While looking for stickers for one of my drink mugs I came across this Pride rainbow sticker purchase from many years ago. How many of my local friends who happen to read this remember Deacon Maccubbin’s Lambda Rising bookstore?

In the coming out stories that gay folk mostly tell…those of my generation at least…you get to the part where they walk into a gay bar for the first time and it’s an epiphany. They realize they’re not alone after all, and there are so many of us of all different kinds in all walks of life. But for me that moment of epiphany was the first time I walked into Lambda Rising. All the books and magazines and newspapers I had no idea existed…it was like the world had opened its doors for me. It was on the shelves of Lambda Rising I discovered Howard Cruse’s Gay Comics, gay fiction and non-fiction I had no idea existed, and magazines and newspapers I didn’t know about, or could only get if I walked into a seedy “Adult” bookstand in Wheaton.

That bookstore made it plain what Vito Russo once said about how It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance. The comprehensive ocean of our lives was there on those shelves. Nobody could ever tell me again that we weren’t just as human as our heterosexual neighbors.

The difference back then was our books were kept off the shelves of the major booksellers. No I am not likely to find a copy of The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren, or Counter Play by Anne Snyder, Coyote by Peter Gadol, The Boys On The Rock by John Fox, The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, Love Alone by Paul Monette, Farm Boys by Will Fellows (director Ang Lee gave Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal copies of this book prior to filming Brokeback Mountain) or Coming Out Under Fire by Allan Berube in a Crown Books, let alone a copy of The Advocate or The Washington Blade. 

I was a regular visitor to the store near DuPont Circle when I could borrow mom’s car, and then later when the Metro reached Twinbrook, then when I moved to Baltimore to the one in the gayborhood here. But like a lot independent bookstores and big chains it eventually closed its doors, unable I suppose to compete with Amazon, and I was deeply sad to see it go.

The gay bars are closing too it seems, but that’s because we’re becoming more integrated into our communities. And you can find sexual and gender minority content in the few chain and independent bookstores left. The next book in the Percy Jackson series focusing on boyfriends Nico di Angelo and Will Solace is coming later this year and will probably be on the shelves everywhere because the Percy Jackson books have been huge sellers. Rick Riordan has done an amazing job of inclusivity in his stories and characters, and it’s all the more amazing that these books are published under a Disney imprint. But it’s easy for minority voices to get lost in the torrent of pop culture. There are other voices, other stories, that I still have to dig to find.

The closest thing I have now to Lambda Rising is my subscription to the Gay & Lesbian Review, which is a literary journal (It used to be called The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review) that gives me pointers to new books. But I really miss being able to walk into Lambda Rising and just browse.

Yeah…or for that matter any good bookstore or newsstand. It’s a real shame.