Many years later, after taking my virginity, Rosie would tell me that it was what I wrote to her in third grade that initially endeared me to her. A couple mean boys had taunted her about her skin color on the playground and I was a silent observer of the incident. My heart went out to her when I saw her lower lip tremble, followed closely by a steady stream of large tears wetting her dark cheeks. She didn’t run away in spite of the hurt put on her by her young white tormentors. She just stood and took the abuse that was heaped upon her. To my lifelong regret, I stood and watched and did nothing.

Rosie was one of only two black girls attending Holy Cross elementary school. The year was 1960. Rosie was a tiny little thing, with thin legs and brightly colored ribbons in her kinky hair. Her parents were immigrants from Kenya who had come to America for a better life.

Rosie and her family were true outsiders in the Northwest corner of Indiana we grew up in. On that warm day in May I heard terrible things said to her by our classmates, things that I would never forget, and I was ashamed and angered by what I heard. Even after Rosie was reduced to tears the torrents of insults continued until the recess bell rang and we returned to our classroom. Rosie wiped away her tears and gathered herself, and by the time she was seated in our classroom her bright eyes were clear. I noticed a stoic, defiant expression on her face. Anger that would never leave her had established a place within her. She sat in the next row, one seat up from mine, so I could observe her that year without her being aware of it, or so I thought.

It was toward the end of the afternoon that I finally decided to take some sort of action. I had thought about the possible ways I might make her feel better, so I wrote a note to her surreptitiously, because if the nun caught me she would make me stand up and read it to the class. It was a one sentence note, and I quickly folded it up and stuck it in my shirt pocket.

When the dismissal bell rang, I managed to get right behind Rosie as the students rushed the door. In the general hubbub of the dash to freedom, I found a moment and quickly tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back at me and smiled when she saw it was me, and I quickly said, “I think you dropped this,” and handed her my note. I then took a turn and walked briskly away from her, putting as much distance between us as I could.

“Dear Rosie, I like you,” my note read. I drew a misshapen heart below my name. She would later tell me, as we lay in her bed together, that my note had given her encouragement on a day when she had felt shattered and alone. She saved it and read it whenever she felt low or sad. After telling me that, she would take my head in her hands and give me one deep sensual kiss after another.

The years plodded by, and it was two years later that my parents moved out of our small house in the city into a more rural area a few miles outside of town. We were surrounded on all sides by expansive farm fields. Our new next door neighbors were my grandparents, who had a farm.

During those years before we moved, however, Rosie and I hardly ever spoke. She was a girl, after all, and I was much more interested in garter snakes and comic books. Rosie had made some white girlfriends at school and I often observed her sporting a wide smile that showcased her pearly white teeth. Underneath it all I always thought I saw a hint of anger in her face, though.

I suppose I had developed a childhood crush on her, although I would certainly have denied it at the time. In the twisted logic of young affection, the more I liked her the less I talked to her. Once we moved to our new house, it would be nine years before I saw her again, when we were both included in the same high school district, each of us riding buses to attend high school.

Acne ravaged my face early on when I went through puberty and then ruined it further with each year of junior high school. My mother took me to several different doctors, who would earnestly squeeze and poke me with painful instruments of torture, none of which provided any type of relief. Angry red pustules and hard, subcutaneous cysts made my face look like the surface of the moon, and I hid myself in the back corner of each class I took, feeling deformed and monstrous. All I could think about were the girls that were developing hips and breasts around me, none of whom would ever glance at me, let alone talk to me. I was Quasimodo and Two-Face combined into one hideous outcast.

Meanwhile, Rosie had blossomed. When I first saw her in high school our freshman year, I almost didn’t recognize her. She had small, firm-looking breasts, and a slim waist that only made her bubble-shaped butt stand out more, and not a blemish on her smooth, dark chocolate skin. Her lips were large and rose-hued, and her eyes had a slight angle that I did not recall from her youth, almost oriental in effect. Her outward persona had grown into one of confidence and her carriage was proud and still somewhat defiant.

I didn’t have her in any of my classes my freshman and sophomore year. I would only catch glimpses of her in the crowded hallways between classes or at the cafeteria. I always looked away when I saw her, for I was monstrous and she was so beautiful. Once I thought she recognized me and tentatively waved a greeting to me, but I averted my eyes and walked hurriedly past her in the hallway, feigning being late for my next class.

Time happened as Time will. My sixteenth birthday came and the worst days of my acne slowly faded away. I only had one or two huge cysts to despair over at any one time. I wore my hair over my ears and shirt collars. I wrote page after page of lonely, awful poetry. I listened to angry rock and angry R&B and angry folk music.

