1988, three other lesbians and I opened Grand Books, a general bookstore in Jackson, Wyoming, (population 4,000, tourist population 3 million a year every summer). We needed to employ one and a half of the four of us (jobs were scarce in Jackson) and decided that opening a bookstore would be a cause worthy of us, and something we would enjoy doing. Thus, we began the process of starting a small business.
We didn’t have enough cash of our own and so we needed a loan. We consulted with a woman who was a manager of the local savings and loan. She couldn’t provide a loan, but she did spend a lot of time helping us create a business plan, mentoring us, explaining the ins and outs of banking and financing. She revealed to us how extremely difficult it is to be a woman in banking in Wyoming. At one point, she was having lunch with other women bankers from across the state, commiserating about the sexism in their industry. If they just had the right “equipment,” the men would treat them equally.
At the next luncheon, one of the bankers presented each of her fellow women bankers with a necklace charm- a tiny penis and balls carefully sculpted in silver! Now the women would forever know they had the right equipment.
With help from this financial adviser and many others, we formulated a dynamite business plan and went loan shopping. At the first bank, the loan officer said, “It’s too bad you don’t have husbands who can sign for you. We have plenty of money to loan.”
The second banker sat stiffly behind his huge wooden desk and said, “I don’t have anything against you . . . uh . . . ladies, per se . . .” as he rejected our application. By then we were disgusted. For the third and final bank, we dyked ourselves out, carrying briefcases and backpacks. We called ourselves the Lesbian Mafia. We strode into the
bank as if we owned it. We got the loan!
But before we could receive the money, the loan had to be approved by the Small Business Administration. The SBA has a rule that no business borrowing money from it can support a particular ideal or philosophy. When the SBA learned that our list of bookstore sections included Women’s Studies and that half of the books in our store would be by women, they decided we were a specialty store and therefore not eligible for a loan.
This ruling has been used time and time again to prevent feminists and lesbians from borrowing money to start businesses. We organized a successful letter campaign (from our lawyer and our book distributors) saying that it would be dumb to open a “specialty” store in such a small town, and we were, after all, smarter than that. We finally got the loan, and repaid it in less than 4 years.
We ordered bookstore fixtures that were to be trucked from “back east” and had a crowd of lesbians lined up to help unload the moving van over the Fourth of July weekend. When the Mayflower truck pulled up, we discovered that the two drivers were women and definitely “family.” Their previous delivery had been to a Christian bookstore in Ohio, and they were mighty pleased to be delivering to dykes. In spite of our promises to the SBA, we did carry a wide selection of lesbian and gay books. However, we didn’t want the fact that we carried “those” books to affect our sales of everything else.
For this reason and our own homophobia, we decided to put the lesbian and gay section in the small back room we were using as an office and call it “The Closet.” We put a sign on the door saying, “The Closet” and, in our ads to the lesbian and gay community we stated that “the books are in the closet.” This made a safe place for local women to peruse the books and gave us a great conversation item with lesbians passing through. Realizing that some dykes would not be brave enough to ask us where the books were, we trained ourselves and our employees to spot and approach lesbians with questions such as “How did you find us?” and “Is there anything else we can help you find?” Our straight employee, Colleen, was sometimes better at spotting and interacting with lesbians and gays than we were.
After hiding the books in the closet for a couple of years, Colleen decided we needed a coming-out party for the books. She brought the books out of the closet and formed a great lesbian, gay, and women’s studies section. Much to our surprise, sales increased and we never did receive a negative comment.
The bookstore was an oasis for locals as well as for travelers visiting conservative Wyoming and nearby states, where openly gay and lesbian organizations are few and far between, and where the spirit of appreciation for sexual diversity is not encouraged. Women coming through would stop to get a “hit” of lesbian culture/energy. This constant parade of lesbians through our doors made us feel wonderful, less isolated, more connected. Even with only a few hours’ notice, we could round up audiences for lesbian happenings.
At the beginning of our third year of business, the bank changed its mind about giving us a $10,000 line of credit. As it stood, we had based our financial plan around that infusion of capital. Friends offered to loan us money to keep the store open, but after four years of Reagan and Bush we were exhausted. In February 1992, we closed Grand
Books.
The most fulfilling part of owning a feminist bookstore was also the most demanding. We got to meet and interact with many wonderful people; we were also expected to be the social service center for the lesbian and gay community. We maintained contact with lots of the great people we met through Grand Books, but it was definitely time to do something else that wasn’t so emotionally taxing.
DOROTHY HOLLAND
This is from the book “Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America”, published by Warner Books in 1995. Edited by Lynn Witt, Sherry Thomas, Eric Marcus, Assistant Editor Don Romesburg. Pages 599-602
