by Beob

...everyone's doing it

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Table of Contents

5 Introduction12 Current Affairs16 Pissed Up Texts20 You’ve got their number, now what?24 Flatmates28 Textual Chocolate32 Death & Tragedy36 Man Love39 Textcuses & Lies43 Bunny Boiler49 The Morning After53 Short & Sweet54 Factexts57 Missing60 Song Lyrics63 Health Matters67 Poetry (of sorts)69 Friendship74 Chain Texts77 Thumb Wrestling82 Dating87 Questions89 Love me texter. Love me do.93 Textual Healing96 Films100 TV102 Pet Names104 Public Transport108 Drugs111 Textual Intercourse117 Football Torment119 Heart Breakers122 Texercise124 Funny Texts129 Sorry Texts132 Favourites136 Christmas139 New Years Eve

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Textual Intercourse…everyone's doing itIntroduction

I’m certainly not one of these people who pushestheir chest out and proudly says, “Oh I can’t bearsed with texting, if I’ve got something to saythen I’ll just ring ‘em!”, as if they shouldreceive some sort of medal for being so utterly,uncreative. These people (usually men) haveseriously missed the point if they think the onlything the text message is to be used for, ispractical purposes. These very people couldreally benefit from discovering the joys ofputting thumb to keypad and getting those pent upfeelings out in the open airwaves. Theirgirlfriends would be chuffed.

This is the thing that I love about text. We allfind it hard to say the things that are closestto our hearts, especially us Brits, which is whyletter writing has always been a great way toexpress your feelings. But writing a letter isan event in itself. With texting, your mobilebecomes the pen and paper that you carry aroundall the time. It has suddenly become easy to pendown those things that you’ve been trying to sayfor years, in a few simple words.

Of course it doesn’t always run as smoothly asthat. The text phenonomen has opened up a wholeother set of politics to deal with. Afterreceiving about 15 blank text messages from myMum the other day, I text her to ask why. Shesaid it was because she was trying to put me atthe top of her most texted list because somethingwas going wrong with her phone and another man,that she never texts was at the top and shedidn’t want her boyfriend to see. I didn’t even

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know there was such a thing as “a most textedlist”.

My Dad is a whole different story. It has takenhim 10 years to come round to the idea ofpredictive text and he still hasn’t figured outhow to change “On” to “No” so instead writes“Negative”. Then the other day I received thismessage from him K.cumt. I’ve no idea what itwas meant to say and was almost not the sort ofmessage you want to receive from your Dad. MyDad’s all time greatest text has got to be,Grandma died at 7. Not even a kiss! Pleasedon’t feel sad for me, it actually made me smile.It’s just my Dad’s style.

My Dad’s phone once started doing somethingfunny. It started randomly sending messages outof its sent box or maybe even its inbox, I haveno idea; I’ve never had the stomach to bring itup. The first few I received were alright butstill a bit too intimate for comfort, the nextwere pretty damn horrible to receive. Urghhh, itwasn’t a good day.

That’s probably the worst thing about textmessages; the whole texting the wrong personscenario. What about when you’re sending areally bitchy text message about someone andbecause you’re thinking about that person so muchyou end up actually sending the message to theperson you’re bitching about? A colleague ofmine has just fallen victim to this. Our bosswas sacked and she was so happy she sent a textsaying as much, and went and sent it to the boss.Oops!

I’ve got to take this opportunity to mentionShane 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

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cricketer’s texting faux-pas’, I will explain.Married Shane Warne’s lust-induced text messagessent to a variety of women, have been regularlysplashed across the papers. So much so that itwas a total joke. Anyway, this culminated in thefamous cricketer winning his appeal to his wifeand convincing her to try again, despite herhaving seen the filth her husband had beentexting other women. However, just to add aperfect tabloid-fairytale ending to it all, only2 months after their reconciliation, thedistracted bowler added a bit of a spin to theproceedings and sent a text to his wife that wasmeant for yet another woman. His wife then wenton to publicly shame the “loser”.

Hey beautiful, I’m just talking to my kids, theback door’s open.”

