The tourist

Ethan, Chrissy and Ruth were all appropriately dressed for the day, all sun protected and carrying expensive, lightweight day packs and water bottles as they moved along the hiking trail in a single file line. Bringing up the rear, Ethan was not a happy man. Several weeks ago he had almost talked Ruth, his current girlfriend, and Chrissy into having a three-way. Showing no small amount of guile, he instigated several key conversations about sexual relationships being porous and mailable. People should do what they want to do, insisted Eithan. After all, isn’t monogamy just some old fashion construct? Shackles. A definition of what physical intimacy should be like...imposed on us by society? Ethan really sold it. In his earnest appeal, he managed to make it all sound so reasonable. To increase his chances of success, he made sure to include the current buzzword 'polyamorous' whenever he could. Such an appealing word to the female ear: Poly sounding very much like a girl's name. Poly meaning many, as in there is something on offer for everyone at this new love buffet. And amorous? Forget it. Latin for love. Amour. That's poetry right there. Pablo Neruda. Lorca. The ladies lapped that shit up. The word projected a complete narrative. Poly, who represents females in general, is now being encouraged to explore all avenues of her sexual satisfaction. Viva la sexual revolution.

After much debate, Ethan fully expected to find himself in bed with these two women in the not too distant future. Ruth had come around, eventually, saying she would be open to the idea of experimentation. On one condition: having done all the groundwork, Ethan would need to leave Ruth and Chrissy alone to work out all the remaining details. So, although he didn't like it, Ethan would be forced to hand over all further negotiations to the two women. The women talked about the practicalities and emotional repercussions of exploring this new and exciting sexual dynamic. And the more they talked the less viable it all became. And Ethan's beautiful idea had fallen apart right in front of his eyes. The woman had talked themselves out of it. After all, they were friends and it was all too emotionally messy. Seriously: was it really worth putting their friendship at risk just to satisfy a man's desire for some silly pornographic fantasy? Ruth definitely had bisexual urges but not with Ethan breathing down her neck like some rabid dog. And not with her childhood friend.

Ethan made one last-ditch attempt, saying ladies, let's just concentrate on the physical mechanics of this situation. I say we must do ourselves the service of acknowledging these natural urges. The two women reacted with an incredulous lack of conviction and then Ruth had come back saying, alright then, Chrissy and I will have a go first, see if we like it. Yeah? How does that sound? No way, said Ethan, not without me at least in the same room. That would be akin to cheating. And that was it. Because Ethan had been caught out. All this talk of sexy polyamourous exploration went right out the window as soon as it didn't directly involve Ethan. The deal is off, said Ruth. You can get your jollies the old fashion way. Eyeballing hardcore pornography on a laptop.

Ethan was totally crestfallen. For fuck sake! He knew they should have acted while the idea was still exciting and fresh. Before they had a chance to second-guess themselves. With every bloody conversation, they had moved further and further away from this three-way becoming a reality. It was tragic. These negotiations had taken up weeks of Ethan's time. All for nothing. As things stood, they had all been demoted back to friends. How utterly devastating, thought Ethan as he watched the two women move ahead of him along the bush track.

The hike was a 10k loop. You get off at one train station, entered into the bush, walking along the track and then, 10 kilometres later, you would loop back, though the national park, arriving at the train station one stop down the line. Forty minutes after setting off, they stopped at the waterhole to rest. At this time of year, the water was too stilled, too murky to have a swim. Clouds of nats hung in the air. They sat on flat sections of large, overlapping stones surrounding by cascading bushland. From the surrounding mass of gum trees and spiky shrubs emanated a steady drone of insect noise. They sat in silence. Ethan was still consumed with how close he'd come to the golden chalice of the three-way when a man came down the trail and appeared on the edge of the waterhole. He was a middle-aged Asian tourist. He was dressed in grey and white schemed leisure clothing and lightweight shoes. He wore no hat. He looked far more suited for a day on the golf course. Although Ethan was absorbed with his own inner turmoil, and therefore only paying minimal attention, it did strike him as odd that this man was alone and so ill-equipped for the hike. The tourist paused for a moment, looked around and then continued along the path. One of the girls may have looked up at him and smiled but this detail was lost in a haze of unreliable recollections. The next time Ethan looked back, shielding his eyes from the sun glare, the tourist was gone. Ethan took another gulp of his water and returned his attention longingly to the scene directly in front of where he sat. The girls. One of the girls was down by the water, eating a tangerine, stacking the sections of peel carefully on the rock. The other was laying flat on her back, in the shade, swatting something away from her face. It might have been fatigue or wishful thinking, or a combination of both, but Ethan's mind began to get woozy with lazy erotic possibilities. Images of maidens shedding their clothing and sensually bathing each other in the waterhole overtook him for a time. Perhaps because of the setting, these fantasies assumed a corny ladies-in-the-lake pornographic theme with Ethan's swollen member as an obvious stand-in for Excalibur. Ethan had no special affinity for this kind of sword and sandals foolishness. He could care less about the latest season of Games of Thrones. Yet here he was, dreaming up sexy scenarios which centred around mythological humping in broad daylight. Why couldn't this happen in real life? It was so unfair. Eventually, Ethan's hot little fever dream was interrupted by the obtrusive reality of their situation. Ruth was calling him, Ethan. Ethan! ETHAN!
What? he replied.
We should get going. We still have a fair way to go. Are you coming?
Okay, okay, said Ethan. Considering he was still brandishing Excaliber beneath his beltline, this was going to prove easier said than done.

