Everyone thought that Jaime Osich was gay. Jaime was effeminate naturally—something about the way he laughed all high and girly or the way he moved across a room like he was floating. But even now, 10 years after graduation, Jaime hasn’t come out. Maybe he is one of those rare finds—an effeminate heterosexual. All I know is that I hung around Jaime Osich because I felt like I was around my own people then. I hung around Jaime because I always secretly hoped he would ask me about it or tell me he liked boys. Because I would have told him then that I liked boys, too.

I never did anything after school with Jaime, never went to a movie with him and his friends. We moved in different circles which intersected in English and in band. And I can’t remember whether it was English or maybe even history that put us into the library together that day. But I remember it was just the two of us—Jaime Osich who everyone thought was gay and myself who no one ever guessed was gay.

"You write like a girl," I told him.

I looked over at his Spanish homework and he had that big, loopy, very neat handwriting that only girls had—all soft and flowery and feminine. The only way it could have been any more queeny is if he had used little hearts to dot his "I"s.

"Shut up," he said. "I’ve always written like this."

"Let’s go check it out," I said.

"What?," he asked, confused.

"Let’s go see. There’s gotta be a book in here about handwriting and what it means. Let’s go check it out."

We put our best researching skills together as we hunted the card catalog. Under the "Handwriting Analysis" subject cards, we came across several titles all in the same Dewey Decimal neighborhood. We walked there together. Jaime was intent on reaffirming his masculinity while I wanted to prove my own. My handwriting was far more manly than his and I was going to prove it.

The most recently published book in our small school library had been published 20 years prior. I handed a book to Jaime and told him to find a sample of what his handwriting looked like while I searched another book.

"Here," Jaime said proudly. He shoved the book at me, opened to a page about "S"s. "That’s the way I do my ‘S’s," Jaime said. "And see, it says ‘Very common with high achievers.’ Ha!"

I looked at the sample. He had read the caption correctly.

"Not even, Jaime," I said. "You don’t make your ‘S’s like that. You do that little curly on the end. They don’t even have one that looks like you S." I shoved the book back at him. "Keep looking."

"Here!," I said. "you do you ‘B’s like that. See there—your B there and there and there. And it says, ‘Often associated with artists and dancers.’ See! That’s you, right there."

"I guess you’re right," he said, examining the book and comparing it with his own homework.

I smiled at him, a smart ass, I-told-you-so-smirk while he matched up his Bs. I picked up the other book, determined to find another example of his girly handwriting before I was through humiliating him.

Then I saw it—the quintessential Peter Dell letter, the letter that I had done differently from everyone else since we had learned cursive. It was the lower case Peter Dell ‘P,’ the one with the high first stroke so the letter had a cap on it. No one else did their Ps like I did. I knew my P anywhere and now here it was in a handwriting analysis book. I was ecstatic. So ecstatic that I forgot to read the caption before thrusting the book at Jaime.

"Jaime, look! This is my ‘P.’ I always do my Ps this way. This is crazy. I’ve never seen anyone else do their Ps like this."

He snatched the book out of my hand to look at it. I pulled out my English homework to show him that I was true to my word, that I damned near had a trademark on this P.

Then Jaime laughed. It was one of those deep, belly sorta laughs, the ones where you can tell you’re in trouble but you don’t know why. Between laughs, Jaime managed to chuckle, "I guess that is your P, Peter."

I spun the book around so I could read it. There was my P, plain as day. And beneath it and to the right, in small letters it read, "This example of the letter P is very common with women and men with homosexual tendencies."

A gay P. A queer P. A faggot P. And the English homework sitting on the table next to the book—my English homework—was littered with the gay P. Every word started with P now as I read my paper (one word with two Ps in it). Each percussive principle consonant presumed that Peter was positively a pansy.

I blushed a deep, angry red.

"That book," I stumbled, "It. It’s not . . . It’s old . . . That doesn’t mean that . . . It’s all bullshit . . . how can they . . . I mean, everyone’s different . . . That’s . . . That’s . . . I mean, really."

Jaime just laughed. I had been the antagonist, had threatened his masculinity and then tried to defend it using these books. Now I was back peddling as fast as I could. And Jaime knew there was no way I was getting out of this.

"How about this," Jaime finally managed as his chortling died down. "Let’s agree that you can’t judge people on their handwriting. I don’t have girl’s handwriting. There is no such thing. Just like you don’t have a gay man’s handwriting. Agreed?"

I nodded my head furiously in agreement. "Bunch of crap anyway," I muttered as I reshelved the books.

The next day, I turned in an English assignment. The lower case cursive Ps were new to me, a foreign stroke with my pen. Within a week, the smaller, subtler P blended in with the other lower case consonants. Generic little line with a half-circle attached. To this day, my hand doesn’t remember how it made that P, that beautiful little twist of my wrist which set me apart from Jaime Osich. And sometimes I want my P back, my Peter Dell P, my charming, unique P which was—as it turns out—very common in this homosexual man.