She replied with “You loser, you sent the messageto the wrong person.”

It could have been worse, I suppose. He couldhave sent his wife one of his legendary,testosterone-fuelled messages yet somehow this isso much worse though. He’s texting from hisfamily home whilst talking to his kids yetarranging his lover to slip in through the back-door in order to pleasure his sticky wicket. Thisis probably the same door that his kids run outof everyday to play cricket in the garden, sothey can be just like daddy; or the same door hiswife goes to hang his over-used scruds, lovinglyout to dry. Shane Warne is obviously justincapable of complying with the L.B.W rule; LoveBefore Willy.

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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 veryhot! My turn to come please tell me how I shouldthink of you!

Sex fucking? Is this an Aussie phrase? Also,the lack of punctuation makes things veryconfusing.

Really? Rain? What about i meet you somewhere inthe open and you can be standing there in therain i can come meet you in the rain and then X

It is amazing to me that he hasn’t given up onthe SMS altogether. Why hasn’t he realised thathis 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 theNation’s hero’s idiocy) has found that textmessaging is the most addictive digital serviceon mobile or internet, and is equivalent inaddictiveness to cigarette smoking. The need totext has even got a name; "Reachability", whichis the need to feel connected. If only ShaneWarne had known that all he had to do to win hiswife back, was to explain his “Reachability”issues! In January 2009, a teenage girl set arecord high of 14,528 text messages in a onemonth period. That’s Warne’s kind of woman.

Shane sounds like my kind of man though; hematches my enthusiasm for texting. It’s thisenthusiasm that has driven me to spend the lastyear roaming the country, trying to get into themost intimate of places; The Inbox. I haveexplored various methods of convincing people to

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release their phones to me, usually involvingalcohol. I’ve stolen, pleaded, black-mailed andsold myself in part-exchange in order to get thebest texts around, and all for yourentertainment. I promise every single textmessage you will see is absolutely genuine, downto the punctuation and amount of kisses. Soplease enjoy reading in the knowledge of that.During this entertaining year of collectingtexts, I’ve also had a good team of pals thathave been on the look out for great texts and newtexting trends.

Whilst out drinking the other night, my friendtold me about this new game that’s going around,called the “I love you” game. In this game, eachparticipant takes out their phone and writes atext saying I love you. Everyone then passestheir phone to the person on their left andwithout looking, the message is sent to a personat random. Can you imagine? Which genius/sickocame up with this game?

So we decided to play the “I love you” game, onlywe changed it slightly. Instead, we text There’salways been something between us, don’t youthink?. Now I’ve got to warn you, there’ssomething spooky going on with this game; themessage always, always, always seems to get sentto the worst person it possibly could. Mine gotsent to an old family friend. The only familyfriend I have in my phone. Horrible! Anotherparticipant sent it to his ex-girlfriend’s Mum.Certainly, not for the faint-hearted!

The other week my boyfriend made the mistake ofleaving his phone with his friends in the pub.When he got it back he found this message in hissent box; I want to bum dad. It was sent to hisMum.

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It’s a dangerous game this text malarkey and thetext-dating world is no exception. It really isa minefield. You think you have it all sortedand you know exactly what you’re doing and thenwham, suddenly; silence, no beep,beep, no soddingreply. Just over a year ago, before I got withmy boyfriend, I met this guy who I quite liked.We’d had a bit of flirt, lingering eye-contactand even did that thing where you purposefullybrush your hand against one-another whilsttalking to someone else; so I got his number offhis mate. It burnt a hole in my phone all thefollowing day but I knew I couldn’t text himstraight away. Hey man, I’m no amateur! I didhowever spend all day geekily figuring out what Iwas going to write. I thought I was so bloodyclever!

