Owning Your Shit in the Age of Spin (Rage, 1977)

RAGE (1977)

After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Stephen King sat down and wrote an essay about violence in America titled "Guns." In the essay, King addressed his decision to let the book Rage go out of print. Rage, originally titled Getting It On, is a particularly significant piece of the bestselling author's oeuvre since King himself has identified it as the first novel he ever wrote. The fact that King wrote the story of a high school shooter while he himself was a junior and senior in high school only solidifies the incredible value of the work [1]. King's insights and perspective from the direct point of view of a high school kid lends a level of authenticity that is clear, honest, and blunt. Rage, before it is even considered as a piece of literature to be enjoyed or reviled, already stands as something to be studied, discussed, and protected.

Scary skull concept. Are you scared? It fits,
though I'd argue most directly to just one of
the novels within: The Long Walk. I could
swear my edition had much sharper cover
art and CMYK color processing, but I can't
be 100% certain. It kind of looks like they
scanned in a copy of the original and this
is what came out, like something from a
1985 Xerox machine. 

In the essay "Guns," King mentions rewriting Getting It On some ten years after that first draft and sending it to his publisher to print under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, "[w]here it was published as Rage, sold a few thousand copies, and disappeared from view" [2]. This is a bit of an oversimplification of the matter, since most King fans back in those grody days of the 80s remember when King's pseudonym was discovered and, more precisely, when King's publisher was kind enough to release most of the Bachman works (sans Thinner) under one title, The Bachman Books. I had my paperback copy for decades, spine cracked, pages yellowed and torn, before surrendering it to a giveaway pile, never considering the fact that it was, as of the late nineties, incrementally but increasingly irreplaceable. Because after a series of school shootings linked directly or indirectly to Rage, King decided he'd had enough and asked the publisher to let it go out of print [3].

If you look it up, you can still find plenty of copies of either Rage or The Bachman Books for sale, almost all of them used (and any purporting to be new, buyer beware). The new, "international edition" of The Bachman Books sold on Amazon has taken a few hits to its star rating over the years since the original description included Rage even though the book itself (yet another 2012 edition) does not. They've updated the description since, but the pissed off reviews still stand. People want Rage, more likely than not because it completes the works of Stephen King. And no one likes being told they've been shut out of a special club where only a special few get to know the secret handshake. I don't know, maybe they should've jammed Thinner in there as a consolation prize.

While I can see how perceptive, well-read
fans caught on to the ruse, I would still insist
that the Bachman books do feel different.
They're grittier, somehow. Meaner.

You can't unring a bell...and you can't unshoot a gun. King describes his decision to let Rage go out of print as something he did with "real regret." While he does not believe the story was the singular cause of any one of the violent incidents connected to it, he considers Rage "a possible accelerant" [4]. Which was all the reasoning he needed. From any genuinely compassionate perspective, it is completely understandable. 

Since learning of his decision to let Rage go out of print (which took years for me to truly understand--I was a bit out of it for a long while), I've experienced a surplus of supportive, combative, compassionate, and mean spirited feelings about it. As with any King work that I absolutely adored in my teen years, It's Complicated. At this writing I'm balanced on slim blade, where two opposing arguments weigh exactly the same...and (at least in the exact here and now) I'm not sweating it so much because of one very awesome reason (more on that in a minute).

On one side, I understand where King is coming from. Anyone who has read more than one of his books knows that he's an empathetic person, someone who can create whole, true humans out of thin air full of depth, history, and feeling. And anyone who has read his chatty forewords, afterwords, and varied addenda are doubly tuned in to King's self awareness, sensitivity, and genuine affection for his fans. The criminal incidents that can be connected to Rage started with hostage taking and ended in multiple murders. Even the most incidental connection between the least damaging act of violence and something I wrote would absolutely sting like hell. I would feel sick and struggle for perspective. It would hurt. So I get it. After the killings in Paducah, Kentucky, King called it. He couldn't bear the association any longer and, more importantly, he didn't have to. 

On the other side, the place where I tend to linger, is the question of censorship. Until the last copy of Rage or The Bachman Books perishes from earth, I suppose you could never exactly call the decision to take this one particular King story out of publication "censorship," but Never. The. Less. Access to Rage is effectively restricted. You can try to buy it online, but you're rolling the dice whenever you buy something used sight unseen. You could attempt to find a copy in a used bookstore, and maybe you will get lucky. And your library might be hoarding a copy like a bright and gleaming Precious, back in storage, not out in the stacks where any idjit bastage could just up and steal it. There are tepid little pools everywhere, no doubt, but the fresh spigot to Rage has been cut off.

Savage secrets, ghoulish game shows, and em-dash abuse, oh my

Rage speaks to a certain teenage mindset, one twisted to seek validation through violence and chaos, but it also speaks to a lot of other teenage mindsets, and plenty of empathetic adults, too. Rage should be available for study--for academics interested in King's early, formative work, his very first novel is, quite frankly, extremely vital. And yes, for history, as well. It's just one fragment to the exhaustive school/youth shooter formula that we're still trying to solve to this day, but it's important that historians, sociologists, educators, psychologists, and politicians get every fact they can to try to understand this problem better. This includes access to the novel Rage--and not just a synopsis, either.

There are sales/ad pages aplenty in
this edition of The Bachman Books.
This one appears in the frontmatter.
Shameless! I do love that Fangoria-
style font, though.

Leaving Rage out of print is not exactly censorship, but it's got its lips pressed against it and the glass between the reader and the work is getting all kinds of fogged up. It's censorship adjacent and I Don't Fucking Like It.

