Reframing Wichita

I haven't been entirely fair in my assessment of the so-called 'Italian prison.'

WHEN I ARRIVED IN WICHITA I was figuratively bleeding from every pore of my body. My mother tells me that for the first couple of months, I didn’t blink. The drive from Vegas and the flight from the harsh reality of being abandoned for the sex and cash of who knows how many people was a blur (not the best way to hurtle oneself down highways at high speed) and when I finally pulled off of the freeway to 13th Street, Wichita, Kansas, I was deeply depressed and the sight of the place piled it on. I remember thinking that there were dozens of reasons I left this place in 1989 without more than a tankful of gas to my name and none of those reasons had changed.

My perspective was likely tinged with the idea that I was a failure. I had the metaphorical tail between my legs and this town represented how far I had fallen. Yes, I was coming to be with my family and be of use while I recovered from the humiliation of being an unwitting cuckold but the selfishness that comes with self pity was the lede.

My mother was strangely in a similar place. Having been the sole caregiver for my dad for the past thirteen years had taken its toll, the weight of it she had managed to hide when I’d pop in for holidays. When he was initially diagnosed, it was dire, and he gave up and decided to die. But he didn’t die, he just sat there and endured the suffering that his stock was designed for. Mom had done her duty but the drag of helping someone who was content to do relatively nothing but go to dialysis for the past three years complete with the need of a body slowly failing appeared to have sapped her own joy and enthusiasm for life.

We were both drowning and needed each other to swim to shore.

On top of that it was looking like my pops wasn’t going to make it past Christmas. I wanted to spend as much time with him as I could before he gave up the ghost. There was no choice but to relocate to Wichita and be of use while recuperating.

For the first three months, I lived in their home in a tiny room on the second floor. Mom had decorated it and made it incredibly comfortable. She made lots of incredible meals and we nursed each other back to the land of the living.

In November I had to do… something. I didn’t know what but I felt myself feeling pinned in. I had managed to get into the public school system as a substitute but all it reminded me was how much I hated public education in the age of the smartphone and parents ascendance of control of everything from curriculum to disciplinary practices. I applied for a graveyard shift surveillance position at the Boyd casino property in the sticks and my previous experience in Vegas made me shoe-in. Before I started with that gig, I decided on a whim to drive up to Chicago. I told few people and stayed on Himmel’s couch.

Chicago kickstarted me. It was the first time I’d felt gravity in months. It was the first time I’d felt at home since early 2019 and trekked out to Sin City.

When I came back to Wichita, I got a job. I threw myself into it and rented a ridiculously cool apartment in a building with a super cool Sky Lounge and roof top wading pool. I unpacked my stuff to the surprise that I was not really in my right mind when I packed it up to leave Vegas. Boxes of screws and not one screwdriver. Butter knives but not one steak knife. One pillow that was comprised of a pillow case filled with rags that Dana had made instead of getting a new pillow. A box of Christmas stuff that she had packed that I was, frankly, horrified to open. Apparently, my brain was on autopilot.

It was time to get up offa my ass and get on with living.

At first, I was excited about the job. It was incredible that, in a place as tiny and insular as Wichita, that a job in radio and events was even available. I threw myself completely into it, checking out venues and looking to collaborate with them to create and execute some Chicago-style events while focusing on the ongoing tasks of building ticket giveaways and cleaning up both the five station websites and mobile apps. It was new while feeling familiar, the people seemed cool but depressed, and the flexibility allowed me to continue helping my family. The wrench came when it was made abundantly clear by both the General Manager and the corporation that owned the stations that no one was terribly interested in Chicago-style events. No one wanted to pay for them, no one was interested in expanding the brands. “Keep the train on the tracks” was my mandate. “Comply” was my dictate. Anyone who has ever spent more than fifteen minutes with me would tell you that this circumstance was not going to work for me in any long term arrangement.