Ethan, Chrissy and Ruth resumed their hike. They were in no particular rush. They had hiked this trail a few time before so they basically knew what to expect. Sometimes the girls would stop and examine things along the way. The spiky head of a Xanthorrhoea. A particularly gnarled and beautiful ghost gum. The trail wound on through the bush, cutting through rocky gullies, across more sections of tabletop rock, occasionally breaking out into clearings which afforded views of the city in the far distance. The topography was consistently flat so these vistas were not exactly breathtaking, more a reminder that the city was never too far away. The main point of the hike was the 10-kilometre effort. Determined black flies zoned in on them like angry fighter pilots, seeking out the moisture in their eyes, mouth and ears. Occasionally a lizard would scurry across the trail, spooked by their approach.
Sometime later they came across a digital camera laying in the dirt. A nifty little piece of technology with a retractable telephoto lens. The sort of equipment that would appeal to someone who had photographic aspirations beyond the point-and-shoot capabilities of their iPhone. Ethan picked it up, brushed it off and turned the camera over in his hands. It was simple enough to figure out. He pressed the button that activating the display screen on the back of the device. The little machine chimed and the screen lit up revealing an image of some trees. Flick back and there were more images of Sydney. It was Chrissy who suggested the camera most likely belonged to the Asian tourist who had passed them back at the waterhole. They had seen no one else on the trail that morning.

Ethan, Chrissy and Ruth pushed on. They assumed that they would catch up with the tourist shading himself under a tree or that he would return this way having discovered his camera was missing. Think about it now, it occurred to Ethan that the tourist didn't even have a water bottle. Ethan held the camera in his hand, expecting this encounter to happen within ten or fifteen minutes. They plodded on and eventually, Ethan put the little camera in his daypack. The women talked on, about the tourist, recalling that he really hadn't been dressed for such an arduous hike. Maybe, they speculated, he was unaware that the trail was 10 kilometres in length. He might have mistakenly thought this was more of a sedate walking track with regular bathroom facilities along the way. Maybe even a kiosk where one could purchase a cup of coffee. This was not the case. This trail needed to be taken seriously. Things could go wrong. Ethan was only catching snatches of this conversation. Even though he couldn't quite hear what the women were saying word-for-word, he understood the gist. Once again it occurred to Ethan that the tourist had been alone. Which was sort of strange. Ethan wouldn't want to generalise but come on....usually, tourists from Japan or China travelled in packs. Typically you would see them at the Opera house or at Bondi Beach being shepherded around by some company who specifically catering to their needs.