How do I balance on this impossible edge, both sympathetic and disapproving? In the best way, of course, because revisiting this King classic comes with a sunshine-y side story, and it's time to glow and crow about the Wichita Public Library. Let's talk those bitches UP. Because after realizing what I'd done (goodbye my copy of The Bachman Books, I hope someone is loving you), I had to come to terms with the fact that I might not be able to get my hands on a complete copy at all. I searched the Wichita Public Library's website and found that they did, indeed, have one paperback copy. It even listed Rage in the description. More intriguingly yet, it was in the "Storage Collection" and the shelf location was "Ask for Staff Assistance." It was also checked out at the time, so I put a request in and warned myself not to get my hopes up. After all, there were versions of The Bachman Books out there being advertised as intact that were, in fact, not intact, sending customers into their own mini-rages over false advertising and general vexation about not being able to get the thing they wanted. 

Full title page. Obligatory "Explain
yourself" section included. Anyone
who thinks the Bachman books are
just throwaways that should have
stayed in the trunk are just dead wrong.
Wait til you hear all of my Strong and
Loud feelings about The Running Man.

The good old Wichita Public Library came through, though, didn't she? The best part yet, it appears to be the same edition I owned as a kid. I'm not 100% certain it is the exact same since there are weird little differences in the color values on the cover and there's some wackadoodle typesetting in the interior, but it's the same cover design, same interior content, and was published roughly around the same time my own copy was clutched in my sweaty little hands, at the twee age of 14, still smarting from my time in the clink, aka middle school. The library's copy has a creased back cover and some pages that are a little beat up, but the binding is remarkably strong and, aside from just age, it is in fantastic condition. When I first picked it up, I rifled through to see if Rage was really there, and was squawked with joy to find it complete and whole. A real copy of The Bachman Books in my hand! And all courtesy of the Wichita Public Library. Fucking heroic. 

So that's what's got me balanced here, half compassion, half rrrrage against even the hint of censorship, because librarians Know What's UP. Somebody was fully aware that Rage was out of print and would be harder for the general reader to get a hold of. Not impossible, but harder. So they secured a copy and then double secured it by keeping it safe but available to any patron that requested it. I only had to have a library card in good standing to check it out and take it home. No surrendering of kidneys or first born boychildren required. It's even renewable so long as no one else requests it. Fucking. Heroic.

I would just like to state for the record, before moving on, that I know I've related stories here about my tendency to break book backs, fold pages, and all around act a damn ingrate when it comes to the treatment of my own books, but rest assured I treat library books with the utmost care, always. I've been especially sensitive to this copy of The Bachman Books because I know how much it is worth. So, no sweating WPL. I promise not to crack any spines.

Copyright page, jammed tight from top to
bottom. The bottom margins in this book
are obscene. Like, who dares? Apparently,
Signet, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a
division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

Growing up, The Bachman Books was always a favorite, placed much higher than the pulpy horror King frolicked in during the early-to-mid 80s (Firestarter, Cujo, Christine, etc) at least in my estimation, with three of the stories (sorry Roadwork) true rippers and roarers, fearless, bold, brutal, striking, and even in the depths of speculative, near-future fantasy, so very real. As a bruised survivor of hellschool, I found high school to be a far milder, much more pleasant place to score those C's and B's, but when I first read Rage I still remembered with cruel clarity the stifling victimhood of the bullied. Middle school, high school--it all translated. 

In the essay "Guns," King spends a little time outlining the every day circumstances of the kids who carried out those Rage-adjacent incidents; what happened during each incident, certain things uttered during or after, and what was going on in their lives just prior to acting out. In each case, there are sad moments of attention seeking--blustering, infantile, pathetic neediness--and declarations like, "I don't think I can kill anyone....I don't think I can do it," "Why am I doing this?" and "Kill me! Please! I can't believe I did that!" [5] In each case, the kid was under some sort of external duress, whether it was guardian neglect or abuse, or bullying from schoolmates. This theme isn't new--it's basically the same refrain we've heard after every school shooting. The difference, however, may be in how these particular kids reacted to their own actions. Why am I doing this? I can't believe I did that. What have I done?

It is real! It is complete! Thank you, Wichita
Public Library! As much as I believe readers
deserve full access to Rage, it is actually not
my favorite novel in the collection. It's not
even my second favorite. Still good, though.
Still worth fighting for.

Reading Rage now, under the shadow of its quiet death, forces the reader to think not only of the story unfolding, but of the context outside the story; its earnest beginnings (King laboring away at his typewriter, smudged glasses and pimple-faced, bent over the keys and typing a wild whir because he's got Something To Say), and the dark, sad demise (sullied by association to the despair of its creator and sent silently out to sea). Considering the notoriety, you'd expect to find a much bigger bloodbath within its pages, kids bodies sprawled in gore, a grinning psychopath with a gun. But it's really more like The Breakfast Club with a pistol. There is a body count, but the construct is deliberate and the message is clear: Charlie Decker doesn't shoot his teacher because he's a stone cold killer out for blood; he shoots her because he's got a stomach ache. And why does Charlie have a stomach ache? Because he has a controlling, distant, judgmental dickwad of a father. Because he has severe anxiety and has been trying to manage it on his own to no avail. Because he's starting to lose cohesion, grow more paranoid, and has nowhere to go but to his bedroom, day after day, to quietly crack up. Because when his teachers put him on display, trembling at the chalkboard, mocking his ignorance, slathering sarcasm and snotty shots at his back while he tries to work it out, stomach turning and churning, mind whirring, until finally its just one shot too many...well. Chaos. 