My grandfather took me under his wing when he saw where I was heading. On Sundays, he took me fishing with him on small Michigan lakes and listened to me whine about my life. He didn’t say much. Every now and then he’d pass me a beer, never addressing my underage status. He did say one day that he thought I was trying to grow up too fast and that girls were always going to be a mystery and they’re always going to go out with the wrong boys.

Rosie’s beauty and personality gained her more acceptance and she became a cheerleader our junior year. She got a boyfriend, a charismatic senior named Charles. He and I were both baritones in the school chorus and we stood next to each other at concerts because we were the same height. I would see Rosie looking at him from the audience and I always wished she was looking at me. She had a look on her face that broke my heart it was so sweet.

My grandfather had been putting me to work at harvest time on his small farm. My musculature started developing and the hard farm work was reflected in my shoulders, chest, and arms. My grandfather bought himself a new Ford truck and he shocked me shortly after I got my driver’s license. He threw me the keys to his old Studebaker pick-up truck and said “This is your payment for all the work you’ve done the last few years. You earned this.” It took me a while to get used to the angry scream of the transmission when I missed a gear, but after a while driving a stick became second nature. The body was rusting and the windshield had a crack that ran nearly the whole length of it, but the radio worked fine and the tires were brand new. It was heaven on wheels.

Rosie and I finally landed in a couple classes together our junior year, French and World History. I inhabited the last seat in the corner of the classroom so I could disappear from people’s attention. Rosie was always surrounded by her chattering friends, and she never looked at me. I had succeeded in becoming invisible to her, a fact which tormented me. That childhood crush had not died over time, not at all. It had only gotten worse.

In January of 1970 a blizzard of snow and cold came rushing down from Canada. What had been mild weather turned overnight into something else; whipping, bone-chilling gusts and blinding blankets of snow. The P.A. announcement came at noon announcing that due to the weather the school was closing early. Raucous cheers rang out from every classroom. I took my time getting to the parking lot, as there was just going to be a jam of cars and school buses trying to be the first to get out. The snow was already so deep that I thought I would let everyone else create a path through the mess for me. I started my truck and let its heater slowly defrost the windows while I smoked a cigarette, waiting for the idiots to clear out of the lot. The wind and the snow had already made driving a white-knuckled adventure, with visibility near zero.

Sensing that the lot was nearly empty, I put the Studebaker into first gear and eased out of the parking space, steering toward the exit more out of memory than by sight. I was on her just as soon as I saw her appear out of the blinding white curtain of snow. She was shielding her face from the elements with a scarf and didn’t see my truck. I hit the brakes too hard and skidded sickeningly toward her. Those new tires saved her; they stubbornly gripped and grabbed through the deepening snow and I stopped just inches from her. Her face was looking at me with terrified eyes and a silent scream in her throat. It was Rosie.

I threw the truck into park and opened my door and got out into the cold and the wind-blown white. I was so shaken I didn’t have any words ready to say to her and she was the same way. We just stared at each other for a second and then I yelled at her, “Get in, Rosie, I’ll take you home!” Without a word, she slipped and slid through the snow to the passenger door and got in.

She was wearing a short, bulky winter coat and a heavy scarf and a huge knit cap and mittens. She had on winter boots but her legs were exposed. As I got in the truck, I couldn’t help notice the snow melting on her knees, the huge white flakes contrasting with her lovely dark skin. I stammered out an apology and she did the same for not watching where she was going.

“Do you know where I live, Billy?” she said, taking off her scarf and brushing off the snow.

“You still live on Brookfield, right?”

“You remember? How nice.” And then she gave me that smile that I had admired throughout the years, the one that exposed her perfect white teeth and animated her face. I felt my pulse quicken. “Settle down,” I thought to myself. “She’s way out of your league.”

I took a deep breath to relieve the anxiety of nearly hitting Rosie and navigated the Studebaker through the snow. I didn’t look at her, concentrating on driving through the mess outside. She did something I didn’t expect. She started talking to me as though we were the oldest of friends who were catching up after not seeing each other for a while. It was the first time I’d talked to her in over nine years, but she seemed at ease with me. I felt comfortable in no time, not at all as nervous as I thought I would be.

When we got to her house, she insisted I come in for some hot cocoa. Her parents weren’t home, she said, as they both worked and it was a weekday. I knocked the snow off my boots outside on the porch while she opened the door with her key.