The trail snaked on through increasing rugged terrain, the last three or four kilometres becoming an uphill slog between dusty boulders and dried out branches that snagged and pulling at their clothes. They crossed a dried waterfall. The ground hummed with its own baked in heat. Later on, they passed the blackened ring of an old, extinguished fire pit. This was a sanctioned camping site. In the ashes, there were a few tin cans and beers bottles. With only a few warm gulps of water left, Ethan made a mental note to ration out the rest of his supply. He would probably grab a cold beverage from the vending machine on the train platform. The women were now chatting about various people they knew. About holidays. Places they wanted to go. Vietnam. Cambodia. Suddenly the trail ended and they came out of the scraggy drag of the bushland and onto a section of well-maintained gravel road. They had basically reached the end. They crossed several small, linked paddocks and arrived at the train platform: civilization appearing out of the spiky heat haze in the form of safety messages, corrugated tin roofing and train tracks. The well hammered vending machine swallowed Ethan's coins and spat out a cold drink. He'd been thinking about the healthy option, ie water, but fuck it. He decided he needed some sugar. The women had lulled into a silence and had slumped onto a bench to cool down and examine their phones now that cellular coverage had been reestablished. Ruth wandered over to swipe some of his drink. I'll buy you one, he said. I don't want a whole one, she replied. Yeah, but I do, he thought. He had completely forgotten about the camera in his bag.

Later on, Ethan was waiting for his coffee at his local cafe and he happened to flip open a newspaper, something he never ordinarily did. There was usual detritus of celebrity gossip, suburban hoon antics and dumbed down political coverage. In that order of importance. Even the international stories had a fairly provincial spin so as to establish relevance for the paper's national audience. Ethan was leafing through this happy bullshit when something familiar popped out. Later on, it would occur to Ethan that people get lost in all kinds of ways. In the media. In real life. On bush trails. They point is, they get funnelled down into obscurity. They drop off the face of the earth and no one knows where they end up. Sometimes you might catch one last glimpse of these souls just before they slip under. Sometimes not. On page 7 Ethan saw the tiniest of stories about a Japanese businessman who had disappeared last weekend. Apparently, this guy was a big deal back home in Japan. The head of a global tech company. Japan's answer to Mark Zuckerberg. The NSW authorities were just now scaling down their unsuccessful search. They had scoured the bushland south of Sydney on foot, on all-terrain vehicles and in helicopters, searching the locations where he'd last been seen. Nothing. Not a trace. Ethan took his coffee and reread the article. Instantly, Ethan felt in some minor way responsible for the man's disappearance. Or at least for impeding his rescue. The camera. The camera had been totally forgotten about and had remained at bottom of Ethan's backpack since last weekend. Seven whole days, for godsakes. They could have, should have, done something at the time but how were they to know? Thinking back now, the camera might have marked the spot where the tourist had wandered off the trail. Maybe. One thing was for certain: the trail was not clearly marked out in places and if you weren't familiar with the area, you could easily wander off in the bush and get lost. After getting his coffee, Ethan returned to his apartment and dug out the camera. What had he been thinking? He'd his head so far up his own ass that day he'd forgotten all about it. He turned the camera on and began flicking through the images, this time being more thorough, going back to the start of the memory card. And, as he scrawled back, the strobing images made a crudely animated movie chronicling events in reverse order.

37. An unintentional image. The tourist's squashed shadow on the dirt hiking trail. There seems little reason to take a photograph of this section of ground other than to capture his own shadow. It could be anywhere in the world.

36. The Waterhole. Ethan, Ruth and Chrissy reclining in the shade around the edge of the murky pool. Sunlight pricing through the surrounding tree cover. Ethan is caught in mid-motion, turning towards the camera. At that moment, Ethan has just become aware of the Tourist's presence and is pivoting around, shading his eyes from the sun, trying to see who is behind him. The women are positioned as Ethan remembers them. Although crisp in terms of focus, the shot looks off centre indicating it was hastily taken. In all likelihood, this is because the tourist is aware he was being voyeuristic.

35. Trees on the trail. Ghost gums against the blue sky.

34. The sign at the head of the hiking trail. Tourist information about the loop and the protected status of the flora and fauna in the area.

33. A monstrous lobster on a white plate. Claws limp, multiple legs dangling, dead eyes on stems. Metal devices for digging out the cooked flesh set up on the table next to the plate.

32. The tourist in a group shot. Men of different nationalities in a restaurant. Large fish swim in a huge, bubbling tank in the background, fins and claws scraping against the glass. The men sit around a large white-clothed table. They all face the camera, waiting for the photographer, who might be a waiter, to finish taking the shot. They all wear clip-on name tags. The sort you might see at a convention. Beers bottles and clean cutlery await.

31. The tourist in the bland, oversized interior of a convention hall, attendees and staff in the background. Tables and booths. The tourist is caught in front of his own camera, smiling little conviction, wearing a name tag that says, 光暖.

