The Northville Review
an online literary journal
Fifth Floor School House

Matthew Dexter

Back when I went to boarding school everybody wanted to lose their virginity in the same spot: the one where Ted Danson lost his. Rumor had it that he lost it on the fifth floor of School House Dormitory. That’s where students migrated every evening around nine thirty, where we’ve been making out for decades, hoping to feel something like the eighties sitcom icon from Cheers.

Drinking vodka from Snapple bottles and snorting Ritalin from dormitory desktops, we would warm up, climbing eight flights of stairs hoping to get a taste of Sam Malone. The fifth floor–like many floors of the building–consisted of offices and classrooms–mathematics mostly. You’d calculate whether a classroom was empty as you selected your door from about a dozen; most were occupied by the time you arrived.

You’d often see two students bent over a teacher’s desk; an adolescent wearing a tie and sports jacket huddled in a corner by the chalkboard with a girl in formal dress with rug burns on both her knees. We quickly shut the door. Walked down the chamber, a love of labor, like Sam Malone enchanting Diane, Woody Boyd in my hand I would listen to the ants marching outside the windowsill and wait for an empty classroom to come into fruition.

We did this night-in and night-out, hoping for a piece of Cliff Clavin. Norm was to make the most of that one hour between study hall and lights out. We prayed, shivered, in the darkness to the sound of bells ringing in the chapel, the exotic smells from bars of soap, shampoo, deodorant, mixed with sweat, and Ted Danson on our minds, scoring a home run where the famous Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Sam Mayday Malone hit his first round-tripper.

Rounding the bases we were complacent, linoleum floor, shadows on the chalkboard, and intruders our only witness. This is what made Sam Malone famous. Let’s face it: this is the same spot where Family Guy was created by the depraved imagination of Seth McFarlane, where Treat Williams found his inspiration, where generations of students have found themselves thirsty and yearning for the place where Peter Farrelly discovered something about Mary. These are just some of the celebrities who have walked these hallowed halls.

Where the only thing scarier than the wonderful sounds and ineffable echoes of Ted Danson’s horny ghost dancing down the corridor are the currents of the Housatonic River as it slivers toward Kent, Connecticut and School House Dormitory like an interminable serpent. To this day, if you listen close enough between nine thirty and ten thirty you can hear Ted Danson having an orgasm amid student cheers, as an angel gets it wings.

About the author

Matthew Dexter lives and breathes in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. An expatriate author and poet best known for eating shrimp tacos and drinking enough Pacifico to kill six blue marlins, he's the Lil Wayne of literature.