Inside, the house was chilly. She took me into the dining room that adjoined the neatly kept kitchen and sat me at a large formal dinner table while she started making hot chocolate with marshmallows. She kept chattering, asking me my opinion on this or that teacher at school. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she later told me she was nervous about me being with her.

Bringing our hot chocolate, she set herself down beside me, scooting a chair out from under the table in order to face me. Her afro-styled hair was wild, frazzled from her large knit cap. I searched for a topic, anything, to keep her talking and to keep me in her house. I was in awe that I was there and alone with her, and wanted it to go on and on, if it could.

“So…,” she said suddenly, with a tone that indicated seriousness. “I want to know something, Billy. Why don’t you ever talk to me at school?” Then she took a sip of her drink and watched me fidget, her eyes burning into mine over the brim of the cup.

“I….uh…..what?” I knew exactly what she meant. I just didn’t have an answer for her. I really had no idea why I never spoke to her.

“You …know… what… I…mean, Billy.” The evenly spaced words cut right through my bullshit, leaving no option but to address her question directly. “Tell me, Billy….I want to know.”

What could I say? How could I tell her that I had withdrawn from her after that day so long ago because… I liked her? I suddenly started thinking of some excuse to leave, to return to the storm outside where it would be safer. I stared at her legs, her muscular dark legs that were anything but skinny now. Long seconds went by and I heard the ticking of a clock from the living room. My cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. Then she got up and left the room, leaving me alone and totally panic-stricken. I heard her open a door and I assumed that it was time to leave. I heard her yell loudly at me to stay put and she’d be right out, she had to find something.

Long seconds ticked away from the increasingly loud clock. I was just about ready to make a break for the front door when she re-appeared in front of me. She stuck out her hand and there was my note, the one I had written her in third grade all those years ago. The first thing I noticed was the crooked red heart I had drawn on it.

“You remember giving me this?” Her voice was gentle now, not prosecutorial. Tender, even.

“Yes.” My eyes finally rose and met her eyes. I was surprised to see wetness in them.

“That was a terrible thing they did to you back then.” That’s all I could manage to stammer out.

“Assholes.” She said.

The word sounded strange coming out of her mouth.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “There are a lot of assholes.”

“You don’t know it, Billy, but I’ve always wanted to find some way to tell you….” And then the first big tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheek and suddenly I was holding her. I had stood up and put my arms around her and she just folded into me and she cried.

“Shhhhh…” I whispered. I put one hand on the back of her head and felt her hair, the kinky curls feeling strange to my touch. Then I kissed her cheek, feeling the wet warmth of her tears on my lips. I kissed her other cheek next, longer this time, and held her a bit tighter, hugging her to me. Through her blouse I felt the hard roundness of her breasts. “Stop that,” I thought to myself. She started really bawling then, huge sobs wracking her small body.

What should I do? I knew why she was crying. I had reminded her of the pain of that awful day and the bitter, bigoted hate she had endured. My arms instinctively held her still tighter and she clung just as tightly to me, letting it all out. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I remained silent. I just held her.

Finally, I felt her breath deeply and let out a deep sigh, and she wiped her cheek on my shoulder. She was squeezing me and wasn’t letting go and I was just fine with that. She finally looked up at me for long seconds, searching my eyes. I felt her eyes swallow me up. A sensation as if I was falling came over me. “I want to do something….” She whispered to me.

She kissed me on my mouth. She did it so fast I was taken completely by surprise. It was a perfunctory kiss, the kind that people give to family upon greeting them, and she quickly moved her face away and then looked at me again, as if gauging my reaction. Whatever it was she saw on my face caused her to smile, and then she kissed me again.

The next kiss was hardly familial. She pressed those beautiful full lips that I had always admired into mine and pulled me against her and I returned her kiss. Our lips parted at the same time and our tongues dashed to meet each other and the world got dizzying and wonderful. I had kissed neighborhood girls before, but not like this, not anything like this. I felt my penis harden into a full-on erection and then her hips were pushing against me and I knew she could feel my cock and I liked that. She broke our kiss and put her cheek against mine. I thought I had over-stepped my bounds and was formulating some way to apologize to her for being so forward and then I felt her hand reach out and touch my hard cock through my pants. I froze.

Her hand took its measure of me. She had pressed against the front of my jeans, and then her hand grabbed me, her small fingers tracing the girth and the length of it, before firmly rubbing up and down the outside of my pants. The pressure of her hand made me aware of the wetness I had leaked into my shorts. Her hand was exploring that part of me as I marveled at how good it felt to have her touch me there. Her face moved off my cheek and she looked at my face with a look I had never seen before, a naughty look, and then she kissed me again, slower this time. I heard the most heavenly sound as she sighed into my mouth. Her breath was sweet and her mouth had a fresh taste with a hint of chocolate.

