I’m accustomed to sitting in a particular chair in the café of the local Borders, which is
all-too-conveniently located about a twenty minute walk from my apartment. The café, as in most other big-box bookstores, is located near the magazine section and it just so happens that from my chair, I have a clear view of the Gay & Lesbian aisle.

As I write this, I'm surreptitiously spying an elderly gentleman in his mid- to late-sixties. It’s not Sunday, but he's dressed as if he just came from a church service. I’m watching him as he tears open the plastic wrap of a magazine showing a twenty-something guy with washboard abs on the cover. The old man pulled the magazine halfway out and is leafing through the contents as he looks over his shoulder. He then hastily repacks and returns the magazine before moving along to another aisle.

A few days ago, I saw two other men do a similar dance at the same section. One man in particular, another older gentleman, was as nervous as a gerbil. Twice, I watched him try to grab a magazine and then snatch his hand back whenever someone walked around the corner into his aisle. He'd freeze, hands at his sides, presumably looking for an opportune moment. When he found one, he would grab his magazine, step over into the next aisle, and began reading.

I realized that I had been watching something curious, yet familiar. I couldn’t know what was going on in their heads, but it was clear that their intentions and motivations, whatever they were, didn’t seem strong enough to dispel whatever concern they had about being seen perusing that particular section.

Now, I can’t in good conscience single them out as hypocrites. I felt a certain dread when the bookstore’s computer told me that CDs by Robert Randolph and the Family Band might be found in the Christian music section. This, from a person who already owns a Mercy Me album. Still, being in that section was nothing compared to what I feel looking through writers’ books. I simply cannot go into that section while someone else is there, especially in a town like Ithaca where wannabe writers abound, most of whom are better than me.

At every chain bookstore, there’s one section you probably wouldn’t want to be caught dead perusing, but you do, anyway. You tell yourself that it’s no one else’s business while you’re looking over your shoulder, hoping no one notices you hovering over the latest Anne Rice novel. It’s the same combination of self-righteousness and apprehension that I see on the faces of people who pull out a lesbian fiction anthology and then step one shelf over to the African-American Lit section to read it.

Big-box bookstores are designed to be one-stop shops that cater to as many interests as local decency standards will allow them to exploit. They strive to project an image of providing something for everyone in a friendly, safe, and comfortable shopping environment, which is why they have cafés.

But, there’s a catch. The marketing strategy that gathers different demographics and sub-groups under the same roof does not require them to check their prejudices at the door. Every time you walk into a Barnes and Noble, you risk bumping into someone who may, for whatever reason, deem whatever you’re browsing for, be it Maxim or Chicago: Greatest Hits, 1982-1989, to be the cause of society’s moral decay. Or, at least, cause to point and laugh at you mercilessly. Heaven help you if that person is your boss, the church gossip, or a student that you teach. This is why it seems to be the exception, not the rule, to find someone who unapologetically says, “Yeah, I’m reading The Pop-Up Kama Sutra, what’s it to you?”

While there are, and should be, legal limits as to how prejudices can be expressed and things you can do when someone crosses the line, none of them really help you the day after your trip to Borders, when you go to work and find yourself labeled gay, a Jesus freak, or a wannabe writer.

Most of the people who shop there seem to know and accept that, at least at a sub-conscious level. It may not be fair, but maybe it’s a reality that can’t be avoided. For all the freedom we enjoy in American society, it’s sad that the one we seem to lack is the freedom to live our lives the way we want without catching any grief from anyone else. Then again, if all we have to worry about is a little indignity now and again, maybe it’s still not so bad.