Hi Aaron, just thought I’d let you know you leftwithout taking your goody bag the other night, soI think you should come around and get it. LoveBeob xx

I mean it wasn’t a lie. He did leave withouttaking his goody bag, but then so did everyoneelse because I was too leathered to give themout. Waiting for a reply, I started to questionmyself; Did I have the right number? Did Iimagine the hand-brushing thing? Was my cute,little impression of the Wizard of Oz munchkinsnot cute at all and in fact the most cringeable,embarrassing thing I could have ever done? Thereply never came. Humiliating or what? My onlychance of saving any dignity was not to give into the temptation of sending a second text.NEVER SEND A SECOND TEXT.

Well did I send a second text? Of course not. Itold you I was no amateur. I have seen him sincethough. My first mistake was spelling his namewrong. Lazy work Beob! He has also told me

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since that he had never received such asuggestive text message and didn’t really knowhow to respond. I definitely misjudged thesituation. Then again, if this really was themost suggestive text he’d ever received then hecertainly wasn’t the one for me! I should haveknown when he got his guitar out for a sing-song.He probably rolls his own sushi. Oh no, that wassomeone else. My new text/dating rule is, ‘If indoubt, don’t text!’ It’s a goodie, take it onboard.

But it’s all in the name of fun, isn’t it? Infact my only criticism of text is that you get somany great texts that you can’t possibly keepthem all. Maybe it was the desire to keep all myfavourites in a collection that spurred me on towriting, oh wait sorry no, compiling this book.This book has a hundred different authors andthat’s what’s great about text; everyone’s awriter, and I have them all to thank for lettingme snoop through their most intimate messages.

Incidentally, writing this book was a greatexcuse when I was caught,red-handed, going through my boyfriend’s inbox!

Beob

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Flatmates

I would like to take this opportunity to thankone of the strong influences I had when puttingtogether this book. Oonagh O’Hagan wrote andcompiled “I lick my cheese, and other notes fromthe frontline of flatsharing” which gave me theconfidence to move forward with my idea; althoughI wouldn’t dream of comparing my book to hertruly original, brilliant idea. Her book is acollection of notes housemates have left eachother over the years. If you haven’t read it,read it. It’s ace and extremely funny.

There’s a key under the mat for whoever gets homefirst. Safe as fuck.

I know this guy and he always says ‘safe asfuck’, so I don’t know whether he was beingsarcastic, clever or what. I kinda don’t want toknow either. I also like it because it soundslike a bit of challenge where the winner iswhoever gets home first and gets the prize underthe mat, and the loser has to sleep outside forthe night.

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This is a beads up. Just remembered.I didnt flush the loo. Was in a rush.Seats down though, but my apologies!

Ha I love this. Even though it doesn’t makesense, the ‘beads up’ seems to fit the messageperfectly. It gives you all sorts of images.Obviously the writer intended to give hisflatmates a ‘heads up’, rather than remind themof the beads of sweat on his forehead as he wastrying to force out his shit in such a rush thathe forgot to flush the toilet. I also like thepositive point of the message that the seat was

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down, however I don’t understand how someone canremember to put the seat down but not flush. Ialso wonder if the receiver was tempted to have aquick look.

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Hmmm not only did you fall into my bedroom doorat 2 this morning, sending adrenalin pumpingthrough my body, keeping me awake for hours butalso forced me to wipe your chunks of sick notonly off the toilet seat but also off my arse.Nice! Xx

The unfortunate one also found out later that thetowel she had used to dry herself with, afterwashing “the chunks” off her arse, had also beencovered in sick. Nice!

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Hi. We’ve had council tax, electric, phone andwe’re due gas and water.it has been worked outcomparatively but we’re moving end of xmas sothere’ll be final ones from when you were heretoo.i’ll text you the total amount asap tho.thatok?x

What a text message to get. What an evil way toruin someone’s day. The good nature of the SMSshouldn’t be dirtied with such filth. Shame onyou! That ok? No, of course it’s not ok.

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Erghh just went in toilet after Darren and itsmelt and there was bits floating that lookedlike onions. How’s your nice clean hotel? XxThat is, quite frankly, one of the mostdisgusting things I have ever heard.

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PS get into bed with me when you get in. Yourbedroom is in dire straights x

Well! Never has getting your flatmate into yourbed, been so easy.

