Textual Intercourse
Textual Intercourse, a new book by Beob
I’m certainly not one of these people who pushes their chest out and proudly says, “Oh I can’t be arsed with texting, if I’ve got something to say then I’ll just ring ‘em!”, as if they should receive some sort of medal for being so utterly, uncreative. These people (usually men) have seriously missed the point if they think the only thing the text message is to be used for, is practical purposes. These very people could really benefit from discovering the joys of putting thumb to keypad and getting those pent up feelings out in the open airwaves. Their girlfriends would be chuffed.
This is the thing that I love about text. We all find it hard to say the things that are closest to our hearts, especially us Brits, which is why letter writing has always been a great way to express your feelings. But writing a letter is an event in itself. With texting, your mobile becomes the pen and paper that you carry around all the time. It has suddenly become easy to pen down those things that you’ve been trying to say for years, in a few simple words.
Of course it doesn’t always run as smoothly as that. The text phenonomen has opened up a whole other set of politics to deal with. After receiving about 15 blank text messages from my Mum the other day, I text her to ask why. She said it was because she was trying to put me at the top of her most texted list because something was going wrong with her phone and another man, that she never texts was at the top and she didn’t want her boyfriend to see. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “a most texted list”.
My Dad is a whole different story. It has taken him 10 years to come round to the idea of predictive text and he still hasn’t figured out how to change “On” to “No” so instead writes “Negative”. Then the other day I received this message from him K.cumt. I’ve no idea what it was meant to say and was almost not the sort of message you want to receive from your Dad. My Dad’s all time greatest text has got to be, Grandma died at 7. Not even a kiss! Please don’t feel sad for me, it actually made me smile. It’s just my Dad’s style.
My Dad’s phone once started doing something funny. It started randomly sending messages out of its sent box or maybe even its inbox, I have no idea; I’ve never had the stomach to bring it up. The first few I received were alright but still a bit too intimate for comfort, the next were pretty damn horrible to receive. Urghhh, it wasn’t a good day.
That’s probably the worst thing about text messages; the whole texting the wrong person scenario. What about when you’re sending a really bitchy text message about someone and because you’re thinking about that person so much you end up actually sending the message to the person you’re bitching about? A colleague of mine has just fallen victim to this. Our boss was sacked and she was so happy she sent a text saying as much, and went and sent it to the boss. Oops!
I’ve got to take this opportunity to mention Shane Warne, who is the class idiot of texting. Geez this guy loves to text! What is he doing? For anyone who hasn’t heard about the Australian cricketer’s texting faux-pas’, I will explain. Married Shane Warne’s lust-induced text messages sent to a variety of women, have been regularly splashed across the papers. So much so that it was a total joke. Anyway, this culminated in the famous cricketer winning his appeal to his wife and convincing her to try again, despite her having seen the filth her husband had been texting other women. However, just to add a perfect tabloid-fairytale ending to it all, only 2 months after their reconciliation, the distracted bowler added a bit of a spin to the proceedings and sent a text to his wife that was meant for yet another woman. His wife then went on to publicly shame the “loser”.
Hey beautiful, I’m just talking to my kids, the back door’s open.”
She replied with “You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person.”
It could have been worse, I suppose. He could have sent his wife one of his legendary, testosterone-fuelled messages yet somehow this is so much worse though. He’s texting from his family home whilst talking to his kids yet arranging his lover to slip in through the back-door in order to pleasure his sticky wicket. This is probably the same door that his kids run out of everyday to play cricket in the garden, so they can be just like daddy; or the same door his wife goes to hang his over-used scruds, lovingly out to dry. Shane Warne is obviously just incapable of complying with the L.B.W rule; Love Before Willy.
Here are some of my favourite Warne texts;
“I want to kick your puppy”. Kiss? Pussy?
It was amazing? How good was our sex F***ing very hot! My turn to come please tell me how I should think of you!
Sex fucking? Is this an Aussie phrase? Also, the lack of punctuation makes things very confusing.
