Story about this misheard lyric by: James Noonan: I always knew that this song had censorship issues when originally released due to the "ass" reference, but I thought it must have been even dirtier than a the simple word itself. For many years all I ever heard was "beep in the ass" (which fits better rhythmically) and assumed that they cleaned it up before the official release by having Debbie Harry vocalise a self-censoring "beep" to get past the censor and also as a subtle suggestion that one of the main reasons of the relationship breakup was because he wanted to put his "beep" in her ass and that was the straw that broke the camel's back (as it were). A couple of years ago I decided to look up the lyrics because my own presumed explanation seemed to ridiculous even to me and found that my misheard "beep in" was "be a pain in", which I confirmed by listening to the song again. I still like my own story better for the specific reasons I assumed rather than a generic metaphor about being slightly irritated, but maybe that's because I would have loved to have been Debbie Harry's inspiration for writing the song. As far as I'm concerned it would have been better for myself to have loved and lost than to never have been a pain in Debbie Harry's butt (literally or metaphorically).