Wichita Public Library, Main Branch, Wichita, KS

Today is the first day of the second leg of my trip. I drove from Wichita to Dodge City's public library, where I set up shop to finish my Mulvane entry (LUV) and start my Wichita Central Library entry (ugh). I only had time to go through the photos before I jaunted over to the Pioneer Memorial Library in Colby, Kansas, but it put me in a querulous mood that I've only been able to shake by yelling along to my Ipod as I made my way here.

What was true before is true still: I love the main branch of the Wichita Public Library system. The architecture still takes my breath away. So much of the interior design is still original to when I was growing up, and the mercilessly stony walls and huge windows make me wildly happy. It was here that a world outside of my small microcosm cracked open for me and grew. It was here where I knew exactly where to find the books I was looking for, only checking the card catalog when I was there for a school report. I sat at the desks on many occasions, staring up at the grand ceiling, in love with all that bombastic space. It was a dream, a machine, a star cruiser. All those books, all those places and people--things beyond me and my tiny life--it was a ship, a hot rocket, and it lit up everything inside, all dials turned, inevitably, to eleven.

But this is also the place where I was sexually assaulted by a homeless man when I was a young teen. So I hate the Main Branch of the Wichita Library. I fucking hate it and I want to punch it in its fucking face.

Of course I feel like I have to qualify my status as a "young" teen at the time of the incident, to make it all the more clear how truly terrible it was, as though old teens and adults don't count...as much. Why do we do that? If it happened yesterday, we should all be just as mad. We should all be furious.

One of the reasons I visited all of the Wichita area branches before the main one is because my expectations were in the basement...of Hell. And it was important to report how library staff has interacted with me in the present--all good to excellent--because of what happened that day and how I remembered their faces, how helpless and frozen they were. Nobody did anything. I was just left to deal with the aftermath and figure out how to process it.

I am happy to report that the Main Branch now has security. He is in full regalia, black button up and black pants, with all the shiny badges and patches to clarify his responsibility in this establishment. All Wichita libraries have the "Safe Place" signage on the front doors, including the main branch, and don't think this didn't pull a wistful harrumph out of me as I stood there contemplating it before I went in.

But aside from the memories that inevitably spilled out during my visit, my recent tour and time in the Central Branch was positive. And there were far more sweet memories than bitter.



Every time I walk up to the main branch, I start feeling the library feelings. This is an emotion made up of all sorts of sub-emotions, like glee (I get to check out books!), happiness (I know what books I want!), trepidation (Stranger Danger Alert), pre-annoyance (What if someone took my book?), and nostalgia (mmmbooks). This library was My library, my first true library love, and though something ugly happened here, I still love it to the moon and back and all that. And even when I have no intention of getting anything--like this last time--the old catalog of library feelings shuffles through my head because of muscle memory. It's a part of what made me, for better or worse.

The architecture of the main branch will always be the beginning and end of all library design in my eyes--those concrete walls, tinted glass, and boxed lights. The dark wood and a glowy gloom everywhere, despite all the natural light. I realize that the ol' girl is Objectively Ugly, but Brutalism pretty much promises you a harsh and dramatic smack in the face just in its name alone, so...no spoilers there. She displays her cracked bones with a wide set, predatory smile, bared bright and beckoning. She's so wretched you have to love her.

What I like about the library, and Century II which resides right next to it, is just how Far Out and Completely Whacked both ideas were at the time of conception. It was the late 60s, sure, but it was also Wichita. In Kansas. But the Board responsible for these creations received two proposals--one for a Building Block from from the Fourth Dimension, the other a Flying Saucer--and instead of chortling indignantly, twirling their mustaches, and moving on to build squares with columns (Corinthian if you are lucky), they winked, smiled, and said, "Groovy, dude, let's do it." (dramatization, may not reflect reality, but really, really should)


When you walk into the library, the stone slat design carries through to the inside, casting formidable shadows across the dark wood interior. One unfortunate addition since my childhood (I think I'd remember, but who knows) is the hideous carpet they bought on sale at Jabara's (please say it was Jabara's) and laid out on all three floors to harass and terrorize the patrons. The carpet is either meant to distract from the age of the library as a whole, or it is meant to cause seizures. Whatever reason was given on paper, the true intention had to be malevolent.

