Rehme arrived in Boston at an interesting time for the gay community and for the South End. He came by way of Kansas - he was born in a little town with the distinction of being "the official birthplace of MaryAnn from Gilligan's Island - and California, where he spent many years as a gay activist in San Francisco. After burning out on activism, he moved to Boston to enjoy a quieter life with his partner and a secure job with an insurance company. That position required him to travel around the country, and he began to notice a new breed of gay bookstores popping up in America.

"I was seeing all these bookstores that didn't feel the need to be discreet," Rehme recalls. "They were involved in the LGBT community and were also parts of their neighborhood. I came to think that Boston was ready for a friendly, street-level gaybookstore."

After taking some courses from The American Bookseller's Association, and maxing out his credit cards, Rehme opened We Think the World of You in 1994. It may seem hard to believe now, but the store's location across from the Boston Center for the Arts was considered a bit risky.

"The timing was perfect," says Rehme in hindsight. "Tremont Street was still a little untapped as a business district. Some people said it was too deep in the South End."

The naysayers were wrong. The store saw rapid expansion and was turning a profit by its third year. As the South End grew, so did the store, thanks to Rehme's eye for retail trends and willingness to adapt to the market. Beginning by capitalizing on "a golden age" in gay publishing, the store soon expanded into erotica, music, and movies.

But like a lot of small businesses, Cuttyhunk began to feel the pressures of technology, with the rise of digital piracy and online sellers cutting into sales.

"1998 was a peak year for gay music," explains Rehme, that was followed by a boom in gay DVDs in the early 2000s. "What we used to see was guys coming in to the store after brunch, and each one of them would buy the latest dance compilation. Just a few years later, only one guy would buy it. Then he'd burn copies for his friends." Similarly, Rehme's prescience in moving into the DVD market was eventually undercut by the growth of Netflix and illegal file sharing.

In 2005, facing a major rent hike, Rehme decided to quit while he was ahead and close Cuttyhunk's doors. "I could have reinvented the store," he muses, "but I just didn't have the energy."

What he did have was a business sense honed by ten years of operating a bookstore, and plenty of contacts in the world of gay publishing. As he began hearing rumors of gay presses cutting corners or getting ready to close, Rehme sensed that the timing was right for a new venture.

"With Carroll and Graff sold off, and Haworth Press in flux, now is the time to expand," says Rehme confidently. He explains that there will always be a demand for gay-themed books, but in the current publishing climate, the larger presses are less interested in meeting that need.

"I blame it on Oprah," he laughs. "I have great respect for Oprah, and she's done a lot for literature, but she's also shown publishers that if they focus their efforts they can make more money on less books. This was always a problem when I had the store, that books would go out of print and publishers would be reluctant to reprint them. And now more than ever, publishers only want to support their most profitable books."

That's bad for gay readers, but good for entrepreneurs willing to fill the gaps. And Rehme is content, for now at least, to work in the shadows of the bigger presses. He admits that it's harder to take a big risk now that he's older and more experienced.

"To open my store, I got 150 thousand dollars in debt. That's crazy!" he laughs. "I'm still learning, and I'm thinking very carefully about how to expand. In 2008 I hope to publish 8 books."

So for now, Cuttyhunk is a one-man operation, run from a small South End office. Rehme contracts out whatever work he can't do himself; a former Cuttyhunk customer designed the cover, a printer in South Boston produces the books, and Rehme has embraced the current realities of the bookselling trade by making an ally of one one of his biggest competitors from the bookstore days.

"Amazon is now my biggest customer," he reveals.

Learn more about Holding the Man, and Cuttyhunk's future books, at www.cuttyhunk.us.