Famous Male Writers Text
“U Up?”

Raymond Chandler

Right about this time of night, there are two kinds of girls in this town. The good ones asleep in their beds, and the bad ones who are up and looking for trouble. If you’re reading this message, I don’t have to tell you which kind you are. Me, I’m a private dick. Skirts hurl themselves at my undercarriage like rotten tomatoes at a terrible comedian. Rotten tomatoes with really, really swell legs. Well, it must be your lucky night because this dick is one lanky tomato shy of a margherita pizza.

J. D. Salinger

If you really wanna hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is if I’m still living in my parents’ basement, and why I’m bothering you at this hour, and if I’ve gotten any better at sex since the last time, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. Where I want to start telling is the part where I ask if you’re up.

Cormac McCarthy

The man lay shivering in his bed with no headboard in the dark and the cold of the night. He had had to part ways with his sheets after the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos incident. He thought of the woman with her woman’s body and wondered whether she would allow him to enter her before the terrible chill he felt in his bones overtook him. He hoped the woman would be compelled by his narrating his own tragic journey in the third person. In the morning he’d rise before first light and search the blasted-out streets for more Hot Cheetos.

Pablo Neruda

I do not text u as if u were my girlfriend, or wife,
Or any person I’d shower with carnations.

I text u, as certain dank girls are to be texted,
In secret, between the PBRs and boat metaphors.

I text u without knowing how, or when, or from where this impulse came.
I text u straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I text u because I know no other way

To ask: if u are up.

Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight stormy, I shall text you, bored
and horny,
Some lewd emojis (eggplant, peach, and droplets), which I know you
adore—

Are you nodding, are you napping? Your derriere, it needs
a tapping.
Soon I shall be gently rapping, rapping at your bedroom
door.
Might I for five minutes thrust, then leave you with
unsated lust?
Only this and nothing more.

Dr. Seuss

Would you, could you, come to Queens?
Would you, since you have the means?

I will not call you on the phone.
I’ll only text, so we can bone!
I do not want to date you, ma’am.
My jam is more like “WHAM!” and “BAM!”

E. E. Cummings

he
y

u : ? u & m
Y
d)

stars rain sun moon

(up?)

Samuel Beckett

ME: U up?
(coyly) Will you send me a pic?
(desperately) It’s the normal thing to do.
I’m waiting for you to text back.
(testily) One can bide one’s time.

YOU: [Read at 3:12 a.m.]

ME: Wait!
(He rummages in the pockets of his cargo shorts, trying to locate the phone. He realizes he is sitting on it.)
(triumphantly) There’s a read receipt.
Are you going to respond?
(After prolonged reflection) What was your name again?

Haruki Murakami

u up? nvm a nubile girl just manifested while i was lost in solipsistic reverie lol

David Foster Wallace

The paradox of the “u up?” text¹ is that its nonchalance is belabored. Any writer of the message must go out of his way to override autocorrect,² meticulously punch in the letter “U,” and un-capitalize it. This “u” boils, simmers, and ultimately reduces the receiver of the text from a sympathetic subject down to a concentrated, syrupy single letter, thereby inoculating the sender from any sense of vulnerability he may have risked in the pinging of his tersely lascivious request (but in so doing, sacrifices all hope of human connection). Even “up?” itself is sufficiently slippery and cannot be pinned down, with implications ranging from the quotidian “awake” to the risque “DTF.” ³ It’s enough to give anyone a case of the howling fantods.⁴

E. E. Cummings (again)

Wow, I just looked at my phone and saw how incoherent I was last night. I have no idea what I even meant to say. Apologies for the inebriated missive! Anyway, what are you up to now?

⁴ So, u up?