You’re on my wavelength
The other night I was reunited with an old friend I’d never met.
“Glen, this is Colleen.” We exchanged polite hellos over the loud music of the party.
“I think I know you,” I said. She looked at me quizzically.
“Um, I don’t think I’ve met you before,” she said.
“I know,” I replied. “You haven’t. Tell me, did you once have a roommate called Gina?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. Now I knew for sure who she was. I gave her a huge smile and rubbed my hands together in depraved glee, for I was about to make one of the most ridiculous first impressions in the history of Western civilization.
“You might find this hard to believe, but last year you lived in the apartment next to mine,” I said. “And the thing is, your wireless phone was on the same frequency as mine. So I, uh, listened in on your calls.”
She gaped. “Really?!”
“Yup!” I said proudly. And I told her my sordid tale.
* * *
One day, over a year before, I noticed two attractive young women moving in next door. I had seen them around campus, but I had never met them. Nor would I meet them. But nonetheless, I would soon get to know them very well.
Shortly after their arrival, I kicked back with my wireless phone for a review of Vancouver’s finest kinky telepersonals. Suddenly the line crackled and strange, distorted voices could be heard in the background. Intrigued, I fiddled with my phone. The telepersonals vanished and the voices became crystal clear. They were two young women, talking excitedly about the romantic interests of their friends.
“Hello?” I said. “Hello?” But they couldn’t hear me, and went on trading amusing stories about being hit on by guys they didn’t like. With a rush of almost indescribable delight, I realized that my wireless phone was somehow listening in on the wireless phone of the women next door—and they had no idea I was doing it!
Now, I’d known for years that I am a shameless voyeur. Well, it turns out that I am a shameless ecouteur as well—one who derives illicit gratification from clandestine listening. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I exploited my new spy-toy to its fullest.
Of course, the main reason I listened was to hear explicit details of their sex lives. I wanted hot nasty girl talk—real girl talk, the kind shared by authentic, unpaid, non-acting young women under conditions of absolute privacy.
But tragically, it never came. Of the untold hours of mind-stultifying schlock I sat through, the best I got was the occasional “nudge-nudge wink-wink” conversation, the gist of which was that someone was going to get some hot lovin’ tonight. No dicks or clits. It was deeply frustrating.
Sometimes, after listening to ten minutes of drivel about the snow conditions on a local ski mountain, I would lose patience and bark into my mute mouthpiece, hoping they would psychically hear my plea: “Shut up about snowboarding and talk about group anal bondage! Or monster dildo penetrations! Dammit, this isn’t worth my time!”
It was precisely this disillusionment that led me to a vivid realization of how starkly boring people truly are, even attractive young women. Trust me, the truth about other people’s private phone conversations is that they are intensely uninteresting. And the range of meaningless subjects that people will have pointless conversations about is as limitless as the universe itself. I only kept listening for the sole reason that I am a freak.
But I digress. As it turned out, my life as an ecouteur was short-lived. After only a few weeks of listening pleasure, my phone lost its magic. Perhaps Colleen and Gina moved their base antenna to a more distant room, or perhaps they replaced their phone. For whatever reason, one day their voices were gone, and I never heard them again. The lives of Colleen and Gina were once again shrouded in mystery. My eavesdropping was at an end.
* * *
So there we were, Colleen and I, face to face at a party over a year later. She took my confession well. In fact, she was strangely thrilled about it, and proudly announced my crime to everyone at the party.
She asked me what I could remember overhearing. I said I could recall a conversation about going to the university pub and exploiting younger men for free drinks. A woman in the room jumped to her feet. “That was me!” she shouted triumphantly.
The atmosphere became festive. I wracked my brain for things I’d overheard a year before, and we tried to match them to people in the room. As it turned out, several of the people I’d overheard were at the party, and they were all honoured to have played a part in the perverse opera of my obsessions.
At one point I turned to Colleen in reproach. “You know, I really must condemn you for not talking about sex on the phone.”
She blinked at me in surprise. “Really?” she replied. “I can’t believe you said that! Dude, you totally missed out. I have one friend, and holy shit, we talk about everything.”
“Damn you!” I shouted. I don’t think she was winding me up. Somehow, I just missed those calls. But even if I had heard something compromising, there would have been no hard feelings.
Colleen freely admitted that if our situation were reversed, she would have eavesdropped on me in a heartbeat. And why not? Dear reader, I’m sure you’d do it too if you had the chance. Don’t insult us both by denying it, you hypocritical bastard!
And you might be getting your chance sooner than you think, because it turns out that wireless phone eavesdropping is actually very common. Wireless phones transmit on very few frequencies and their signals usually carry beyond the walls of your home, so if you live in an area of high population density, such as an apartment building, the probability of your wireless phone sharing wavelength with a neighbour’s is fairly significant.
Worse, there is nothing stopping naughty folk from buying a simple receiver, enabling them to monitor any frequencies they wish. Indeed, by accident or design, every one of you with a wireless phone may have an eavesdropper as well.
It heartens me to know that right now in this very city, there are possibly thousands of people enjoying the blessing I once had—the ability to secretly listen in on the phone calls of their neighbours. And it is even more heartening to know that thousands more enjoy the blessing Colleen and Gina had—the sense of security that comes from falsely believing one’s wireless phone is private.
So for the sake of me and all the other ecouteurs out there, please keep using those wireless phones! There’s still so much about you I don’t know.... •
Originally published in The Peak, June 5 2000.
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