I love the early author pages for King--they get
more and more effusive and it's literally still the
tip of the iceberg with this guy. So much more TK.

The story begins during an interim period where the lead character, Charlie Decker, attends classes while awaiting his fate. Weeks earlier, Charlie brained his science teacher with a wrench after an unfortunate chalkboard showdown. The teacher was severely hurt, but lived. After counseling, meetings with police, lawyers, administrators, and psychologists, it's decided Charlie can return to school for a period while they decide if he's going to finish high school where he started...or end up at the reform school. But it's already too late for all that, really, because the teachers keep sniping, and now his paranoia is validated by actual stares and whispers, so when Charlie is finally summoned to the principal's office to be told his future, Charlie is already spring loaded to snap. All it takes is one more mealy mouthed lecture from a condescending adult and Charlie commences with what he calls "getting it on." There's a scene in the principal's office, followed by a locker set on fire, and finally Charlie rejoins his math class, blowing away the teacher and taking the students hostage. When another teacher comes along to tell them to evacuate because the fire alarms are now blaring, the teacher is given a chance to escape yet can't seem to grasp the situation--to listen to the students' warnings to leave--and gets shot as well.

When I was a senior in high school, I went through a very mild but memorable incident with the principal's office that immediately made me think of Rage at the time, not because I went off and acted out or anything, but because it reminded me so much of the administrators and teachers, and really most of the adults, in King's story. As King illustrates again and again, adults don't listen. Ever. They just make sarcastic remarks, nag, sermonize, finger wag, judge, humiliate, undermine...they "grind you down" as Pig Pen, one of Charlie's hostages in Rage, would say. They never, ever listen. This little incident of mine had to do with tardiness. I was late to school because I was doing something for my mother, by her direction and permission. The principal's office was deliberately obtuse about the whole thing, rules are rules, etc., and they were hellbent on giving me detention. The condescension was thick, bull-headed, and entirely unnecessary. They ended up reversing their decision, but not before extracting a good deal of frustration and anxiety out of me, the sickly-sweet nectar of the petty dictatorship, and only after my mother called and raked them hard over the coals. There was no satisfaction in that, either, none at all. I remember sitting in the library and stewing over it, mulling and mad, and thinking of Rage, the deliberate, obtuse bullshit of grownups. Being seventeen, the exact same age as Charlie in the book, and so close to finally being out from under that giant, collective grownup thumb, made such a small incident even more bitter and frustrating. The condescension, so close to emancipation, was unbearable. 

Backmatter ad/sales page updated sometime after
the first printing of this Signet edition. Gerald's
Game, Needful Things, and The Wastelands were
all published in the early 90s, several others listed
were published after 1986 when this paperback
first went to print. Funny the things they go out
of their way to update...and the things they don't.

After Charlie kills "the grownups," silencing their dismissive derision and flippant disregard (and all subsequent grownup interactions over the intercom are threatening, confrontational, and table-turning lashings), the class becomes a sort of confessional, where kids share like stories, moments of pain and embarrassment, secrets never told to anyone until now. Stitched deep through it all is the insipid violence of artifice and the conspiracy of "Society" (the grownups) to make kids behave a certain way, believe a certain way, conform as directed and submit to be ground down, sometimes all the way down, until you are a walking stomach ache with a gun. In some way or another, everyone in the class participates, engages, relates...everyone except all-American Ted, who becomes more and more enraged as the hours tick by. Ted likes the clean artifice, despises the dirty real, and hates Charlie most of all for setting this ugly little Breakfast Club in motion. Eventually the class really isn't hostage anymore and Charlie facilitates a final act of chaos, one last bit of education where the class teaches Ted a lesson.

Spoiler alert from 1977, but Ted lives. He's not doing great afterward, at all, but all the violence done to him is not by Charlie's hand, at least not directly. It stands to reason that someone built entirely of ersatz could never bear so much blinding reality. The heat--and his classmates ruthless hands--melt poor Ted down to a drooling nub. Charlie goes to the mental hospital, the rest of the class graduates and moves on. Are they better people for it? Worse? Was one morning stripped of pretense enough to build a lifetime of honest living? The story never tells. But I think about those boys out here in the real world, those stupid, sad boys and their daddy's guns, reading Rage and Getting Ideas. Why am I doing this? I can't believe I did that...

Like, they seriously went bonkers with the ad pages in this book. Buy! Buy!
Buy! But this is how you hustled before the internet was a thing.

Rage isn't a free-for-all of gun toting vengeance. The murders are almost perfunctory. The story is more about the conversation, the connection, kids across different social groups coming together to engage in real talk, down to the grit and the ugly, and coming out the other side still alive, and  accepted. Don't you think those real world sad boys read Rage and felt a sort of painful keening, a desire to be heard and understood, to be accepted, validated? I do.

See? What tomfoolery is this. I mean, they're advertising a book
that the reader is literally holding. 

Compared to other "teen shooter" or "school shooter" works in King's oeuvre, Rage is actually quite tame. I found "Cain Rose Up," a short story included in the Skeleton Crew collection, to be far more disturbing. Charlie Decker does terrible things, but he's impossible to hate--his anxiety is relatable, he's funny, insightful, and has a bright inner world that might've grown an entirely different way under the guidance of a better father. Curt Garrish, the main character in "Cain Rose Up," is cored out, keyed up, and ugly deep into the bone. His most banal thoughts are peppered with images and inclinations of violence, murder, decay, and complete, unhinged sickness. Garrish has a nasty  thought for every person he encounters and his redemption arc is a flat line. He is a far more suitable "hero" to the modern mass shooter, school or otherwise. He's a shell for want of a chamber.