The gig became mundane drudgery that I could accomplish in a few hours per week which left me to seek out artistic opportunities.

I went to the one improv theater only to find myself mentally begging for someone to end my life during the set. I checked out some local theater and just couldn’t enjoy it—how do you glow in the bask of the Wichita melodrama or the drag version of The Golden Girls when you’ve seen Tracy Letts in Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf on the Steppenwolf stage and Chris Farley on the Second City stage right before he moved onto SNL. I went to a couple of local spoken word events and discovered exactly how abundantly Christian Wichita was and that storytelling here was mostly for kids. Local bands were fine but mostly country. On the other hand, I went to Wichita Symphony Orchestra with my mom and cousin and it was surprisingly good. I attended a couple of First Fridays downtown and . I drank at the few microbreweries. Mom and I went to a musical version of Legally Blonde. I walked the river a hundred times. I watched people play Pickle Ball because, man, that shit is only slightly better than the endless games of cornhole. I went to some trivia nights.

There were highlights. Taking my mom and sister to see This is Spinal Tap at the Orpheum Theatre. The aforementioned symphony. Seeing movies with mom (including a surprising Women Talking). Mom, dad, and I had two runs of catching Survivor and The Amazing Race every Thursday night. Every event (both ones I attended for work or otherwise) were simply a stage for country music, a bunch of food trucks, and craft tents designed to sell homemade soap and candles. At a certain point, the only things left to do were to eat, drink, and decide what to watch on TV as I had determined to avoid any sort of dating altogether.

Wichita, from my vantage and not without a little snotty arrogance, was a wasteland. I felt that Dorothy had to escape Kansas because it was Kansas where imagination came to die. I compared it to being my version of Amanda Knox in her Italian prison cell.

In September, on the one year anniversary of my crawling back here to recover from the mythic divorce, something shifted. First and foremost, my dad, while still aging and ill, was rallying healthwise. His temperament improved, he seemed more there, he went to movies and events with mom and I more often. He laughed more than I’d heard in a while. Second, it hit me that best part of Wichita was not things to do or see but the simple fact that my family was here. At one point mom told me “I never thought you’d be the one to show up.” She struggled with the fact that I was no longer twenty-three years old (the age I split for Chicago) and had lived a good chunk of life seven hundred miles away but we slowly got to know one another better. Finally, I found a certain rhythm to the place. It was slower than I desired but it had its charms.

Mom, my cousin, and I driving around Central, KS going to gravesites of our ancestry. Drinking a shot of Jack Daniels at the resting place of my namesake and hearing stories about him and my young mother I had never heard. Going to my grandparents’ home and remembering it in a surreal way from when I was less than three years old.

Mom and I went to Zoobilee, Monster Jam, movies galore. We reestablished that we are best friends as well as mother and son. My dad and I laughed and told stories. My sister and I reconnected in a way that totally surprised me.

In reframing Wichita, I realize a few things. Chicago is my home. I lived there for thirty years and miss it. I’m thrilled to be returning but Wichita is where my family lives and in my drive to live in a big city with all the things I love about that environment I should never forget that. This year and a half reminded me how important my family is to me and how amazing they all are. As long as I can drive those twelve hour road trips, I will. More often than twice a year. I want to be here for the birthdays. I want to be here for longer than a week at a time. I will miss them terribly.

I suppose Wichita, rather than an Italian prison or a cultural wasteland, has been a place to relax, heal up emotionally, and plan for a future that, a year and a half ago, I didn’t dare to dream of. It has been a slice of life that allowed me to reacquaint myself with my incredible family. As my friend wrote in a birthday card for me “You’re rested. You’re ready. And so is the world.” As another friend in Chicago wrote in an email “Our city is on the way back to good with you here my friend.”

So, thank you, Wichita, for being the place my family has chosen to live and thrive. Thank you for the soft landing and the improbable job. Thank you, Wichita, for not asking too much of me as I got rested and ready. I’ll see you soon.