My flatmate had hung his washing out to dry onthe roof-garden but whilst it was drying someonehad come and padlocked the door to the roof. Hetried to go through the right channels to acquirehis washing back but in the end his need forclean kegs was too strong.

The key that came was the wrong one. So I kickedthe fuckin door in. The roof remains our. X

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Bat dead iron on! X

It took me about 5 minutes to de-code thismessage but then I realised what was happening.The sender’s phone is about to lose battery, butshe’s left the iron on at home. Have you evertried to live without your mobile for any lengthof time? It’s a bloody nightmare. The amount oftimes I’ve had to go in a mobile shop to ask themif I can plug my phone in to give it some juice!

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This is from the same naughty boys on page 36 whokeep on texting each other while they’re on theirseparate toilets in their same flat. Apparentlyanother game they like to play is 'hide the whitethong', which mysteriously turned up on theirbalcony one day. This particular time, one ofthem had hid the mysterious thong in the other’swashing; washing which he then took home for his

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Mum. It serves him right really for taking hiswashing home in the first place. You Big Baby!

And yes my mum found the pants you fuck!

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Death and Tragedy

Even death isn’t too big a subject for text.

Sorry 2 miss u & quiz. Traumatic week. Roys sisin law died. Funeral sat in conway. Tinasboyfriend tim hit by car while walking alongpavement. Other guy was hit & killed. We r on rway 2 n wales. Is ur bday this w/e?

Be-Jesus! Would I be wrong in saying that it isonly Mums that send these kind of messages? Imean, this isn’t my Mum but I can imagine hersending it. I’m sure in this situation I wouldring about such tragedy. It’s like they need toget everything in one text because they’re sobusy, so they condense everything into a fewsentences but the result is one intense,impacting text. Now I don’t know it for a factbut I’m willing to bet my life that this nexttext is also from a Mum.

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Ben died of heart attack due to clogged arteries.Just so you know, funeral on Tuesday am. Hopeyou’re having some fun. xxWell I was before getting this text.

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Grandma died at 7

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I’ve finally opened you card, and your right. Idid shed a tear. Thank you for those kind words.I’m coming back to Leeds today but so scared ofleaving the energy that mum has left in thehouse. Hope I see you soon Beet. Your are a greatfriend x x

My friend has recently just lost his Mum and thiswas a message sent from him. It was obviously avery difficult time for him and he received manymessages of sympathy which really helped himthrough. We all know there is nothing to reallysay when someone is grieving and so just passingon our sympathy and letting them know you arethere to talk is all you can really do. Howeverthere are phrases that you should perhaps avoidand my friend’s cousin might just have found sucha phrase, when he e-mailed to give hissympathies;

“Bad luck about your Mum”. Bad Luck?

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This next one is hard. I have been told but haveno personal experience of it, that when a parentdies it is really common for the siblings toargue and this is precisely what is happening inthis next collection I have. I considered notputting it in because it is obviously somethingthat is so personal. All I can say is that I canonly imagine the pain of losing a parent and Ithink you can be forgiven anything when copingwith such pain.

Thanks but there’s no need for u to come up thatwknd. We’re be back 14th Feb and here with dad.After last wknd I think you’re better off takingtime off coming til u got all stresses ur endsorted out. You could do without worrying about

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coming up to help for a while. But thanks for theoffer

Reply….

If u dont want the help that’s fine but I’ll stilb coming 2 c dad anyway once a month.

Reply…

That’s totally fine. But the idea was to give u abreak from having to worry about it all. I didn’tfeel u enjoyed being here at all this wknd

Reply…

Your rite, I don’t enjoy coming there anymore. Ifind it very sad and depressing and hav dun 4 along time, not just since mum died, although muchworse since she has obviously. I would visit 2 cdad though no matter how much I disliked going.Its never been a case of going cause I enjoy it

Reply…

That’s quite evident that u feel that way. Itsnot nice that u bring all that negative energyhere. It effects everyone here. And not for thebest

Reply…

Ur very lucky if u dont feel that way, dadsstroke and mums death hav torn me apart and houseis just a v sad reminder of the past.