Worse yet, there's Todd Bowden from Apt Pupil, a novella in the Different Seasons collection. Through a shockingly devious act of extortion, young Todd basically procures a pet Nazi in hiding, and forces the man to regale him with stories of the war with all the gory details, a quid pro quo that grows more and more depraved as time goes on. Bowden is a budding Nazi of a sort, though he is not so much concerned with racial purity or ethnic cleansing so much as he is attracted to acts of torture and murder. Through a series of events, secrets are unearthed, and the boy, now a teen, is cornered by his own lies and subversion, and the story ends with all-American Todd Bowden sniping cars on the highway until the cops finally take him out.

Bowden is another, much likelier idol for modern shooters to emulate. A baby Nazi with a depraved inner world almost entirely devoid of healthy thoughts or any sense of goodness. Garrish and Bowden are examples of the grotesque, the thing no one really wants to talk about, something so familiar in the pimple-faced killers who committed their crimes after all iterations of Rage went out of print and, apparently, out of vogue with more modern teen psychopaths. More often than not, we witness--time and time again--an unapologetic, vengeful, irredeemable murderer. The last crime "connected" to Rage--the final straw for King--happened in 1997, two years before the incident that is widely considered to be the beginning of the "modern age" of dead-eyed shooters: Columbine. When incidents of school violence became less a cry for help and more about the body count.

The very last page of the book is this public
service announcement that would be sad if
it wasn't so close to the truth. We don't have
a literacy problem so much as we have, er,
a reading comprehension problem...or an
"easily succumbs to propaganda" problem...
or a severe addiction to conspiracy
theories problem...take your pick.
There are so many.

There were dead-eyed killers before, just as there remain regretful killers now, but the scales seemed to have dipped heavy on the flat-eyed, pinch-mouthed sinews of unchecked misanthropy. The influence of a 24-hour news cycle, the immediacy of the internet, and our constant connectedness have all played a part in the evolution of the school shooter. The education system gets its slice. The parents of these killers own a large share of the responsibility, banal hardships and best intentions be damned. Except in egregious cases, I would not hold a parent of a teen shooter criminally responsible for their child's actions, but I do believe wholeheartedly in Owning Your Shit. The stories of mass shooters so often follow the same, frustrating narrative, where at some point it was clear that the future murderer was in psychological crisis and the people closest to the situation just let it ride and hoped for the best. No matter the circumstances, if your child is in crisis, you are responsible for getting that child the help that he needs. A broken arm gets set and placed in a cast. A cancer stricken body gets radiation and/or chemo. A fever gets a baby aspirin. The brain is an organ, too, and when it flags or fails, you have at least try to make it better.

Taking Rage out of publication certainly didn't stop school shootings, anymore than it directly caused those incidents in the 80s and 90s. Ineffective gun laws, lackadaisical mental health initiatives, and our fitful if well-meaning social experiment play much bigger roles than any work of fiction, Moutain Dew Commercial, or Marilyn Manson song.

The Sandy Hook perpetrator fired 156 rounds and killed twenty-seven people, including himself, in less than five minutes [6]. He was on the spectrum, deeply ill, and completely isolated from the world [7]. His exact prognosis can only be guessed through the remnants of his writings, interviews with those who knew him, and his last, irredeemable actions in this world, since it had been years since anyone had bothered to get him the help he desperately needed. His father and brother were no longer in the picture; his mother allowed her sick son to dictate their lives. As deeply ill as the killer clearly was, his mother still stocked their shared home with plenty of guns and ammunition. He never had to buy a single round. He just had to take one of those unsecured guns, load it, and kill her. Then he gussied up in his proto-military/SWAT swag, drove over to Sandy Hook Elementary, and murdered 26 human beings who had done absolutely nothing to cause his misery.

Instead of censoring Rage, why don't we censor the ability of the weakest, sickest, and most dangerous among us from getting their hands on weapons that can wipe out an entire first grade classroom and support staff in less than five minutes? Instead of focusing our smart-mouthed talking points on one novel, one musical artist, or one video game, why don't we collectively Own Our Shit and admit that, while this problem is undoubtedly complex, there are at least two major, contributing factors that could be addressed any time we are ready to stop bickering and actually Do Something: gun reform and a mental health revofuckinlution. Without a real effort to trust one another, confront the ugliness within our society, and a full-hearted embrace of methodologies that could help everyone (and not just the lucky few), removing Rage (or Skeleton Crew, or Different Seasons, or In Cold Blood, or American Psycho, or Catcher in the Rye...) from the shelves is about as well-intentioned and ineffective as those torrents of thoughts and oceans of prayers.

Grade: B+
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 2, it's more unsettling than scary.
Warnings: School shooting, gun violence, slap fights, conformity reform, the phrase "getting it on," asshole dads.
Artifact: Well preserved 1986 paperback reprint, glossy cover, possibly CMYK, but could be flat color, mass market pulp paper, margins to set your hair on end. Large crease on the back cover and roughing of the edges, but the spine adhesive is holding strong and the spine is barely cracked. Oldie but goody.

References
[1] "Guns," Stephen King, ebook, Philtrum Press, January 25, 2013.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Wikipedia, linked.
[4] "Guns," Stephen King, ebook, Philtrum Press, January 25, 2013.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Wikipedia, linked.
[7] Stuff.co.nz, linked.

