure: the catalogers at the LOC, for instance, may grind exceeding slow, but their data can be, and is, relied upon to be accurate and accountable.

[evil_plotbunny]

Yes. I work with vetted data (mostly on the OCLC model) all the time and there are some amazing mistakes in that (but our local cataloging services for the county are quick to fix things), but no where near as frustrating as dealing with the data at the major bookstore sites, LibraryThing or Shelfari.

My first thought was that the culture has changed to the point where I could see a questioning teen logging on to Amazon and doing that search and those were not the results that should have come up for that topic.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Especially considering that queer youth still have a disproportionately high suicide rate.

[evil_plotbunny]

Precisely. But even if they're not at that point, that was the wrong message to be sending.

There are so many ways to mess up kids, and this is one of the worst.

Gay youth? What gay youth?

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

A very straight male police constable told me once:"They *are* the suicide rate, the others we lose are incidental."
I think it only started to improve even slightly in the last few years. Aboriginal or Gay are the two things you don't want to have to be growing up in rural Canada.

[weirdquark]

Not that LC subject headings/classification doesn't have its own set of problems ::cough::western civilization bias::cough:: but catalogers are supposed to describe the works as they are and leave out any personal opinions.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting this in perspective.

We used to get letters like those at Anything That Moves, from folks sending porn and wanting to meet other bisexuals for sex, to Midwestern kids saying "oh my God there are other bisexuals in the world? I found your magazine in Borders and I think it saved my life". It kept me going when the long unpaid hours and interstaff drama made me want to put my head through the monitor of the Macintosh that was our sole publishing station.

Of course we shipped them out in brown paper envelopes from an anonymous PO Box address. And we shipped to some way out of hte way places, and we'd been told by our readers that they shared those issues with their whole polyamorous family, or all the kids in the unofficial queer group at school, and so on.

The high cost of paper was doing us in by the late Nineties, and we'd never been running a profit. I wanted us to go Web-only, now that the Net could reach folks, but that proposal failed, and I couldn't take it any more and I left; it felt like people keeping a brain-dead patient on lifesupport, and someone had to start putting nails in the coffin instead.

I hope this wakes people up to how important Amazon must be to the kid in the Midwest with nowhere else to turn, and why it's important to support our local bookstores, especially those who stock and even encourage the queers and transfolk and freaks.

We're still invisible in too many places.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Lambda Rising! I've been there, a couple summers ago!

(This was big for me, as that trip to DC for the library conference was my only visit to the East Coast so far in my life. (Orlando doesn't count.))

If you haven't been there in a while, it's still wonderful, elegantly organized, well-stocked, and knowledgeably staffed. I got some great stuff there.

[jgcr.livejournal.com]

Lambda Rising is lovely. They have (or at least did have) an entire bookshelf of queer fantasy / science fiction -- the first time I saw that, my reaction was something like "I'll take it! The whole thing!"

Around the same time you were working there, I was working in the back of Reiter's (science and tech books), not too far away. We just lost Stacey's, San Francisco's science/tech bookstore, so I've been thinking about it and hoping it will manage to survive.

[dacuteturtle.livejournal.com]

I freely admit that I don't get it. But with that story, yeah, I now get it.

Well told.

[ithinkitisayit.livejournal.com]

I will freely admit that I don't get the big deal about being queer/gay/crossdresser/transsexual/transgendered. There's this whole thing of bigotry going on, and I'm missing the entire impact. I just don't see why it matters.

Maybe it's because I'm young (22), but whenever anyone mentions a taboo relationship, only to mention it was between two people of the same sex, I'm always extremely disappointed. I just don't understand how homosexuality is considered taboo in this day and age. Then again, I'm only around people on the Internet, so I have no idea if my views are in line with the community I live in, or if it's something I've picked up from the Internet world.

I know my mother was either against homosexuals, or against me being one, but I was pretty oblivious to the meaning/intricacy of homosexuality at the time when she brought it up (When the "Something about Jane" Lifetime movie aired).

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm unclear. Are you not getting why people are bigots or are you not getting how bigots impact the lives of queer people in measurable ways?

[ithinkitisayit.livejournal.com]

I'm not getting why homosexuality is such a big deal to people. I'm not getting why people are choosing to worry over homosexuality instead of worrying over things that have a bigger impact on people's lives: cancer, AIDS, SARS, people who don't immunize their kids, people without proper education, people who drive recklessly, people who drink and drive, people who drive while high/drunk, etc.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

This isn't, I think, an answer.

Many years ago, my mother and I were watching a news piece about two kids who committed suicide with a gun after smoking pot and listening to rock music, possibly played backwards.

My mother's questions were:

Where did they get the dope?

Where did they get the gun?

Where the hell were these kids' parents when they were smoking pot and shooting out their brains?

I guess we're just weirdos, as the news show seemed to think that the most important issue was this weird rock music that the kids were listening to before they killed themselves.

[herself_nyc]

Wonderful post. What a wonderful experience for you to look back on, and the questions you close with, yes, so pertinent.

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

I was born in DC. I grew up in Arlington, VA. I didn't come out to myself as Bi until I was around 30, in the mid 90's. I worked at the Borders at 18th and L NW, that had an amazing section of GLBT fiction and non-fiction, second only to Lambda Rising. I loved Lambda Rising. The Ice cream store you're talking about, is it the one with the black and white checkerboard tile floor? If so, I knew someone who worked there in the 80's. There was also a GLBT tchotchke's, doo-dads and accessories store further up Connecticutt Avenue, in the same block with the Pleasure Chest, and kind of across the street from this leather shop that was up one flight from street level.

Lambda Rising still has an online presence, so I assume they are still there on Conn. Ave.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, Lambda Rising. While I never made it to the DC store, the store in Norfolk (which closed maybe a year and a half ago) was a big deal in what passed for the other-than-vanilla-het community in the Tidewater.

A friend of mine used to work there. The decline in book sales that you mentioned played a part in their demise, as did management issues. But they were great.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder how internet comms have done in taking the place of community spaces like LGBT bookstores. When I went to Rutgers I volunteered for the Rutgers University Lesbian Gay Alliance (RULGA) hotline that is apparently still in operation. Your entry has got me thining. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a vacuum for "a real live queer person" to speak with under the guise of book shopping.

There used to be 3 bookstores I frequented in NYC, all of them now closed. Blue Stockings is a kind of fringy feminist community space, but not one I've really patronized even though it's only a few blocks from my house.