Fierce Salvage

INTRODUCTION: Bug & Fin, Category Is Books

As the owners of Category Is Books, we're often asked what made us want to open a queer bookshop in Glasgow. The doors opened in September 2018. Over the years, like any good queer story, different truths have been told, things misremembered. There's a variety of answers, different combinations and collages of replies.

There wasn't a bookshop like it in Scotland. We wanted there to be one. We wanted to work together. We wanted to work on something that centred queerness. We felt isolated from other queer people. We felt detached from our queer history and culture, discovering it all much later in life, growing up under the shadow of Section 28. We watched as complacency grew post-marriage equality. We knew the rights that had been fought for were not concretely given, that they could be taken away in the blink of an eye. That progress isn't linear, and history can and will repeat itself unless we fight for it.

None of these stories are untrue, but we realised early on that we were making something that not everyone would understand. A space dedicated to only queer words and voices. To others we told about our plans, we were asked, was there really a need for it? Isn't it all okay for gay people now? Is that not quite self absorbed, just wanting to read books about people like yourselves? Well, good luck to you anyway!

We wanted to make something that would mean a lot to the people who knew it was needed, that it was long overdue. Whilst being welcoming to anyone walking through the doors, we haven't wasted time trying to convince the dubious or convert the confused, instead focusing on whom it is for and what those people need from the space and us.

For a brief moment, embarking on the journey towards opening the shop, we applied for a small pot of funding, but were rejected because the committee thought there wasn't enough of a demand for a queer bookshop in Glasgow. We asked if there happened to be anybody queer on the panel and were told they wouldn't release any of the committee's information. We didn't push further, but we had a sense, hard to articulate, but a familiar feeling in the body, that a room full of cis, straight people had decided what queer people want and need on their behalf.

When we finally got the keys, the shop came with a random assortment of furniture and leftover trash from previous tenants. There was a closet with the doors taken off and inside was a pile of books, a strange mix of medical textbooks, '90s gardening manuals and sun-bleached crime novels, all destined for the charity shop. But we kept the closet, sitting in the corner with its doors missing. A queer bookshop with a closet already there! It seemed too poetic not be cursed or blessed or both.

The closet, now sanded and repainted, holds our second-hand books. 100% of the money made from this section goes to queer groups and organisers. Some further afield, but others much closer to home, rotating monthly. Whatever the location, all these initiatives are focused on supporting queer people's access to what is needed. Housing. Healthcare. Education. In the last six years, over 12 new queer bookshops have opened across the UK. There are more queer books being published than ever before. We are choosing to not die wondering.

The stories in this anthology speak to these issues too. Throughout, you will encounter longing Sapphic poems; tales of dykes on trains; descriptions of dancing at queer club nights and tales of gender euphoria. There are stories about getting revenge on your landlord; the distress of accessing healthcare, queers in both the countryside and the cities; gay awakenings and vignettes of the love and care we can give to one another.

These words reflect a common theme-that we are here, and queer, living our best collective, often intertwined and gloriously messy lives-all whilst our external environment hums and thrums with increasing threat towards queer people in society.

Hate is fuelled by shame. Sometimes a group of teens will gather outside, egging each other on to come in and say something. Whoever draws the short straw gets pushed through the doorway, where they linger and pretend to look at whatever is closest, while working up the courage to say something enlightened like, 'You'se are gay.' To which we say, 'Why, yes we are, are you?' and a shop full of eyes usually turn from book pages to burn through their bravado. Dumbstruck and always outnumbered, they shuffle back out, perplexed. Our pride in who we are makes it harder to shame us. We always hope those awkward teens work it out. Come in one day to have a browse and see what takes their fancy.

But more direct hostility, transphobic and homophobic, has become more frequent since the early days of the bookshop. The endless articles filled with transphobic and ever more homophobic bile have had an effect. We noticed when there was an increase in people coming to take photos from outside to post online. Furious red faces searching for things to record and be outraged by. Looking for ways to fuck with us without having to come through the already literally open doors to have an adult conversation.

We can't control how people react to us existing proudly in the neighbourhood. But we can stick lots of gay naked butts around the signs they most like to take pictures of. We can take great joy from watching as their angry expressions become torn over whether or not to share that photo. Is it worth it to also share so many handsome, delicious gay butts?

Spitting on our door windows began during the COVID-19 pandemic. We've never seen the spitter in action, in person. They always come at night to leave their offerings for us to find in the morning. Some mornings there would be so much spit congealed to the glass that whoever it was must have entirely dehydrated themselves in the process.

We found a beautiful picture in a magazine of two very buff boys in a shower together, dripping and holding one another, and added the caption 'No more spit, Daddy, we're soaked through!' The sign saved us weeks' worth of window cleaner visits. We imagined the scene: the spitter hocking something up only to be met with a dilemma, the spit held in their cheek dribbling out and over their bottom lip as their jaw dropped. The campery of it all feels like a super power.

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Yes, they might spit on the bookshop-but inside the queers are living fiercely and showing each other how we can live these lives.

The cute afternoon dates; friends introducing each other to Leslie Feinberg for the first time; the parents coming in to ask about how best to get their teen a binder, or a gift for coming out. The squeals of joy when someone finds a book that before only existed for them as a collection of pixels online; laughing at the niche jokes on stickers and badges with perfect strangers, sharing a deeply personal sense of humour. Do you want a 'Have you Transsexualised yourself today?' badge, or 'Heteronormativity is the plague'?

The meet ups; the soon-to-be hook ups; the swapping of numbers and tips for HRT, exchanging knowledge about where is safe, which doctors are kind. Where is actually wheelchair accessible; which Pride is least corrupt; the best place Southside to get late night snacks; what time does the protest start on Saturday? The friends of friends of friends reminded of how small the queer world is, and how we're all a mycology.

Tourists from literally all over the world, straight off the train looking to feel at home away from home; the weepers for whom the shop hits a particular nerve, or others whose hormones are just kicking in. Queer families getting comfy in front of the picture book section, then getting to watch them move on to the middle grade books and comics as the kids get older and taller. Queers seeking other queers for birdwatching, swimming, film nights, gardening, carpools, dance parties, music jams, knitting, grieving, free hot meals.

The privilege of getting to witness the glow that comes from people allowing themselves their transness; the painted nails, the hair left to grow out alongside the finally freshly shaved or faded and coiffured; the breathing out and levelling that comes from ceasing to pretend to others that you're anything other than yourself today; baby beard hairs and whiskery upper lips, brand new outfits tried for the first time outside the house. Seeing people transition from a distance, changing and growing over time, ourselves included. The queens and older queers quietly sharing author recommendations with someone on the cusp of coming out, and telling us about titles and histories we've never heard of.

But you don't get to revel in queer joy without supporting and holding space for queer rage.

It didn't take long after the shop opened for us to realise that it wasn't just queer books people were struggling to source. We live in a country with dwindling social services and epic waiting lists at every turn. Many of these services no longer exist or are running in limited, skeletal ways. The services that survive, we aren't able to criticise, in fear of those scraps being taken away, however unfit for purpose they are. The NHS gender identity clinic in Glasgow, at a current eight-plus year wait time, is no exception to this. We've witnessed everyone trying their hardest to plug the holes in services, attempting with very little resources to fill in the blanks for one another. New rules, regulations, reports and practices are being debated...