The Gift of Libraries: Requesting Items, Part Deux

The Wichita Public Library stocked Idiocracy. My cup runneth over with BRAWNDO: The Thirst Mutilator!

Look, Idiocracy is mean. Even now, it still comes off as mean, but I've been called tenderhearted in the past and I'll begrudgingly admit that it may or may not be sort of true. The movie depicts a future when idiots outbreed nonidiots and society slides into supreme stupidity living in a ruin of unending garbage, broken automation, droughts, electrolytes, and rampant, unblinking dipshittery. Everything comes from Costco (including law degrees), Starbucks serves sex acts, and an average 21st century man can outwit just about everyone on the planet.

Idiocracy's take on the surviving government is where the movie really shines. And it's where some relief can be found for our current woes...though I suppose it could have the opposite effect, depending on your political inclinations. It certainly did me good to watch it again. It seems less mean and just a squidge more prophetic these days, with the normalization of buffoonery on the daily menu and no end (or bottom to the pit of shame in DC) in sight.

Thank you. WPL! And for future viewers who have never seen Idiocracy (there are so many), fair warning: you're probably going to get offended at some point. It's lewd, crude, delights in the worst stereotypes, and drops the f-word gay slur more than once. And this is coming from the mouths of lawyers, doctors and, of course, your elected officials to the highest offices in the land.

The Gift of Libraries: Requesting Items

It's been too long, hasn't it? I'll blame the book--when in doubt always blame the book--but it isn't all about the book. Right now I'm only managing editing what I've written thus far, and part of that is to get the taste of the story back in my mouth again, less to do with producing anything new (other than the inevitable rewrites that walk hand-in-hand with editing, regardless).

I would love to blame the holidays (since we all blame the holidays for every egregious act of procrastination), but since the latest was flag day, probably not, though I did coast like a ghost all up and around that period of time between November 2018 and January 2019. Since then? We've been working on our fitness in the household, primarily cardio, with some dabbling in planks which have been quite hilarious and also seriously achy and also breaky. Excuses! Though I would like to be nice and fit for my eventual visit to Lawrence, Kansas, and the beautiful, expansive, and very hilly University of Kansas campus. I'd like to spend time in the libraries, for sure, but would also prefer to do it right, walking as much as I am able and really taking in the sights. For those who think of Kansas as an entirely flat plate of nothing except for maybe fields of wheat, the KU campus can be quite a shock. There are some legit, brutal hills to traverse.

So why stop now and finally revisit the library/travel blog? To celebrate the glory of the library, specifically the Wichita Public Library system. Having been back in town for 2+ solid years, I can say with authority that they work hard to provide quality service to the community. The website is fantastic, the branches are vital to the outlying neighborhoods, and the central, advanced learning library is a true gem, still gleaming new and shiny, with abundant, electrified seating options, airy stacks, phenomenal views, and helpful, friendly staff.

I've been a bit "checked out" (eh heh) with other life events, so recently came back with a vengeance, checking out books, scanning through the DVD selection, and revisiting some old searches I'd started back in 2017. After my initial return to Wichita and setting up a new account in the library system, I created a list of books I wanted to read, which can be done via the website and exists, I'm guessing, as long as your account exists. I accrued the list from old Entertainment Weekly book reviews circa 2007-2016 and "Best of" lists via the internet. Why EW book reviews of all things? Because that was basically all I could rally myself into reading during the worst of my alcohol abuse and subsequent recovery. For all intents and purposes, after leaving behind the heavy burdens of NYC and all that had happened, I was only really ready to read books, cover to cover, when I returned home in January of 2017. Sounds weird, right? Like, how many novelists are known as both voracious readers and voracious drinkers? So many. But that wasn't my alcoholism story. And as we all learned in rehab, everyone's story is different. So, with my appetite and focus for reading finally restored, I searched through the lists of reviews looking for vaguely remembered synopses, stories that sounded intriguing, books I truly wanted to read at the time, then forgot as soon as the next tumbler of wine was drained. I doubt I found them all, but I was able to create a considerable list.

There was only one title the Wichita Public Library system did not have in stock at any of the branches: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. This was garnered from the online "best of" searches, but I didn't need much prodding to seek it out. McCarthy's The Road was one of the few titles I did manage to read during those dark times--near the beginning of the dark times when I was still mostly human--and while it did nothing for my depression (dear God, the darkness of it??) it did everything in terms of inspiration, awe, and creative energy. If you've never read McCarthy...just, no. Stop what you are doing. Immediately. Go to the Barnes and Noble. Go the the library. Find the fiction, under McCarthy, Cormac. They'll have at least one copy of something. Get it, buy it, check it out, read it tonight. He does things with language, incredible, impossible things. He turned me inside out, for real. Round and round. His is a national treasure and one of The Greats.

The WPL website had a record for Blood Meridian, but no copies available, not checked out or on hold, just non-existent. I figured it would be restocked at some point considering the author and the easy-to-find, "best of" status of the book in general. I checked back to the record (and my list: updating, adding, subtracting as I knocked those long desired tomes out, one by one) from time to time, but Blood Meridian remained zero of zero available in the system. I kind of forgot about it. Until this recent resurgence of reading rainbow vigor, that is. I checked it again and nope, still no Blood Meridian. Finally, after two years, I was done waiting. I figured if I wanted to read it, I'd probably end up having to buy it. There was one option to exhaust before breaking down and making a purchase: Cant find it? Suggest an Item! via the WPL website...

