Tag: Eavesdrop Followup

Posted on

Eavesdrop Follow Up, by Ray S

At lunch the other day I was concentrating on my ham on rye when I couldn’t avoid overhearing two men on the adjoining bar stools. Maybe their two-martini lunches encouraged their animated conversation when one exclaimed to the other, “But I don’t understand, how after all these years she could do that to Harry? What about the business? What about the children?”

His friend responded, “She’s been that way all her life—so they say.” I wonder who ‘they’ were and why Harry didn’t have a clue.

“Guess not, be damned if the two of them aren’t friendly with each other, all three of them, that is.”

The next response was something like: “Look, you ought to know. You’re married. Women are so flighty and unpredictable, like lovey dovey and then ‘Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,’ or ‘We did it last Wednesday.’”

I’ve got experience, what with a wife and two daughters. I can’t figure them out. So I just grin and bear it. The other guy followed with something like, “I’d throw the bitch out—after marriage counseling. Ha!”

By this time the ham on rye was finished and so was I. I felt like an intruder, unwanted guest, and personally imposed upon by their noise. I picked up my check and headed for the cashier, and back to the office. Somehow the experience at lunch hung over my thoughts all afternoon—so much so that that evening I called a longtime friend who is a counselor at the GLBT Center here in town. She and her partner were the first lesbians I ever met and a real eye opening pleasure for a straight man.

We talked for quite awhile. The over-heard story at lunch time made me wonder too about their question—idle curiosity I guess, because when I met Nel and Liz I simply accepted them as another new couple of acquaintances to add to my list of good friends.

Nel was quite open in her reply—after she regained her composure from smiling knowingly and a controlled laugh. “Jim,” she replied, “It isn’t that complicated, just a lifetime of misguided, badly twisted, confusing thoughts about who you really are. And that condition isn’t exclusively homosexual information. From our previous talks about you and Doris, it is something that comes early or sometimes late in life. It’s the relationship between two people who have discovered how much they mean to each other, not how much they need each other. Being needy isn’t being in love, so perhaps the woman who was the subject of your accidental eavesdropping had that epiphany and started to live honestly and authentically with her new wife.”

“Nel, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and with that same heart wish that your thoughts could penetrate the alcohol hanging over those two guys’ heads. And maybe filter through to their unfortunate wives.”

Next time I’ll pass on lunch at the bar. Think I’ll take Doris to lunch. The company will be superior, and I’ll be with my most-loved one.

© 18 July 2016

Posted on

Eavesdrop Followup, by Ricky

When my family and I were living in Great Falls, Montana last century, our house had a nice privacy fence around the back yard. On the south side of the house there was shed about 4 ½ feet wide and 5 feet long that fit between the fence and the side of the house. The shed was attached to the house and the fence. The center of the roof was located about 6-inches below and directly under my bedroom window.

The house next door was about 5-feet south of the fence. Their backyard had one sturdy tree in the middle with a decent “tree house” built in the forks of the branches. Among other treasures, the house also contained a family as one would expect. Besides the two parents, two boys lived there. One boy was 8-years old and fighting a battle with leukemia. The other boy was 12-years old at the time of the event I am recounting.

We moved into our house in the month of June when school was out in the city. The two boys came over almost instantly as we were unloading the rental truck. After introductions, the older of the two politely asked if he, his brother, and occasional friends could still sit on the roof of our shed. The boys were in the habit of periodically sitting on the shed’s roof to talk whenever they did not want to go in the tree-house. The previous owners of the house we were moving into had given them permission. I went with them to inspect the shed and found it very sturdy and stout enough to hold several adults let alone two or three or four boys. So, I also gave permission. I also cautioned them to be careful climbing up to the shed and jumping down.

One day, I had come home from working a midnight shift and opened the window located above the bed’s headboard and directly centered on the shed’s roof. I opened the window about 2-inches so the room would have cool fresh air circulating while I slept. Deborah had taken our two children somewhere so I could sleep undisturbed before I needed to go to work again.

After 3-hours, I was awakened by the sound of two boys climbing the fence and sitting down on the roof.

“The time has come,” one boy said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

Such was the idle chatter of the two 12-year old boys. They finally ran out of things to talk about and just sat quietly for a bit. One of them said that he was bored and the other agreed and asked his friend what he wanted to do. There was no reply so the boy suggested that they go to the tree-house and “play with our dicks.” The first boy said that he didn’t feel like it. A few minutes later both boys left after deciding to go to the park.

I chose not to follow-up that bit of eavesdropping.

© 17 July 2016

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced. 

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Eavesdropping by Betsy

To eavesdrop means to deliberately listen in on words not meant for you to hear and to do it secretly. I cannot recall a time when this actually happened to me or a time when it was carried out by me. Plenty of times I have overheard things accidentally, things not necessarily meant for my ears, but things making no difference whether I heard them or not.

Plenty of times I’m sure people have accidentally overheard something I said, but words that did not affect them. Or likewise, I have overheard others’ conversations. For example, I recently heard a discussion coming from the next room. The follow-up was that I chose not to join that conversation. It was not interesting to me, or I simply was too tired to join in, or perhaps I was more interested in what I was doing at the time.
So I don’t have much to say about eavesdropping really. Eavesdropping follow-up is a different matter. To my way of thinking “eavesdropping follow-up” means gossip—pure and simple. What fascinates me about gossip is what drives people to do it.
It seems to me that people like to tell secretive things about other people’s private lives because it makes them feel superior to the people to whom they are gossiping. “I know something about so and so that no one else knows. That makes me better informed and smarter and more powerful than all y’all.” In my opinion that is what drives people to gossip.
This all may be sour grapes on my part because I am always and have always been “out of the loop” so to speak—the last one to know the latest gossip. Why is that, I ask? I guess it’s just because I’m not listening, not interested, or maybe I just have bad hearing. Anyway I seem to be hearing impaired when it comes to gossip. Often it’s about people I don’t even know, so who cares? If the gossip is about someone I know and care about, I usually already have the information.
As for eavesdropping, I honestly can’t imagine where I would be if I were secretly listening in on a conversation I was not supposed to hear. I would be too afraid I would get caught. I don’t think I’m very good at spying really. If I had a reason for getting information I ostensibly wasn’t supposed to have, I would ask for it and ask why I wan’t supposed to have it. But I know that would not ever happen because I would not be aware the information even existed.
I like to think that I can mind my own business and just “keep my nose clean” as they say.


© 17 July 16


About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.