Reply…

Im shocked n upset that you think that mums deathhas no impact on my life. All I was trying to saywas it would b nice if we all could b a little

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more supportive and positive when been here. Imsurprised u can’t see it otherwise. Ps Ive told ulast wknd that I’d sooner u call me to chat aboutwhats on ur mind aposed to texting me. EverythingI say seems to be misunderstood

Reply…

I hav just reread message I sent u 2 try 2understand how u misread it, I didnt mean atallthat mums death n dads stoke hadnt had an impacton u ofcourse it has, but unlike me it dosntupset u 2 be there that’s all. I didn’t call 2say this as I think we all need to calm down. Infuture I will ring rather than txt as words doget misread,p.s sorry I hung up tx

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Man Love

Ever wondered what men are texting each other.Here’s a little insight into their dirty, littleworld. By the way, these were not easy to get,so please feel privileged.

Lots of gash out

I nearly didn’t include this, but I thought itwas just too disgusting and outrageous to be leftout. Actually I’m lying, I just thought I shouldpretend to be outraged as a woman but it’s toofunny. However you should be ashamed ofyourself, but I know you’re not. This wasn’tgiven to me but my best friend’s hawk eyes saw itover a shoulder of a friend. Scandalous! Thepurpose of the text was to get the receiver to goout on the lash. And it worked as well. He leftthe party after about 15 minutes of getting thistext. Must have been the promise of all thatgash!

Ha I don’t know if this will be funny to you butmy spell check wanted to change that lastsentence to the promise of that entire gash.

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Love you you big fucking tit xxxx

Rule 69 in Male to Male conduct:A declaration of love between two heterosexualmen must always coincide with a derogatory termof phrase, in order to reaffirm masculinity.

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These are the two boys from page 27 and have gotinto the habit of going for a shit at the sametime as each other. Presumably these are sent

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from the toilet seat. Despite the disgustingimages that these conjure, I can’t help butapplaud their writing skills.

Despite not commencing nor coinciding theirdeparture from the same starting line, I feelthat both of our deposits will soon meet on theirtravels, as the forceful and viscous waters fromcolon to sea batter and bruise the multiplecompanions as the quest for the retrieval of thegolden duck begins…Reply…

Yet again, like the brave warriors of old, jackand ben combine colonic forces in the ongoing warwith the armitage shanks warlords. While previousbattles have been fought, won and lost, the warcontinues. However, tonight spells the end towater closet domination as a combined arsenal ofjerk chicken and the sweetcorn holocaust isunleashed upon white fortresses. Goodbye noblesoldier.

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Where the hell did you go? Come back I feel nakedwithout you.

You see boys do love as deeply as we do; it’sjust that they’re shallow bastards when it comesto us.

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I like this message because it’s really honestand straight forward. There’s no pretence orego. It’s nice to see to such unabashed lovebetween two boys. It’s lovely!

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-Hey buddy how r u?whats happening in ur life?Dont hear from u anymore.Why? please stay intouch manny miss u here bro. Email me orsomething.Hope 2hear frm u soon

...everyone's doing it

‘Cool, me and Daniel can watch porn and shag in the front room now’.

Whether it’s to plan our love life, skive off work or say those things that we just can’t say face to face, we’re all doing it. Texting has become a way of life for us all, with millions of texts being sent each day. Writer and text enthusiast, Beob has got her hands on some of the nations best texts, ranging from up-close and personal to the down-right dirty, and all compiled in a book for your enjoyment.

Textual Intercourse is a celebration of all things text and aims to get to the bottom of what we are so thumb-happy about. Beob also touches on text politics, divulging her embarrassing text-dating tales, giving her opinion on bunny-boiler texters and admitting the real reason for writing the book; an excuse to snoop through her boyfriend’s inbox.

Whether you’re young or old this fascinating insight into the nation's inbox, will have you hooked and will make you look at your own inbox in a whole new light.

www.textualintercourse.co.uk

textual intercourse