March 2003 Lit. Supplement
HOUSE HUNTER
"Junkyard Dogs"
by Michelle Tea
LEN PLASS, the butchier half of the queer duo behind the so-new-it's-barely-here Junkyard Books, is croaking a precaffeine, cranky croak into my telephone. "I don't think you should come over," she warns. "The toilet's broken, the office is such a mess you can't work in it, and my dog's psycho." This sounds appropriate for a press named after a giant mess of garbage, and I insist on a tour of headquarters, psycho dog and all.
Junkyard Books is tucked away inside your run-of-the-mill upper Castro Victorian. Cujo has been locked away in the basement, where for the duration of my visit he hurls himself violently against the bolted door like a horror film monster-dog. I've taken the time to tinkle elsewhere, and as for the office, it's not quite the wreck I'd imagined. A dismembered PlayStation tops a pile of junk that includes a bunch of plastic Jesus paraphernalia. John Deere and flying-corn Dekalb signs hang on the walls; a leopard couch is crammed with plump trash bags bound for the Goodwill and a couple of boxes of books, fresh from the printer.
Junkyard Books is the brainchild of Plass, a young veteran of the city's queer performance scene, and Shay Alderman, a graphic designer from North Carolina. It is the pair's noble mission to create a small press specializing in publishing the unpublished � the queer, the messy, the experimental; writers whose corner of the lit world contains not editors and agents but community-oriented open-mic nights and self-published chapbooks scammed from Kinko's. The low-key release of their debut anthology, Lowdown Highway, created a happy stir in this world as it put into print for the first time many of the city's queer spoken word champs. Subtitled The Transportation Anthology, the slim collection features references to trains, bicycles, and even horses, but the real star is the romantic myth of the American road: a dusty, cement ribbon where gritty pilgrims weather breakdowns and endure Greyhound buses to emerge transformed and anonymous in a new, more possible place.
This urge to start a tiny press whose main function is to be an outsider writer's first step on the publishing ladder was a dream Plass temporarily shelved to focus on reviving the failing Bearded Lady Cafe, the raggedy heart of grimy lesbo poetry in San Francisco. Alderman applied her design muscle to gave the coffee joint a face-lift, but the venue's downward spiral could not be halted. When the caf� closed its doors, the pair returned their focus to bringing into print the poets who spouted verse before the pastry-cluttered counter.
"We were looking at what was out there for queer anthologies, and it's all Best Erotica collections," Plass says. Junkyard's queer sensibility rejects the more traditional near-obsession with sex, coming out, and rainbow flag-waving, choosing instead to search for stories "about anything. And maybe you happen to be transgender, but it's not about it." Call it postgay or whatever, but what it does is make the whole world suitable material for queer authors.
Still, chunks of the community insisted on seeing a call for a queer anthology as a call for sex stories. Alderman laughs about one writer who, when he realized it was a queer anthology, sexed it up extra. "I said we'll accept his submission, but we're not asking for things about queer sex. We're asking about things about transportation, from people who are queer and ride bikes, drive cars."
Presently Junkyard Books is looking for stories on the theme of weapons, for its second anthology. While the war has cast a grim shadow of reality on the subject, Alderman has faith that capable writers will mine the topic for deeper and more universal sentiments, such as "how people use certain things against each other. People come up with complex readings into what 'weapons' mean."
Right now the only way to snag a copy of Lowdown Highway is at the Junkyard Web site (www.geocities.com/junkyardbooks/home). The pair has hesitated to connect with a distributor, unwilling to give the book's price the upward kick such a deal would necessitate. "We wanted it to seem like a steal," Plass says of the book's $8 cover price, "which it is." But while poets push $5 self-published chapbooks, surely the reading public would be willing to trade a sawbuck for a perfectly bound volume containing some seriously unique writing. With the aid of little more then a how-to book and grassroots gumption, Junkyard has cranked out an impressive debut. It's my hope they'll score a distribution deal that gets the books into indie bookstores, where they belong, even if it means broke-ass readers like me have to cough up an additional few bucks.
"We're learning," Plass says, "how to be the small, tiny publisher and still get what we want."
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Michelle Tea is the author of a novel, Valencia Street, and a memoir, The Chelsea Whistle. She lives in San Francisco.
San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 30, 2003, Volume 37, Issue 31
www.sfbg.com/lit/apr03/junkyarddogs.html
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