I clicked through to the order form, filled it out with all the requisite information, and found myself at that last question (How did you learn about it? Any notes to add?). I debated skipping the question and leaving it blank, but figured laying it on thick might help more, so I did. Librarians, I am sorry. Truly. I know you know your shit. But I was swinging for the fences. So I might've said it was wrong for any major library system not to carry at least one copy of every Cormac McCarthy novel available because he is one of the greatest American writers, living or dead, and also how dare you. Honestly, it wasn't quite that snotty, but maybe verging on it a little. I wanted that book. And also, seriously, stock your Cormac McCarthy, ya libraries.

I did not think much would come of it...and if anything did, it would be months before I held a dilapidated, second hand copy in my hand. And I would have been glad for it, too, because I really want to read it. Instead, less than a week later, I get notification via text and email that Blood Meridian is on hold, waiting for me to pick it up at my neighborhood branch, Rockwell. You will have to imagine the various cockatiel-dolphin noises that frightened my cat friends and woke the cemetery. YAY MY BOOK, but also whaaaat? 

Like most, I always assumed libraries got stingy stipends in the form of rolled nickels, perhaps via an old sock, handed out yearly, maybe bi-yearly, surely not quarterly, and only to be used on the most urgently required (e.g. new release, big name, bestseller) materials. Certainly there were no nickles to spare on my 1985 wishlist paperback? My initial thought was that maybe the library system stores books with little or no traffic for safekeeping offsite somewhere and that they'd just pulled it from there. I'm not even sure if that is a thing, but I thought it was possible, so much as libraries are like museums where not everything could possibly be displayed at all times. Assuming the story was something along those lines, I hoppy skippied over to Rockwell in the Rogue, overjoyed and ready to pull the old, dusty copy from the hold shelf to finally--gleefully--check it out.

But it wasn't old and dusty. It was pristine. Protected by a brand new, completely unscuffed plastic cover. As I wondered over it, cooing and acting a general fool, I made the guy at circulation check to see if he could determine when it was acquired. Sure enough, this copy of Blood Meridian had been put into the system just a couple of days prior. I was GOBSMACKED. The good kind.

So let's review: I filled out the request form for a 1985 paperback and about a week later the as-new, never-read condition book was somehow in my hands. Purchased, acquired, cataloged, plasticated, and ready and waiting for me at my branch. Not the central, learning library, either. It was ready for me at my branch. I mean, COME ON, y'all. That is FREAKING AMAZING. I even checked the record afterward and sure enough, Blood Meridian is no longer zero of zero available, it's now zero of ONE. Because I've got it! Thanks to the efforts of the Wichita Public Library system and the taxes we pay for the privilege of having such a fine service for our community. YAY!

Post-script: I also requested they add at least one copy of Idiocracy to the collection as a healing balm for these trying times, but no dice as of yet. I'll try again soon, and add more electrolytes.

Advanced Learning Library, August 2018 UPDATES!

I've now spent a fair amount of time in the new Advanced Learning Library in downtown(ish) Wichita, Kansas, and have acquired a number of updates to share.

I'm in the midst of re-reading my blog, doing light editing, taking some notes...and have found that above all else the thing I regret the most is the brevity of it all. Most of the libraries reviewed in Travelrogue were one shot deals; some were visited a mere couple of hours before I had to jet off to another destination. I would have loved to have spent real time in a lot of these libraries (though Pasadena and Seattle spring immediately to mind), primarily to get to know them much better, but also to relay more broad and solid observations in my blog entries. While some libraries suffer chronic ailments (Utah's Magna and Glendale, for example), other libraries that left terrible impressions (oy, San Bernardino) might've just been suffering a seriously "off" day. In most of these cases, I will never know. I have to acknowledge that it is unfair, at the very least. And that goes both ways. For all I know, Pasadena may have the meanest staff this side of Hell and a strict late fee policy or some other bad habits I would have no way of knowing since I never checked anything out there...or anywhere else I've visited, save the Wichita locations.

So, it's nice to get to update my observations a bit, as I've already done for a few of the Wichita-area locations (see Andover, specifically--what a change of heart!). After all, the only way to truly know a place is to spend some real time living in it, right? Plenty of Flatiron workers will eagerly tell you that while the building is super pretty and obviously striking on the outside, the inside is 98% garbage. The bathrooms are teeny tiny--some hilariously so, like you have to step over the toilet and, once closed, the damn door hits your knees--and are on every other floor (boys on the evens, girls on the odds). The finishing is pure rebate, on sale, cheap-o creep-o, mismatching crap, from the white, scarred walls to the industrial, metal door frames. Don't even get me started on the nasty carpet, made of squares so that stained patches might be replaced by new squares...had they actually bothered to stock them (they didn't). Before they installed replacement windows (ugly), the old windows let all the smut of the city blow in and coat everything in a film of black dust. And the "water bugs"--so, so many water bugs, a.k.a. Big Juicy-Yet-Crunchy Cockroaches everywhere. Scurrying on the stairwells, chasing people down the hallways. Falling from the drop ceilings.

