A tale set in Albany, New York back in 1962...
For Rose Calhoun, her years at the girls only St. Catherine's High School weren't much like the other girls in her class seemed to be. There was no endless stream of boyfriends for Rose, and since she wasn't all that good at making friends she got left out of most of the other stuff her classmates did, like sleepovers and parties. Not helping was the fact that Rose had stayed back in 8th grade, mostly due to poor attendance due to a lengthy illness, so not only was she older than her classmates she was thought of as not only unattractive but slow as well.
Rose wasn't slow, but her grades were decidedly mediocre and while the cherubic teen wasn't ugly, she was very plain looking and the extra 30 pounds she carried didn't help her popularity with the boys in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, the only boy she had a real relationship during those years wasn't a boy at all but a man, her Uncle Larry, who wasn't really an uncle at all but a friend of her father's who hung around the house a lot.
So as graduation neared and there was no prom on the horizon for Rose, she was down in the dumps until something very strange started to happen. The janitor at the school, Ralph Cobb, had started to get very friendly with her when no one else was looking. Mr. Cobb had always been very nice to Rose, but this was different and the short conversations they had when no one was around took on a very adult tone until finally one day the old man suggested something to Rose on the final day of school.
"You just gotta be sure nobody sees you going in there because that would be powerful bad for both of us," Ralph Cobb told Rose, his toothy smile contrasting with the deep crimson lips and the coal black skin of the 62 year old janitor.
"On account of you're a Negro?" Rose had replied, using the terminology popular back in the early 60's, and Ralph grinned at that.
"That, plus I'm suppose to be working and not talking to pretty girls in the janitor's closet," Ralph suggested.
"Is that what we're going to do Mr. Cobb, talk?" Rose replied as she fiddled with the combination on her locker while Mr. Cobb pushed the broom around her when somebody came around the corner.
"That, and maybe other things," he suggested with a wink as he looked at the plump girl's bosom in the baggy white uniform top. "I tell you child, you done a lot of growing up lately. Either that or you're stuffing that bra of yours. They real?"
"Of course they're real," Rose blushed, her skin tingling when she felt the old man's eyes on her chest.
"Heh-heh. I guess those beauties are real," Mr. Cobb noted when he saw the outline of the teen's nipples through her bra and blouse. "You got some big nipples on you too. They must be if I can seem them through the blouse and the bra. They get stiff because of me looking at them?"
"Don't make fun of me Mr. Cobb," Rose complained as she crossed her arms over her bosom.
"I'm not child. Just thinking about how beautiful those breasts must be, and how that sweet ass of yours drives me crazy," the janitor said softly while making sure no one else was in the hall. "You like it there? Any boy ever put his dick in your ass?"
"Ew! That's gross," Rose replied, shivering at the thought.
"Just curious. So what you think Rose darlin'? You gonna meet me in the closet later or are you one of them cock teasers?" Ralph suggested, and when he got no response added, "Hell, I bet you're a virgin."
"Am not."
"You turn 18 yet?"
"Course I did. I'm almost 19 on account of I stayed back in 8th."
"Oh. You one of them slow kids?"
"No. I was just sick for a time."
"Well you sure look well enough now. How many boys you been with?"
"No boys, but I've been with a man and plenty of times too," Rose snapped.
"That right? Hell, I guess that figures because you're way too much woman for a boy," Ralph said, rearranging himself in his pants. "That man - he have a big one?"
"Yeah, plenty big," Rose said of her uncle, although in fact she had no idea whether he was big or not since his was the only one she had ever seen hard.
"So you like the big ones huh child?" Mr. Cobb asked while moving closer to the girl. "Want to feel what I got to make sure I measure up?"
"Not here Mr. Cobb!" Rose answered while stepping back.
"In the closet then after dismissal bell," the old black man said, and he nodded down while noting with a grin, "Look what you did to me."
Rose did a double take when she saw the bulge in the baggy green trousers, turning away and hurrying down the hall while she heard the janitor whispering that he would be waiting for her.
The last class of the day dragged on even worse than usual because everything had been covered and there was only the graduation ceremony that evening remaining, so Rose's mind wandered as she pondered whether she would have the guts to really meet the custodian in the closet like he wanted.
It wasn't like she was ever going to see the man again after graduation, and while she hoped to meet boys when she went to community college in the fall, she had no prospects for romance in the meantime and her faux "Uncle Larry" only stopped at the house occasionally and not for several weeks of late .
Rose smiled when she thought about what her parents would think of her being with a black man. Her mother might just approve because she was always talking about equal rights and donating her homemade chocolate chip cookies to the NAACP bake sale, although the quality of Mom's baking would not help racial harmony.
Father was a whole other story, because he didn't share Mom's views and if he thought a black guy even looked at her he might have a stroke. Then again, Rose had caught her father peeking in at her when she got out of the bathtub, so he was no saint either.
Rose didn't know what she was going to do, figuring that she would wait until the end of the school day to decide, and she guessed she would probably chicken out in the end, but at least thinking about it made a boring last day at school exciting.
***
"Started to worry about you child," Mr. Cobb said when Rose finally got up the courage to open the janitor's closet door instead of just walking past it like she had over the last 10 minutes, and after Rose peeked out into the deserted hallway and closed the door behind herself she saw the janitor standing in the corner.
Mr. Cobb had taken his green uniform off and was wearing boxer shorts, a wife beater t-shirt and white socks as he stood next to a long worktable with a devilish grin on his face. The room was small, dimly lit and smelled like chemicals, hardly the romantic setting Rose read about in the paperbacks Mom bought, and the more Rose thought about it the less this seemed like a good idea.
"Take that blouse off for Ralph," the aging black man said, his torso bony and far less formidable than it looked in the uniform, but as Rose unbuttoned the white top her eyes focused on the bulge in his worn boxers, visible despite the baggy drawers. "Oh yeah. Look at you girl! Come on over here and let me help get that harness off you."
Rose tried to keep the waistband of her skirt above her little belly as she went to Mr. Cobb whose hands rubbed her round shoulders wile his eyes went to her cavernous cleavage, and when he moved her around to face the other way she did not protest.
