"Do u like cock?” There it was, in LCD letters on my phone. I knew what the answer was straight away – but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to give it right now…

Half an hour earlier, a stranger had accidentally sent me a message and we’d got chatting. Like most people I have my faults – not very many, of course, but a few – and one of them is that I talk too much.
I’ll chat to anybody, any time. Even in my sleep. So given my incessant desire to communicate, chatting away to an unknown bloke potentially seemed like a more amusing way to spend an evening than watching re-runs of Friends. It was all very polite, until he established that I was female. Then he hit me with the big one, so to speak. As I pondered how best to respond, or if I should respond, the phone beeped again. “Do u wanna have fone sex?” No beating around the bush with this fellow, then. I was a bit taken aback – but also intrigued.
Human beings, being horny creatures, will find a way to bring sex into everything. Erotic writing followed swiftly on the heels of the printing press. About three minutes after the invention of the camera someone must have realised that it could be used for something more stimulating than portraits of ugly politicians and family snaps. And so it was.
Phone sex is big business, and the Internet has given us adult chat rooms, cyber sex, real time live sex and access to thousands of movies. Great though the Internet is, however, my favourite form of virtual sex would have to be the humble text message.
What’s so great about text sex? Well, the first thing to say is that like other forms of sex, it’s got to be between consenting adults. There was a furore during the last week about teenagers in Munster sending a ‘pornographic’ picture of a girl around by mobile – not a good idea and something that is to be avoided.
But if you’re an adult and know what you’re up to, it’s got a sexy dynamic all its own. It’s discreet and hassle-free so you can do it anywhere. Except the cinema, of course, that’s just rude. But you can text away with virtual impunity at work, out with friends, or even during Sunday dinner. It can seem like bad manners to text in company, so keep your replies short and sweet, and try not to give the game away.
I was having dinner with a friend last week when I received the following text: “I want to lick you all over.” Confronted by such an offer, it’s hard to look as if you’ve just received a friendly hello from your mother. However, when my mobile beeped again I had my poker face prepared and dashed off a response, claiming it was my boss. Thank goodness for predictive text, the saviour of few-fingered typists. The dictionaries tend to be fairly coy, but luckily, like men, they respond well to instruction.
Another great advantage of text sex is that distance is no barrier. You can spend the evening gorging yourself on curry and beer and still be a sexual dynamo. No scrub up, shaving, flossing, brushing or deodorising required – now that’s casual sex!
Cruelly separated by immigration laws, my ex had to leave Ireland a few months ago, and we kept in touch mostly through texting. The messages would get progressively steamier until we were both really worked up. Once he suggested a masturbation race. I have a really competitive streak so this thoroughly appealed to me. It was great fun, but damn it! I could never win.
It is said that women respond to verbal stimulation and men to pictures. I have my doubts about that. I never met a girl who fancied the pants off the Booker prizewinner, but Brad Pitt has the ability to make women of all ages go weak at the knees. However, camera phones ensure that there’s something for everyone. I send you a picture of some part of my body. You respond telling me all the nice and nasty things you’ll do to it.
Alternatively, you can do a virtual striptease. Take a series of pictures of yourself getting undressed. Just make sure you don’t send them to the wrong number, and that the recipient is trustworthy enough not to share them with friends. It’s generally best to keep the pictures suggestive rather than explicit – full frontals should be approached with extreme caution. Blokes should take note that girls tend to share everything with their friends. The last thing any self-respecting guy wants is a gaggle of girls giggling over a picture of their proud manhood.
Successful text sex is like successful flirting. Start off fairly innocently and progress slowly. This is where my mysterious stranger went wrong. Had he started by asking me what I was wearing, things could have been very different. Of course I would have lied. Warm fleecy pyjamas may be very cosy during these long, cold nights but they’re not the stuff of fantasy. His full-on message was the text sex equivalent of walking up to a stranger with a “Hello, wanna shag?” Definitely not the best approach – or not for me at any rate!
He texted me again the next day, just to chat. I couldn’t get any information out of him regarding what music he liked, or anything else that might have given me a sense of who or what I was dealing with – so I decided he was either an ageing Lothario or the most boring person in the world. Instead of having text sex with him, I sent a message to my ex. Sometimes it’s better the devil you know.