I could go on, I really could. It was, in a word, gross. But do I still tell people I worked there? HELLS yes. Because nobody cares about gritty city truth. They just love hearing how you worked in a historic building. And I did, and it was at least interesting, if not entirely...sanitary? Professional? But then what in NYC really is? I remember similar "water bugs" falling from the drop tiles at my doctor's office once, so...yeah. And the same goes with visiting NYC in general, even for a week. You don't really know the city until you live there. Sure, you're surrounded by history with a wealth of arts and culture at your fingertips, but you do have to dodge and ungodly amount of poop on the sidewalks and, if you are really lucky, you may even get to dodge random pieces of paper floating through the air, whipped by the skyscraper wind tunnels and boosted by the subway trains screaming past underneath your feet. Papers smeared with brown something, papers darting directly toward your head.

A visit filled with cab rides tells you nothing about NYC reality, when you're earning your literal dimes and can't afford more than the subway (already an outrage to your bank account) and find yourself walking, walking, walking everywhere always because it is just less of a hassle and the trains don't really go east-west in Manhattan anyway (save one, a hellish ride). Or the fact that you have to carry everything, so grocery shopping is a revolving door because you can't carry what you need in one go, so you shop more than you want, and are sometimes stuck with some pretty vile options (e.g. one local store where a fly was packaged into the steak, nicely fat and juicy all squished up in there and proudly displayed, the whole place smelling of dead blood and Pine Sol). Or just the horrors you see. And you do see them, not every day, but sometimes things can get very real, and very ugly, very fast. Sometimes it's funny (the Fried Chicken Fight being my all time favorite) and sometimes you're getting assaulted in broad daylight on a busy street and no one is even looking at the spectacle, let alone helping you. That last one didn't happen to me, thank God, but it happened to a friend.

Now, if it sounds like I'm harping on NYC, well, yes. I am. Because visiting is one thing--staying in hotels, spending money on restaurants, plays, bars, shows, taking cabs hither and thither, and every day is just fun fun fun. The day-in, day-out drudgery is quite another thing...hour-long commutes stuck in a metal can that smells of mouths and armpits, working all day long and slogging home in a downpour with your broke ass black umbrella from the bodega, feet sodden, ankle scratched from some brush-by on the morning commute so you might have leprosy now, up to your fourth floor walk-up that costs $1200/month in Brooklyn (forget Manhattan hahahaha) and is about as big as the fanciest master closet you ever saw...on television...once.

(Let's be real in this side-side-side note: I'm harping because, quite frankly, I wasn't really into it from the start. I wanted to work in publishing and that is where the lion's share of publishing jobs reside. Ergo, if I wanted to work in publishing, I had to move to NYC. Which I did, and I worked in the industry for over 15 years. Don't get me wrong. At first I loved the new experiences--it was all very different from anything I'd done up to that point--but eventually things turned sour. The drinking was fun...until it wasn't. The job, until the very end, was always worth the price of admission, but to be perfectly honest I'd have been happier in the same job in almost any other US city. I got very tired of the "realness," too dependent on bad people, and started drinking myself into oblivion to avoid thinking about how miserable I'd become. It's not a place for everyone. And once the job was gone, and my head was finally on more or less straight, I left. And NYC, if it cared to say anything at all, would have likely brayed "And don't let the door hitcha on the way out!")

Cheese Grater = Electron Membrane 1

I don't think I'm going to experience anything of the sort during the time spent at the new Advanced Learning Library. Parking is easy (and free!), there are three different ways to handle returns (drive up window, outdoor slot, indoor slot), and checking out materials is such a breeze. I do proceed with caution whenever I need to use the restroom, making sure to check that I'm going in the right one depending on which floor I'm on, but I suppose eventually that habit will fall to the wayside. And the main artery traffic jams? I've run into them a couple of times, but more often than not I take the long way or avoid the first floor altogether. "My place" is on the second floor, now firmly set in stone in more ways than one.

I still use the study carrels, but have found that they are equally beloved by plenty of other people...most days, they are all taken by the time I arrive. That has never been a problem, since I pop over to the staff help desk right next to the carrels and ask to reserve a collaboration room. I've done it often enough that my regular guy remembers my name! And those rooms are very quiet...so long as the people in the other collaboration rooms are relatively quiet, too. One thing they maybe didn't think of was the transfer of sound from one collaboration room to the next. The sound barrier between the collaboration rooms and the library proper is solid, but it's less so between the rooms themselves. It's only been a problem a couple of times, and a mild one at that.

And when neither space is available? I set up shop in one of the many study desks available on either floor. Some of the desks are nested within the stacks, safely tucked away so that only people who are looking for those books in particular have any business being behind you. I'm in the business and job-seeking section as we speak, headphones on but nothing playing, and haven't been disturbed by anyone for hours. NICE.

I've also found solace at the very back of the Research Pavilion on the second floor. The views are limited, but there's hardly ever anyone back here and I don't have to put on headphones to block out immediate noises. And, for some reason, there is a New Friend on the study table I prefer to use...a Brother typewriter, looking all 1993 Fancypantsy. Bless its little clickity heart.

Even nicer? Things have calmed down a bit, I think. The drive for certain staff members to converse about whatnot yellingly out in the middle of the library has seemed to dissipate, thank the lordy lord. It's a generally quiet space, the electricity flows from every which way, the seating is comfortable and varied, and it is just a fantastic place to get some work done. Love, love, love it.

When I looked up the library to get the link for this entry, I noticed there were sixteen Google reviews already, all but one crowing compliments left and right, espousing all of the wonderful attributes of the new space and services, and showing the Big Big Love all around...except for one Giant Asshole who gave the place one star because "it wasn't open yet." I clicked the link and found a lot of similarly entitled, bitter reviews from this jerk, and all over the world to boot. I reported the review to Google, so I hope they take it down. It definitely qualifies as "off topic." Who gives a business under construction a bad review because they have the audacity not to be open yet, I ask you? A dingleberry. That's who. One star.