There's a cool lighting fixture above the entry point down the middle of the library's main floor, past circulation toward the back of the building. As I admired it, I felt that familiar disturbance in the matrix, and I could've sworn the circulation desk used to be twice as long. Chalk it up to a child's memory, where everything is just More (but I say they changed it, they did). The mis-memory could almost jar a person into thinking she's in the wrong place, at least until entering the main part of the library, each wing unfurling in vast, dual cathedrals of concrete, glass, and mellow light.

At the very back of the first floor is the computer room (glassed in) and just before it are stairs leading down to the basement (archives, I believe--it used to be off limits, so I didn't go down there this time around, either). There are two floors above the first, with the second only taking up the same amount of space as circulation, the basement stairwell bay, and the computer room--the sides are open so you can look out over the rest of the library on either side, and it is wonderful. On each side of the main thoroughfare are identical cubes of space: massive, wide open, and wondrous. This is where the fiction, reference, and some nonfiction can be found. The south side is fiction, the north side is reference. Or, at least it was...my exploration of the shelves themselves was cursory at best.

I will not describe the assault that happened to me in the north side stacks--it was horrible, I felt sick to my stomach for a long time after, and would blush furiously whenever I thought of it well into my twenties. It took a long time for the shame and embarrassment I felt to turn into a hard, black rock of RAGE that I would happily beat a particular person half to death with, if I only knew where he was. And that's enough to know. But here is where it happened, right in the stacks. After I chased him and failed to motivate library staff to help me catch him, or call someone, or just DO something, I finally just ran up to the third floor to the bathroom. See the square little window? All of the women's bathroom windows are like that. It is a pinhole compared to the rest of the library's vast openness, and it now reminds me of the tunnel vision that happens when a panic attack is going very, very badly. I used to think of it as a porthole on a cruiser--water boat or spaceship, either one. Now it just makes me fluttery and sweaty.

That's enough of that.




When I was a child, I never spent time on the second floor--it was all stuff I wasn't interested in or allowed to be--but I'm thrilled I took a look around the place this time. The Business and Technical Center is my absolute favorite thing. It's like time stopped and instead of wrecking it, they preserved it. I am sure there are uses for typewriters today (my car buying experience taught me that even dot matrix printers have a foothold in our present reality, as unreal as that may sound), but the whole scene was just too twee and darling not to document.

I had great fun photographing the weirdest parts of the library because, well, there were so many. So, so many. Like the bronze piece in the main foyer featured above? "Structure of Knowledge" it yells in cruel, serif font. Sounds like a Babel translation of Google translation of a German pop song, ay?

On the third floor I found mostly sadness. It is closed off from the breathtaking scope of the first and second floors' widemouthed, stark beauty, so it just looks like the basement of the basement of the DMV. In my teens, I spent a lot time on the third floor because that's where my idols lived. I learned all about Marilyn, Marlon, and Greta, and all their messy truths somehow managed to simultaneously break them down and build them up in my eyes. This is where the film and television books still reside, but now they share space with the DVDs, so the whole area has a used, broken hanger aesthetic like 3 A.M. K-Mart in Amarillo, Texas.

For your half bath decorating needs.

But the third floor is also where they keep their weirdest treasures. The Lonely Piano, for one. If anyone ever plays it, it's probably "Tiptoe through the Tulips," "I Just Called to Say I Love You," or similarly satanic shit. The third floor also features the Inexplicable Cork Wall. Which probably seemed like a Great Idea on day one. Day two, maybe week two. Perhaps the burnt toast look was intentional. But in such a dreary space, it just looks...burnt. And accidental. And something people who work there probably dream about, sweating and murmuring nononono. Not the Cork Wall.