30. Similar to the previous image: people milling about at the same conference. This time the tourist is not in view.

29. Similar to the previous image: people milling about the same conference.

28. Bondi Beach. Distant waves tumbling into shore. The Pavillion. Tourists and locals on bikes and on foot. People walking through the shot carrying surfboards. Flags snapping in the breeze. Sun.

27. Similar to the previous image: Bondi Beach.

26. A view from the top of a hop on-hop off tourist bus. Shops along the side of a busy road. People. Cars. Advertising.

25. The tourist in downtown Sydney. Buildings thrusting upwards into the sky, the exaggerated perspective caused by the angle and the camera's slightly fisheye optics.

24. A plane window. A downwards, compressed view of clouds, the plane's wing, the engine housing, as the plane descending into Sydney to land, flying over The Harbour Bridge. The harbour water a swath of dark blue, scored by the wake of an occasional boat or ferry.

23. Similar to the previous image: The plane landing, the ground getting closer.

22. A young woman in a sexually provocative position on a hotel bed. The tourist is engaged in a sexual act with this woman while operating the camera at arm's length. His body is elongated and unnaturally stretched by the camera's optics. Their bodies are both bleached by the harsh flash.

21. Similar to the previous image: more explicit, slightly different angle.

20. Similar to the previous image: more explicit, different angle.

19. The young woman in a restaurant, the table cluttered with beer bottles and plates. She is checking her phone which is sheathed in a plastic, bejewelled phone cover. She looks irritated.
18. The young woman standing on a cracked street corner, a marketplace in the background, dirty plastic yawning tethered to the side of a peeling building with mix-matching pieces of rope. Sunglasses conceal the young woman's eyes.

17. The young woman now laughing into the camera, not in a particularly friendly way, her teeth white, faint acne scars on her cheeks. She is sitting at a bar with a thatched roof, the tranquil blue of hotel resort pool in the background, surrounded by manicured landscaping, temple themed paving stones, a restaurant area spilling into the foreground. Staff. More tourists.

16. Similar image to the previous one, from a slightly different angle.

15. Similar image to the previous one, from a slightly different angle.

14. The young Filipino woman, looking quite beautiful, is naked on the clean white linin of the hotel bed. The starburst of the camera flash is caught in the black rectangle of the television screen. The woman looks hesitant, somewhat at uneasy at being photographed. A can of beer is evident on the nightstand. The woman wears luminescent contact lenses, an unnatural colour, perhaps only intended for the sake of fashion. The camera flash is reflected back in her lenses, making it seem as if white light is emanating out of her eye sockets. Her shoes, strap cork wedges, sit nearby on the tiled floor.

13. The ceiling of the hotel room (most likely an unintentional shot).

12. A white sand beach. The tourist sits by himself in a restaurant. A meal is spread out on the table in front of him. Several small lobsters or large prawns curled up on the plate in their pink-red shell. Garnish. The tourtist is now in front of the camera, smiling with grim determination, not making a particularly good show of it. Someone, a waiter perhaps or another guest at this resort, might have insisted on taking his photograph.

11. The same beach. A large sign made of cartoonish lettering reads welcome to El Nido, Philipines. White sand, rental umbrellas stretching off into the distance, roughly hewn deck chairs for hire. More tourists.

10. The same beach. Ragged palm trees and whimsical thatched buildings running along the distance curve of the beach. Tourists milling about, sunbathing, shopping and relaxing. People caught in middle step and mid-conversation. People drinking beer. Modified motorcycles with sidecars and muddy vans. Blue skies and equatorial sunlight smashing down on green limestone islands in the distance.

9. The bland decor features of the luxury seaside hotel suite with balcony. Flatscreen TV, minibar, decorative artwork, the corner of a bed. In the image, the tourist is caught partially reflected in the room's mirror, a black outline. His suitcase, complete with airline luggage tags, is on the bed indicating he has just arrived.

8. A seaport. Docks and Boats. Cranes in the background. A shed. People waiting. The ocean. Other people loading backpacks and luggage into a boat.

7. Passing landscape: vibrant green fields and telecommunication towers. Shot through a minivan window.

6. The tourist is in what looks like a tropical, third world city. This image was taken from a hotel balcony. Below an insane amount of traffic moves past on a mammoth causeway which crosses countless smaller streets. Each one of these streets is a universe unto itself with makeshift business, food stalls, people in doorways, plastic furniture, welding torches, open sewers, disassembled automobiles, roosters in cages, piles of garbage, exposed wiring, construction...etc.