Our tongues played some more and my hand got bold and dropped downward and I cupped her ass, her perfectly round ass. I felt the approval in her body as I caressed her butt, lifting her skirt and feeling her firm cheeks through her panties. I told myself to memorize this moment, these moments, certain that I would never again feel anything as wonderful as this. Then she took my other hand and placed it on the outside of her blouse, on her breast, and I squeezed the firm softness there. Then she said the words I was dying to hear, in a tone that would not entertain debate, and that sent my poor adolescent soul soaring.

“Come with me.”

I scarcely remember the walk to her bedroom. I do know she was holding my hand and leading the way, not looking back at me. I remember the poster of Angela Davis on her wall, with her perfect afro and her defiant beauty. I noted the poster of the musical “Hair” and the small turntable on a nightstand and seeing her cheerleader uniform crumpled over a chair at her study desk and several large stuffed animals scattered here and there. Then she was back in my arms and our mouths were mashed together and she was kissing me again and her hands were roaming over my shoulders and arms, giving me permission to roam as well.

I’m not sure who led who to the bed but suddenly we were prone and kissing and our mouths were open and gasping and our hands couldn’t seem to be in enough places at once. This was all new territory for me with a girl and I was amazed that it was Rosie. Our difference in race added a flavor of forbidden fruit that was totally erotic to me, and I think to Rosie as well. Our momentum was carrying us to a place I had never been before and I was anxious that soon my inexperience would become obvious.

“Billy……” she said. There it is, I thought, the stop sign. I was on my back and she was lying on top of me and I stopped kissing her and looked into her eyes. I smiled at her and she put her head onto my chest. The wind was really howling outside, and it whistled through the moulding of both of Rosie’s bedroom windows. My shirt had somehow come half-unbuttoned during our rolling around on her bed and one of her hands was still on the outside of my jeans, feeling my shaft. She seemed to like doing that.

“What do you want to do, Billy?” What a silly question, I thought. But she had asked it with that serious tone that I couldn’t joke my way past, so I stared into her deep dark eyes while her breathing grew less ragged. She was looking into my eyes with a soft questioning look that was making my heart beat fast and her hand lightly rubbing my cock. I could feel her fingernails through the material of my jeans.

“I want to……” How could I say it? She was one of the most popular girls in school and I was a nothing, a monster who hadn’t fit in for years. I wracked my brain for the right words to say while she searched for something in my eyes. I looked at her hand that was still touching my cock. “I want to do it.”

Her eyes softened even further. Her lips smiled at me.

“You haven’t done it yet, have you?” She whispered, as if it were a secret between us. I shook my head in affirmation.

“I have, Billy. It’s not that great, really.” I found that hard to believe, I told her. I asked about birth control, hoping not to break the mood, and she told me her mother had taken her to the doctor a year ago and got her on the pill when it became obvious that Rosie was sexually active. My mind was racing. I wasn’t sure what to do next.

Much to my relief, Rosie took the lead. She sat up and she took my shirt off and then she took off her blouse and bra and wriggled out of her skirt, leaving only her panties on. Once they were free, her breasts were larger than I thought. I reached out and started fondling one. She smiled as she watched my face. I was rock hard and her breast was soft and firm at the same time. I couldn’t seem to get enough of it. I pulled her closer to me so that I could take a nipple and suck on it. She let me have it and she made a sound as I suckled her. It was a low growling purr and it drove me crazy.

I had read enough to know that girls enjoy foreplay so I told myself to take it slow. My hands and mouth and tongue started feeling, stroking, sucking, licking, squeezing, all of which elicited more noises from Rosie. She whispered my name but not in a way that I had ever heard before. I could feel the sexual excitement rise in her and the more she responded to me the less anxious I was about my inexperience.

My hand got bold enough to stray between her legs and I was thrilled to feel the moistness of her panties. Her smell was pungent and strong and her eyes closed while I rubbed the outside of her pussy through the damp black material. She moaned when I stroked her. I was listening to her and when I did something that she liked the volume of her moans increased. I kept doing that. I gently pushed her over so that she was on her back and I on my side and my hand rubbing her crotch. She spread her legs for me and I tugged at the top of her panties and she raised her butt off the bed and let me take them off. I saw that her pussy was dark, surrounded by dense black curliques, and her vagina was blossoming, revealing pink folds of wet flesh. With her panties off, her smell was stronger, filling my nostrils.

