Downstairs cracked-leather couch: tenth hour of an acid trip that began

an hour before my virginal screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
November 1978. In the bed upstairs my college roommate Mike, age 28
and my close friend Cheryl, age 21, consummate their six-hour affair.
In another world, he and his sister babysat for her.

I hear her footsteps now, descending, approaching me. She caresses my
head, looks into my frantic eyes.

“Are you all right?”

She loved me for three years. And in that moment of anti-hallucination, I
realized, finally, that I loved her too.

– Terry Barr

Author’s Note:  “Their First Time” [was inspired by] the time when my roommate and my best friend hit it off while I was tripping on the downstairs couch.