Over the month of July, signs started showing up in the foyer from the parking lot that explained the art around the building, so I've included some pictures here. Huzzah! Explanations are welcome. I'm glad to see the cheese grater better explained, but no amount of exposition is going to save the Knowledge Noodles. I am so sorry, but ugh. The execution is not successful, neither in the rendering of the bark/tree stand nor in the sizing/writing/reading of the scrolls. I miscounted the number of Knowledge Noodles in my first blog entry since I have spent zero time on the eastward facing "front" of the building. I think there are something like six of them out there. So, noodles noodles everywhere, all impossible to read without getting a headache.

The Avian Migration piece has been installed in the atrium. I am going to have to see it at different times of day and night for awhile before I have a real sense of how I feel about it. The execution does not match the rendering, nor do the pieces move much at all, though they are meant to react to sensors in different parts of the library. From what I can tell, they might as well be moving because of various breezes throughout the library. It is quite possible that the installation is not yet complete, though, so the verdict is not yet in. When I look at it, I can't help but think of the Filament Mind art installation in the foyer of the Teton County Library, made of thousands of strands of fiber-optics, all reacting to library search engine results. It's a visually arresting piece, not to mention objectively beautiful in a multitude of ways. I would guess that there is a vast gulf between the cost of Filament Mind and Avian Migration, and since Jackson is presumably a thriving tourist town flush with cash it stands to reason, but still I hoped for more. That being said, Filament Mind is robbed of some of its glory when daylight washes out the color effects, so perhaps Avian Migration will be better at night, too. I'll have to wait for the summer to pass before I get a real crack at seeing it in a full-dark setting (though a night drive-by this past Saturday showed the interior lit up like the surface of the chain-drugstore sun, so my hopes aren't exactly up). The actual materials used look like holographic. metallic airplanes, so they might react well to laser light, something any sketchy-mcsketchballs store on sixth avenue in the NYC "fashion district" can afford, so why not the Wichita central library?

Sunny day shot, viewed from the doorway.

The outdoor tables and chairs for the reading pavilion were finally delivered just recently--they were still in boxes last week, but they've got it pretty well set up now, umbrellas and all. It's still hot as Satan's taint in Wichita, as it has been all damn summer long, so I won't be wandering out there anytime soon. Much like the majority of the first floor, I'm avoiding the outdoor spaces for now. I did witness at least one dude smoking out there, so we'll see how that space turns out when the weather gets more bearable. Reading haven for all...or smoke deck for some? Do I sound bitchy? I sound bitchy. I smoked forever so I get to be bitchy. Like, it's hard, dude. So, smoke in your car, at home, or away elsewhere, just away from me. Because cigarette smoke still smells so delicious even though I'm 3 years, 11 months smoke free SO Y'ALL NEED TO GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME. Thbank, as we used to say in publishing.

Gray day shot, viewed from a collaboration room.

There have been some unavoidable hiccups transitioning from the old Central Library to the new ALL, but my firsthand experiences have been professional and impressive. I regularly check out a lot of DVDs (e.g. this past week's wonderful selections: I, Tonya, Space Camp, and Ferdinand, all fantastic) and some books (I checked out Ulysses because my self-hatred is a never ending river running under my soft and fluffy mantle, I am a Foole for the Ages and should stick my head in a dirty mop bucket and drown because Who, Exactly, Do I Think I AM, trying to read effing Ulysses?) and am a stickler for turning things in on time, so I was gobsmacked and ready to rumble when I saw that my account had a hold on it and a three dollar fine. EXCUSE ME, I thought, though underneath it (in the river of self hatred, whispering whispering) I did think I must've forgotten something, missed something, done something wrong. I looked into it further and determined the library was definitely in the wrong. I had the evidence of tomfoolery logged in my email (thanks to the Wichita library system's awesome notifications) and headed over to the ALL main circulation ready to make my case. The young woman behind the desk was remarkably friendly and chill, clicked through my record and said, yeah, we're behind with checking things in right now, so that's probably what happened. I'll clear your record. Like that. No argument, no pickle-faced suspicion, no static. Just NICE, under control, and professional.

I'm sure the staff has plenty of opening-blues stories, though I doubt any of them include water bugs or mismatched, half broken furniture from all the decades (ahem Flatiron ahem). I've witnessed some issues with the little iPad-type tablets they walk around with, signing in or securing collaboration rooms, for instance. And a few incidents and comments have led me to wonder about the leadership in general. People seem not to be informed about things that they should definitely know, and there have been moments where it was clear that staff did not know the proper rules and regulations for the space. There is a sense of detachment from responsibility and a disconnect from ownership. Not all the time from every person...just general and not really all that hidden. It reminds me of a time during my stay in publishing, we called it "The Regime"...and I really don't have to say much more than that, do I? I hope that's not the case here, but these less-than-complimentary symptoms are not a sign of bad staffing--the truth is that it is never the case--but of ineffective management. Whether it is due to fatigue, ineptitude, or malice, who can say. But ya knickers are showing, gorl. Get it together! Managing people is hard, especially a large staff. For this I have nothing but respect. But keeping people empowered with knowledge is paramount, especially when serving the public. I have to wonder if the draining days of drearytude in the old central library eroded that sense of purpose and drive to do the very best. The staff seems more than willing to shine, so give them the resources they need to do that! Hashtag HUGS, hashtag NOTHINBUTLUV, hashtag PEACESIGN.

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.