This Post Needed an Editor

It is when Curt is looking for a way to make his writing feel more urgent that Homes suggests the present tense. He asks Homes what is so urgent about the present tense, and Homes explains. "If you talk about something as if it just now happening," he says, "it will feel like it is just now happening!"

It all seems to make sense. Curt starts writing everything out, in the present tense, and everything feels as if it happened just now. He relives things from his past through his writing. Things that in real time were very confusing as they were happening. Through writing, things that always seemed surreal start to feel real and then achieve a written realness that over time gets suffused also with a good deal of fantasy, if that makes sense. Curt Jimenez becomes a self confident man through the present tense, and he becomes much more interesting. A fictional Curt Jimenez is born. Readers (hypothetical ones!) begin to wonder where the line between the literary and the historical Curt Jimenez is.

Homes is fascinated by this dichotomy. He has taught Curt about the present tense, and now he wants to teach him about voice. About honesty. He talks skeptically to Curt about some of the things he has written. "Curt must have been quite the Casanova!" he remarks, or "this Curt Jimenez really must have been something in high school...really, class brains and best smile!"

"I don't like this literary Curt," he says at one point. "He seems like a real phony!"

Homes knows that the real Curt has a JD Salinger obsession. He also knows that the real Curt is very sensitive, and quite in awe of Homes, who he sees as his mentor. Homes is a teacher.

This Curt, this early version of Curt, this Curt who has just begun to use writing as an outlet, is so discouraged by this he almost stops writing. He is confused, and hurt. He realizes that he can create alternate worlds for himself through writing, and that this creation brings with it a certain sort of empowerment. He also knows that this creation represents a sort of "putting himself out there" that leaves him vulnerable. He wonders whether it is worth it, whether his life needs any more roller coasters. He arranges a meeting with Homes.

Homes doesn't show up for the meeting.

Curt avoids Homes for the next few months. He reads serialized Star Wars novels, and takes a drawing class, and a business class. He writes letters to Lo Mei Fok. He misses going to those writing classes with Homes, but he is scared. He doesn't understand that Homes hurts too, that Homes himself is wondering whether maybe he didn't play his hand the right way. Homes worries that he has underestimated the depth of Curt's hurt.

Curt doesn't remembered how it is that they started talking again. Maybe Homes brought a book to Curt's cell, maybe it was Elephant by Raymond Carver, or Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason. What matters is that they started talking again. That Homes started talking to Curt about his own troubles, and ultimately gave him that story that was so personal that it tore Curt apart, but also made him feel as alive as he'd felt since he'd been locked up.

This is when Curt begins to understand voice.

This is what he is striving for.