Perfectly Scarred

The Walk of Shame

At exactly the same time as we exit, the men exit their quarters beside us. They wear red tank tops and boxer shorts. From the look of some fresh bleeding noses and shiners it's clear their uprising was lost, too.

Some women start to cry as they see the men. Some men start to cry, and others look away out of respect, when they see us.

The man who leads the Failure line looks at me and curses when he sees what we have to wear. The male lead Whistleblower immediately clatters him across the head, which silences him.

We meet in the middle and are ordered to walk alongside each other. I lead the women; he leads the men.

I wonder what he's done to be picked to go first; I'm sure men weren't fighting over their boxer shorts. I scan the men's line to see if I can find any familiar faces, but a whistle is blown loudly in my face, signaling that I must keep my head straight.

"You're Roseanne Park?" the man beside me asks, lips not moving.

"Yes."

"What's going on here?" I look around.

"I don't know." I answered.

"Well, I hope you have a plan of some sort," he says. We step onto the docklands and the streets are lined with people, members of the public who have come out from their houses and workplaces to see the Failure parade through the streets.

The walk of shame. The walk of blame.

Dotted along the sidewalks are Whistleblowers dressed in their riot gear, shields in their hands. We are in the old part of the town. On the other side of the river is the urban, vibrant, modern city, which rises from the once-derelict docklands. On this side, the old cobblestoned roads have been maintained, home to the market traders, wholesale and retail, from fruit and vegetables to meat and fish—a thriving, busy, colorful world filled with people and life.

And so this is where we begin our journey, from the warehouses, past the stallholders in the market, and I feel it's fitting. I feel like cattle about to be traded, sold, gawked at, and valued.

Then the laneways widen and bring us by cafés and restaurants, stories of apartments above, people out on their balconies, watching us with steaming cups in their cobblestones are difficult to walk over in our flimsy flip-flops, and more than once I stub my toe on the sharp edges of the pitched paving and am not alone in stumbling.

A few people fall to the ground, cutting their knees, and are helped up by their fellow Failures. Through the city speakers we hear Dahee's voice, a recorded version of what she said earlier.

Snippets of phrases that have been cut, edited, now replay over and over again.

"Today is the day we say thank you to the Failure population for helping us cleanse our society of imperfection and for allowing us to have an organized, decent society."

This one statement is popular and plays over and over like broken record.

Big, small, skinny, fat, black, white, old, and young, there is nothing left to the imagination, as we're paraded through narrow cobblestoned streets in front of the audience.