Really? Rain? What about i meet you somewhere in the open and you can be standing there in the rain i can come meet you in the rain and then X
It is amazing to me that he hasn’t given up on the SMS altogether. Why hasn’t he realised that his love of text is landing him in hot crocodile-infused water? He seems to be somewhat addicted. The University of Queensland in Australia (perhaps in a desperate bid to understand the Nation’s hero’s idiocy) has found that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or internet, and is equivalent in addictiveness to cigarette smoking. The need to text has even got a name; “Reachability”, which is the need to feel connected. If only Shane Warne had known that all he had to do to win his wife back, was to explain his “Reachability” issues! In January 2009, a teenage girl set a record high of 14,528 text messages in a one month period. That’s Warne’s kind of woman.
Shane sounds like my kind of man though; he matches my enthusiasm for texting. It’s this enthusiasm that has driven me to spend the last year roaming the country, trying to get into the most intimate of places; The Inbox. I have explored various methods of convincing people to release their phones to me, usually involving alcohol. I’ve stolen, pleaded, black-mailed and sold myself in part-exchange in order to get the best texts around, and all for your entertainment. I promise every single text message you will see is absolutely genuine, down to the punctuation and amount of kisses. So please enjoy reading in the knowledge of that. During this entertaining year of collecting texts, I’ve also had a good team of pals that have been on the look out for great texts and new texting trends.
Whilst out drinking the other night, my friend told me about this new game that’s going around, called the “I love you” game. In this game, each participant takes out their phone and writes a text saying I love you. Everyone then passes their phone to the person on their left and without looking, the message is sent to a person at random. Can you imagine? Which genius/sicko came up with this game?
So we decided to play the “I love you” game, only we changed it slightly. Instead, we text There’s always been something between us, don’t you think?. Now I’ve got to warn you, there’s something spooky going on with this game; the message always, always, always seems to get sent to the worst person it possibly could. Mine got sent to an old family friend. The only family friend I have in my phone. Horrible! Another participant sent it to his ex-girlfriend’s Mum. Certainly, not for the faint-hearted!
The other week my boyfriend made the mistake of leaving his phone with his friends in the pub. When he got it back he found this message in his sent box; I want to bum dad. It was sent to his Mum.
It’s a dangerous game this text malarkey and the text-dating world is no exception. It really is a minefield. You think you have it all sorted and you know exactly what you’re doing and then wham, suddenly; silence, no beep,beep, no sodding reply. Just over a year ago, before I got with my boyfriend, I met this guy who I quite liked. We’d had a bit of flirt, lingering eye-contact and even did that thing where you purposefully brush your hand against one-another whilst talking to someone else; so I got his number off his mate. It burnt a hole in my phone all the following day but I knew I couldn’t text him straight away. Hey man, I’m no amateur! I did however spend all day geekily figuring out what I was going to write. I thought I was so bloody clever!
Hi Aaron, just thought I’d let you know you left without taking your goody bag the other night, so I think you should come around and get it. Love Beob xx
I mean it wasn’t a lie. He did leave without taking his goody bag, but then so did everyone else because I was too leathered to give them out. Waiting for a reply, I started to question myself; Did I have the right number? Did I imagine the hand-brushing thing? Was my cute, little impression of the Wizard of Oz munchkins not cute at all and in fact the most cringeable, embarrassing thing I could have ever done? The reply never came. Humiliating or what? My only chance of saving any dignity was not to give in to the temptation of sending a second text. NEVER SEND A SECOND TEXT.
Well did I send a second text? Of course not. I told you I was no amateur. I have seen him since though. My first mistake was spelling his name wrong. Lazy work Beob! He has also told me since that he had never received such a suggestive text message and didn’t really know how to respond. I definitely misjudged the situation. Then again, if this really was the most suggestive text he’d ever received then he certainly wasn’t the one for me! I should have known when he got his guitar out for a sing-song. He probably rolls his own sushi. Oh no, that was someone else. My new text/dating rule is, ‘If in doubt, don’t text!’ It’s a goodie, take it on board.
But it’s all in the name of fun, isn’t it? In fact my only criticism of text is that you get so many great texts that you can’t possibly keep them all. Maybe it was the desire to keep all my favourites in a collection that spurred me on to writing, oh wait sorry no, compiling this book. This book has a hundred different authors and that’s what’s great about text; everyone’s a writer, and I have them all to thank for letting me snoop through their most intimate messages. Incidentally, writing this book was a great excuse when I was caught, red-handed, going through my boyfriend’s inbox!
Beob is the author of Textual Intercourse. You may find more information about the book at: www.textualintercourse.co.uk
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