I am an unapologetic eavesdropper

Reflecting on the best stories I’ve overheard

Perhaps you’ll find this appalling, but for as long as I can remember, eavesdropping has been a favourite hobby of mine. I have a treasure trove of stolen stories. They’ve been collected mostly while I’ve been sitting alone in cafes and bars, surreptitiously listening to the people around me.

I’ve heard strangers talk about their cheating. Their finances. Their work dramas. I was riveted once, listening to a well-dressed woman talk about the time she ran an escort service. The most popular woman on her books? By far it was the lady with a husband and grandkids who was in her late 60s.

“Barely had a night off!” she said loudly. It was 10am and the cafe was filled with people working silently on their computers. Perhaps that was the point. I think some people want to be heard. I was a captivated audience.

That woman’s story was interesting. Sometimes they’re funny or illuminating. If you’re lucky you might get both.

Me in a Vietnam cafe, probably listening to that couple in the corner.

One time, while I was at a beer garden in Melbourne, I listened to a defeated-looking man describe his night to someone on the phone. I ascertained, before the conversation got juicy, that he was from Sydney. He was well-dressed, wearing a dark pair of sunglasses and holding a schooner of beer.

“I got so drunk last night, I ended up at the Casino,” he said to the phone.

“They must have kicked me out or something, I can’t remember. But I think I got a cab home and a kebab at some point. Anyway, I got back at the hotel, right? But it’s not really a hotel. It’s more like one of those serviced apartments, you know what I mean? One that doesn’t have a reception desk.”

He paused while the friend replied.

“Yeah, so I get into my room at some point and fall asleep. But the next thing I know, I’m in the hallway, in just my undies and a t-shirt.”

He took a long sip beer while the friend asked the obvious question.

“I don’t bloody know what I was doing. Maybe I got confused with which door went to the toilet? I told ya, I can’t remember a thing. So I’m now locked out of my room and can’t get back in. You know Mick’s staying in the same place as me, right? Well, I try and find his room, but I get lost. Then guess what?”

His friend guesses.

“Nup. I get so lost that I end up outside the building somehow. No, seriously. I’m outside, next to the fuckin’ Aldi in my underpants.”

He takes another long drink of beer while his friend replies.

“Fuckin’ oath it was cold last night. I was freezing. I had no shoes on, mate. I honestly started to get worried that my nuts would freeze off. But this place is next to a busy road, right? So I’m trying to flag down cars. Finally, thank God, some security guard on his way to work sees me. He pulls over, thinking that I’ve been mugged or something. Anyway, this bloke lends me his phone, and I call the after hours emergency number on the door.”

“They buzz me into the lobby, and I have to wait for another hour before someone comes in with a key. I’ve barely slept, I’ve got the worst headache. My credit card is gone. I think my license as well. But that’s not even the worst thing, mate.”

He finishes the rest of the beer in one big glug.

“That house I was going to buy? The redbrick with the zoning stuff? I got gazumped, mate. No, seriously. They took a better offer, it went over my $2 million”.

I hoped whoever found his credit card took it for a bit of a spin before he had blocked it. He clearly needed another lesson on moderation.

Intellectually, I know there’s money in Australia. Absurd, stomach-churning wealth. But it’s one thing to know a fact, another to see the shape of it in person. I may not be a rich woman, but I do live in Sydney’s ritzy Eastern Suburbs. This occasionally makes for entertaining conversations – big money makes for big dramas.

But more frequently it makes for dross.

Another time, another cafe – I’m sitting at a table in Bondi listening to two young women in front of me. Their chatter is predictably inane (is anyone really interesting before the age of 25…?). It feels like I’m on a road trip, listening to a radio station going in and out of reception. But my ears perk up at the mention of a car crash.

“...she almost wrecked my car. For real.”

“Oh my God how?”

“She hit a pole. I swear she shouldn’t have a license. Hashtag seriously.”

At the unironic use of the word ‘hashtag’ in a real human conversation, my will to live is ejected out of my body like one of those prank peanut tins filled with snakes. I made an effort to stay conscious.

She continued.

“Her dad is going to pay for it, though. My dad tried to pay, but he insisted.”

“Like fighting over who will tap the credit card first, right?”

“Yah, exactly,” she said with a laugh. “But he was going to get me a new car anyway.”

“The Range Rover?”

“A Porsche,” she replied with a slight hair flick. “Hashtag winning.”

I drank the rest of my scalding coffee in one painful go and left.

But that’s the conversational flavour of the east. It’s all money, houses, health, and fitness. The outer trappings of a person, but not an inch deeper. It’s amusing for a while, but eventually it gets old.

Any good diet requires variety. In this regard, the inner west has much to offer. Another time I sit in a cafe next to a fruit shop in Glebe. A large elderly woman with permed hair, wearing a shapeless t-shirt over an ankle-length shapeless skirt, has a conversation with her arthritic Jack Russell.

“Come one Toby!” She says. The dog stops its hobbling for a moment, and looks up at her quizzically.

“We’re going to buy a box of mangoes for that nice man who pulled you out of the harbour!”

I know animals can’t understand the complexities of human language. And yet. I got the sense, somehow, that dog was embarrassed.

But what a perfectly complete story that sentence told. I was able to clearly picture the unfolding drama – the dog waddling off a pier, the older woman distraught and unable to reach him. But then a hero arrived, and somehow fished the dog out of the water. The mangoes seemed an odd reward. But also why not a box of mangoes? There is no etiquette guide for such a situation.

I enjoyed that snippet so much, I immediately wrote in my little notebook. It’s easy to steal stories, but just as easy to lose them if they’re not written down. Just like that, I commit another silent, invisible intrusion on a stranger’s day.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

But if those famous words by Shakespere are true, surely I am absolved of some guilt? If all the world’s a stage, then we are all part of the same performance. And what is the point of a theatre if there is no audience to enjoy the show?

Ordinary life, I think, offers the best entertainment. But only if you pay attention.