The Queue at the Iron Gates

Our guided walk finished where a fifty-metre-long, four-to-five-people-

thick queue began at a church's three-metre-high iron gates. Our walk
was supposed to finish with a free gospel concert in the church.

Marga, the walk's organiser, pushed in twenty metres from the gates.
Her sweet eyes, in their sensual, round mount, masked her audacity, her
son "guarding a place." I stood back. A woman yelped: "We've been
waiting here for an hour!"

I imagined someone saying: "And you haven't done anything similar?!

You?!"

Marga snorted: "My son has been waiting here for an hour here as well!"

The queue-jumpers talked and smiled. A car entered the church's

grounds. The iron gates swung in opposite directions, like expediency.

Marga left the queue and approached those who hadn't pushed in.

"What's the problem?" she asked.

Her surprise indicated why a problem existed.

"I can't jump queues," Guillermo said. "It's a question of principles."

His face was bone-white under a street-light, his brown eyes black
circles in semi-darkness, stars pronged in deepening night. The road's
neutral territory offered respite from embarrassment, the curb a Green
Line between restraint and greed.

"Even if everyone pushed in," Guillermo added, "I still wouldn't do it."

"But," Marga replied, "someone was waiting for us."

Moral reasoning revolved around her son. Your group is above the rest.

"Yes," Guillermo replied, "but these other people have been waiting here
for an hour and I wouldn't feel comfortable pushing in."

Those who hadn't pushed in had created a zone of mutually-agreed

rights based on ethics, potential tensions eliminated by unspoken
agreement.

Maybe Marga's attitude sprung from zero emotional intelligence? Or

maybe from predicting submission to her discarding of accepted norms?

Being composed of small, independent "tribes," the queue couldn't

organise itself into effective resistance against rule-breakers. Those
"tribes", although morally outraged, avoided conflicts that may have
created more difficulties. They didn't know if others would help them.
And they knew they were going to see the concert, this cooling them
with perspective, indignity avoided by avoiding debates that may have
created greater problems.

Marga obviously substituted accepted precepts with norms convenient

to herself. Convenient to her, they were apparently convenient
universally, this self-indulgence a mystery to me.

Guillermo and I went to a pub with a French woman called Julie. Julie
hadn't pushed in either.

Someone arriving after us at the pub was asked by a barman what he

wanted. The man said: "They're first."

We thanked him.

"Not a queue-jumper," I said.

"It's a question of dignity," Guillermo replied.

"It is," I said. "But honour also means protecting your clan against others
for some people."

"That means creating your own rules," Guillermo replied.

"It does," I said. "But we interpret our actions to justify our desires; and
some people learn how to manipulate others from day one. Imagine the
shock of being opposed when you always get your way. It would be like
having your indisputable nobility questioned."

They studied me with wondrous contemplation when I added: "If twenty

people had pushed in front of Marga she would have complained. Seeing
things in isolation maximises rewards, keeping your power up. They call
this belligerence self-esteem."

Julie said: "I agree. And we deserve a full refund. We assumed we were
going straight into the concert. I'm not going to one of her events again.
It should have been better organised."

"Or at least," Guillermo replied, "we should be entitled to a free walk."

Julie had warm, vast, green eyes. The clarity of the snowy whites of
those eyes matched the translucent freshness of her skin, both looking
polished by miraculous creation. Her long, wonderfully-shaped legs
soared up into exotic gorgeousness, such perfect legs deserving the
sublime destination of her torso, her face framed by honey-blonde
follicles. If anyone had reasons to be self-indulgent it would have been
her, someone who could get what they wanted without thorny
opposition. But she observed the unwritten rules, this, to me, a sacrifice,
a rejection of privileges, an act of solidarity with the physical-proletariat
majority.

Although I didn't agree a full refund would have been fair (the guided
walk had been interesting), I was intrigued by her opinion, as I had been
by Marga's. Behind both lurked a principle, this inspiring fascination,
even if the principles may have been distorted.

"I'm going to write to Marga, telling her what I think," Julie said.

I read the message the following day: "Pushing in is inexcusable. For

putting us into that awkward situation, we deserve a full refund."

Marga's response: "It was the complainers who pushed in. We were
ahead of them. But I'm sorry you feel the way you do."

Belief concocts the ruthlessness required to satisfy desires. Marga

believed what she said.