5. A busy street in the same country. Broken pavements, lush vegetation creeping in through the cracks and hairy clusters of cable infrastructure and unfinished concrete construction. A city built a neck-break speed and without the money required to finished off the rough edges.

4. The interior of a plane, rows of seat backs receding off into the distance, bunching up in the nose of the craft. The back of other passenger's heads. Movies playing on tiny screens. Finding Nimo. Superheros. Romantic comedies.

3. The Japanese tourist with a woman and a little girl in a domestic setting. An apartment with quite a plush interior. Lots of glass and quality furnishings and expensive looking paintings. Obviously, the man would have been quite wealthy to afford something with this much square meterage in a major Japanese city. Judging from the casualness of the tourist, the woman and the little girl's interaction and the level of intimacy this was likely the man's wife and daughter.

2. Similar to the previous image: wife and daughter. Different angles.

1. Similar to the previous image: wife and daughter. Different angles.

It was nothing to do with Ethan, not really, yet being in possession of the camera slowly became a burden. It weighed on his conscious incrementally and over a long period of time. When he became aware of this gathering weight, Ethan wanted to throw the camera in the garbage yet for one reason or another, it remained in his apartment, conveniently out of sight in a drawer containing one giant tangle of brightly coloured electrical cords. Time marched on. Time was the problem. If they had acted on the day, if they had called somebody from the train platform, this whole situation might have been avoided. After all, isn't that what they say about finding people lost in the wilderness? Time is of the essence. You need to act quickly.

On those occasions when Ethan dug the camera out, he would look at the images and speculate about this man's life, trying to connect the dots. One night, when he'd had a few too many, Ethan erased images 15-21. He intended to sanitise the tourist's journey from Japan to Sydney via the Philippines. Obviously, the woman in the Philippines had been a prostitute. The plan was, after erasing the explicit, incriminating images Ethan would send the memory card back to the widow in Japan thus resolving the matter. At the very least Ethan felt responsible for the poor woman's lack of closure. For the unanswered questions. Sure, people just disappear. Everyday. But if you know something, you should speak out and not be indifferent. To throw the memory card away would be terrible. Ethan found himself looking at the remaining 29 images several more times before the camera's lithium battery died. He took the memory card out but never got around to finding the woman's address. In real life, it would have been a mission to get this kind of information. Where would you start?

The more time that went by, the less important it all seemed. People get on with their lives, reasoned Ethan, even when something as tragic as this happens. That said, having the camera around still made Ethan feel anxious. It was that slow accumulation of guilt, incrementally weighing him down. Ethan was in possession of what amounted to a black box containing the final record of a human life. The tourist was dead: even though they hadn't located his body, that much was certain. As time passed, Ethan found himself in an impossible situation. He felt like holding onto the camera was eroding his good luck yet throwing it away would bring even worse luck. Moreover, he was scared that, for the first time in his life, he had become heavily invested in superstitious thought. How had this happened? How had he embued an inanimate object with what amounted to magical properties? For god sakes, he told himself, the soul of the dead tourist was not trapped in the memory card of this camera. That all sounded very reasonable when he said it aloud and in a firm tone of voice. Still, lingering doubts persisted. Before he knew it, Ethan had lost his girlfriend and things had become rocky at work. He was being performance managed. Another way of putting was, he was hanging by a fucking thread. Then he was injured in an electrical accident. He had been overseeing the viewing a rental property in the city and he had plugged his phone into an old wall socket. Zap! Old wiring. Completely illegal. He was badly burnt and lost part of his finger. When it happened, it felt like his skeleton had been hit by a large tuning fork. A cold vibration ran up his arms. His teeth were rattling and he could smell burning flesh. Later, lying in a hospital bed, numb on drugs and his arms heavily bandaged, Ethan was able to conveniently trace this shift in his luck back to the moment he found the camera. This is what the mind does under duress. It ties nice, neat bows on messy events.

One day, after being released from the hospital, Ethan returned to the national park. He walked the track until he found what felt like the right spot. And then he left the camera, complete with memory card, for someone else to find. If you could, you would move back from the precipice. It's only natural. It's human. You would back away from the thing that is going to kill you. But, there is no way of knowing so all you can really do is try to take the necessary steps to move forward.