The third floor also has some sort of framed art display/reference rack-thing, a scene very reminiscent of the olden days when we would peruse for prints at the college bookstore. Do they even still have those? To make it weirder if not weirdest, these prints are already framed. In their original, very old, sometimes tacky, totally dated frames. Terrible, terrible frames. It's like the Wichita Central Library raided Hobby Lobby back in September of 1999 and this is where they keep their stash. If anyone knows what this thing is, do tell. I was afraid to ask. (Yes, I will kick a face, but inquiring about the Frame Display of Bathroom Art seemed irrevocably dangerous. Les requetes dangereuses.)

As a former Stacks Maintenance Professional,
I had to document these lovelies.

I genuinely hope they have display cases for all this crazy crap in the new place.

Once I completed my circuit of the parts of the library I cared about (sorry basement), I decided to stake my claim on some prime real estate. There just happened to be an open table next to the computer aquarium, a lucky spot where I could sit with my back effectively to a big, concrete wall. If anyone attempted to get anywhere behind me, I would know it was shenanigans and proceed to Make A Terrible Scene*.

(*What, you've probably asked yourself, does she plan to do if something happens, or starts to happen, again? I've given that thought and, depending on the situation, have settled for the two step approach. Should a genuine threat arise, step 1. Get Loud. I've determined that the mentally unstable don't get private ownership of Acting Out in shared, public spaces. When I am threatened, I feel pretty goddamned unstable, too. Things will get shout-y, immediately. I will not be playing nice or negotiating for civility, either. If you encroach uninvited, you will get the claws. First verbal then, if need be, step 2. Flee or, if I am cornered, Fight. I remember an old Oprah where cops were advising women on how to behave in these sorts of situations. One of the cops made the point that we are programmed to be NICE and POLITE. Criminals know this and take advantage of it. It isn't going to help. My feeling is, Why be nice? Why bargain? Are they being nice? No.

For the record, I hope I never have to make these choices. But before I set out on this trip I knew I had to decide what I was going to do instead of hoping and wishing on a star that everything would go smoothly and nothing bad would happen. You have to be honest with yourself. What would you be willing to do to protect yourself? I do not believe there is one right answer to this question, either.)

I was able to write for a few hours uninterrupted (sort of)--all without headphones, anyway, and that is my test of a library's usefulness for study, contemplation, and creation. A few people approached and sat at the table next to mine, and two of them gave me an undeniable stinkface, which I understood. It was a very good table and I know I am not the only person who prefers to have her back covered at all times.

There was also a meeting room right next to where I was sitting, so people were going in an out pretty regularly for an hour, until finally whatever was happening reached its conclusion and 30 or so people left at once. They were all holding certificates, which could be a good/fun thing (pride! accomplishment!) or a bad/boring thing (work training! traffic violations! probation officers! pee cups!). I heard one person say "Oh My Gawd can we go now" so that suggests the latter, don't you think?

I wish I could say I exorcised all of my demons in this last visit to the Wichita Central Library, but we all know that's not how it works. Maybe sometimes or for some people, but for most, dealing with trauma is a process, just like it is for any part of your life that is complicated and hard. Going to rehab for 30 days will help (if you let it) but you're not cured, even though you get that dandy certificate saying you completed the program. You are on your way to being okay, and that's something. It is a HUGE something. It's the beginning of a process.

For me, touring all of these libraries has made the difference. And traveling by myself, doing things my sequestered self would have been horrified to face (sleeping in the car are you crazy), has made a difference as well. It also helps to confront the dark things from your past directly instead of peripherally, accidentally, fearfully. Whether we like it or not, these things belong to us. We can allow the darkness to keep twisting that knife, or we can take it, turn it, or break it, make it into something new, better, bolder--and God willing, stronger. Fortified. It isn't impossible.

Wide shot of Century II, the Central Library,
and my favorite building in Wichita, the Garvey Center.