“Take your pants off, Billy, please,” she said. I didn’t think she had to say please but the way she said it, as if I would be doing her a service, made me even harder. I stood up and took my pants and boxers off, hopping on one foot from being in a hurry. She giggled and I watched her eyes as she got her first look at my cock. I’m not small and I’m not large but I am wider than most and I had leaked so that my cockhead had a wet sheen to it. She reached out and touched the tip of it, hesitantly, and then she let her hand encircle my shaft and she stroked it two or three times, watching me react to her touch. I felt like I would never stop grinning.

She pulled me down beside her, and pressed her naked body against mine. I kissed her again, more aggressively, and she responded in kind. My hand found its way again to her pussy and my fingers delighted at the feel of her wetness and the mystery of her vaginal folds. I had no idea what I was doing but again her moans offered me clues on what to do. Somehow I found her entrance and my middle finger was suddenly inside her, rubbing and pushing into her. I was finger fucking her and a sense of amazement overcame me as I explored my first pussy. There was a delicious complication to it, one fold after another. I felt around in her and as I approached her clit she broke away from my kiss and arched her back and then her hips started moving against my hand. Her moaning was getting louder and soon I had two fingers inside her. She buried her face into my neck and started licking and kissing me there, her hands reaching down and finding my cock. Suddenly she shuddered and said, “OH…..there……” and I kept rubbing and she shuddered again and moaned, “OH….God.” I saw her face contort as if in pain and I wondered if I was hurting her. I stopped and she opened her eyes and looked at me and whispered, “Put it in me, Billy.” She didn’t say please and she didn’t need to.

She spread her legs even wider as I got into position between them and she reached down and guided me into the place I had dreamed about for so long. I was still telling myself to go slow but she was suddenly having none of that. Entering her triggered her hips to start their undulations again, and once I was inside her she started really bucking up against me, and I held on for dear life. She was wildly humping underneath me, and I was suddenly concerned about keeping it in while she was thrusting up to meet my cock. Her legs pressed against my hips and held me in place and then the wildness was on me and all I wanted was to drive into her as deeply as I could, again and again.

It was pleasure incarnate and I didn’t want it to end and yet I was eager to cum in her. I was soon grunting from my exertions and she was making a high pitched wailing sound as I fucked her. She was scratching my back and her legs suddenly went straight up in the air and then I was pressing her down, hard into the bed and then something exploded inside me and I was coming inside her. Spasm after spasm rocked through me as I unloaded shamelessly inside her. After a few blasts of pure pleasure the sensations were just too much and I started hysterically laughing. Big belly laughs born of sexual release exploded out of me. She joined me in laughing, although I think she was laughing at me laughing. I didn’t care, I was in heaven.

I was soon spent and she held me in her, hugging me tightly. Our breathing gradually became normal again. My cock stayed semi-hard in her tight pussy and her vaginal muscles spasmed around me and sent delightful shivers up my spine. I kissed her, long deep kisses, and was rewarded again with that low guttural purring sound. I kept kissing her until I felt her respond again to my lust. My cock got fully hard and her hips started their dancing motion again and soon we were bucking frantically on her bed, in perfect sync with each other. My hands were underneath her and I was squeezing her ass cheeks and letting myself concentrate on the feel of my cock slamming into her wet warm pussy. Her voice built into a loud crescendo as I rammed myself into her again and again.

My next explosion drew near and I told her I was going to come again. “Oh, God, yes, Billy, yes, yes, yes….” Her hips moved even faster and then I collapsed on top of her, burying my face into her pillow, and I felt my seed release out of me again, the feeling just as wonderful as the first time. I groaned loudly and she was moaning, holding me tight against her as I came. I remember her hand stroking my back, almost the way a mother strokes her child.

We lay together for a long time afterward and I wasn’t sure what to say. Some inner voice told me to caress her, so I let my index finger trace along her eyebrow as I looked deeply into her dark brown eyes and simply smiled at her. Her mouth, her eyes, her nose, her hair, all fascinated me. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She didn’t say much, but her eyes spoke volumes. We enjoyed the intimacy of the other and when I saw her look at the alarm clock on her bedside table I didn’t have to be told that it was time for me to go. I got up and got dressed, never taking my eyes off the wonder of her, lying naked there on her bed in front of me.

I walked over to her, bent down and kissed her for a nice long time, and then I headed outside to the blizzard to brush the snow off my Studebaker. The snow was being driven by the wind and had drifted across half of the street and the truck plowed through the drifts and the storm, and the whole way home I was smiling.