Kerfuffle in the Bunker Hill Monument with emblematic American and fitness matters

Thursday 11/27/25

People now are so insane, toxic, rude, entitled, oblivious, narcissistic, and insistent that their stupidity is intelligence, that their ignorance is knowledge, and that their wrong way is in fact the only right way, that I will often wonder if the problem is me, or I am about the last person left who isn't like this. Because how would that be possible? It seems so unlikely.

And yet, I cannot help but calling to mind Sherlock Holmes's maxim that once possibilities/theories A, B, C, and so forth have been exhausted and proven not to be true, then whatever you're left with is the truth, no matter how unlikely it appears, or at first appears, anyway.

The Bunker Hill Monument has been open eight days now since the government reopened. I have ran stairs on each of those eight days, despite having some kind of illness dating back the better part of a week. It is my head and my chest. I'm having a hard time taking a full deep breath, I'm coughing a lot, coughing up stuff, my sinuses are wound tight.

I have also been having bad headaches--waking up with them such that I need Advil, and then waking up again with another upon arising for good at what passes as morning/the start of day for me, which is anywhere, usually, between two AM and four AM, and requiring more Advil, which I usually try to avoid. I didn't have any headaches over the course of this last evening, though.

I've been doing the Monument anyway and grinding through. I felt discouraged starting all over again after the government shutdown, and was also displeased with myself. My calves were sore, my breathing not where it should be. I had regressed. Which was inevitable, but all the same, I have my standards for myself and I'm ultimately responsible for maintaining them. If that's not how you look at it, you become a person who looks for excuses. That's not me.

As a general rule, I'm supposed to run the first 100 stairs for each of five circuits. If I do more, then that number may become something else. After the running portion, I keep moving. That's the key--not to stop. Often, I will run more stairs as I go, and finish off at the top by running a portion. I have run the entire way to the top, which is something I'd like to get back to being able to do before too long. Other times I'll run 150 stairs the first couple times, then 100 stairs the next three. But you get the idea.

With the layoff and my illness, I've only been running the first fifty stairs on average I'd say for what had been my first seven days back. It was sixty degrees yesterday. I had on shorts to go with my T-shirt--which was just a white undershirt--and fleece. There was much moisture inside the Monument, which was considerably colder than it was outside. You could see your breath. Kind of an icebox effect, but not as cold as an icebox. It was very comfortable.

I knew I was going to lose today, with the Monument being closed for Thanksgiving, and I just wanted to have a solid performance and make some progress, which meant committing to running the first 100 stairs each of the five times up. It's a process. You need to be able to do a single circuit. You need to be able to do five circuits at any pace.

Your legs and lungs determine how well you'll do. There will be soreness in your legs for however long, and you have to keep at it until the soreness goes away. Then your legs can better serve your lungs as your breathing and conditioning improve. Then you're doing ten circuits if you wish, and up to twenty, which I last did in September before the shutdown. I could have done ten any of these days back, but that's different than me being back as I wish to be. So I'm tending to the process, the building up.

Was going well yesterday. Despite, again, whatever illness I have. I don't believe in letting illness stop me, unless it's pneumonia. I defer to pneumonia. But if it's not pneumonia, I should be able to overcome whatever I may have with my will. I understand that this isn't an approach that works for others, but for me personally, I put a huge amount of stock in the power of the mind, and with matters of the body, too. The body takes its cue from the mind. Or mine does, anyway, I believe.

I had run the first 100 stairs the first three circuits, and was about to head up for my fourth time when this family of multiple generations got in front of me. There were two young men at the back of their group and closest to me, a father ahead of them, a mother ahead of him, and a grandfather and his grand daughter at the top of their line.

I politely said, "Excuse me," to the two guys--one of whom was probably in his late teens, the other early twenties. I cannot emphasize this enough: I am always very polite because I want no trouble and it's also who I am. Now, if you are going to start something, I will absolutely light you up, shock and crush you, send you to your therapist for extra sessions, or what have you, but I start nothing. Ever. No matter what. With anyone.

I never started anything with a publishing person. When I have said something with them or two them, it was after many years of discrimination and abuse, and me somehow taking that discrimination and abuse and behaving like I was of higher moral character than a saint and more patience than existed in the rest of the world combined, all while being friendly, as parts of my soul--which I was later to regather--floated away into the dark distance.

Do you know how awful it was kissing the ring of horrible people like David Remnick, Lorin Stein, and Sigrid Rausing as they shat down my throat with that kind of glee that is endemic to the envious, talentless, rightfully insecure, classist bigot? They want to debase you when they know you are better than they are, and ideally for you to play in your own debasement as well. That's how people like this like it. Because they're sub-human garbage. The very lowest forms of us.

Anyway, these two guys give me this surly attitude after delaying in stepping aside. One of them says, "What the fuck?" It's like, really, guy? They look at each other, make under the breath comments. Then the dad does the same thing. But at least all three stepped aside, albeit reluctantly, slowly, and with this great show of exasperation.

Then we get to the mother. There is something about out of shape, overweight women over the age of thirty and below the age of, say, sixty, that makes them embittered, toxic, nasty, ridiculously entitled, delusional pieces of work. I can catch grief from any kind of person in the Monument, like that guy who called me a young punk a few months ago, in part because he thought I was like twenty-eight, when I would wager I was about ten years his junior, but most often it's overweight women above the age of thirty. They seethe with hate for the in-shape sporty-looking male.

This woman was right in the middle of the stairs. Her hindquarters dead-centered, as if her ass was saying, "This stairwell belongs to these substantial buttocks and these substantial buttocks alone!"

Passing each of these fuckers has been a chore at this point, which each making doing so far more difficult than it should be. But nonetheless, I politely say--in my friendliest voice--"Excuse me."

She hears me. But she refuses to budge. I say it again. The same thins happens. The substantial buttocks continue their flabby oscillation, very slowly. Flab jiggles up, flab jiggles down. I say it a third time, and she responds, over her shoulder, "Maybe you should just wait your turn."

Maybe you should just wait your turn.

This isn't how the rules of the road work. This isn't waiting in a line for a ride at Disney World. If you are driving on the highway and going forty miles per hour and someone wishes to pass, you can't seriously believe that they have no right to and shouldn't be allowed to because it isn't their turn.

We were on maybe, I don't know, stair fifty at this point. Meaning, there were about 250 more to go. It just blows my mind what people expect to happen. Like when someone treats you terribly. A so-called friend. Lies to you over and over. Is never there for you. They expect you to have no problem with that. If you express that you do, they castigate you. It's your fault for having the issue with what is their abusing of you. As you are there for them, always.

If you were slow, would you really want to delay the person behind you? Wouldn't you be embarrassed that you couldn't go up the stairs because you were so out of shape and were making them wait behind you?

I'd be more mortified. I can't imagine doing that. "You will wait for me. I'm not ready yet. Just stand there until I am."

But people have no shame. No consciences either. They're not embarrassed. They're just entitled.

This woman was going to stop and rest at least three times--and probably more like five--on the rest of the way up to the top. In her view, the way it works is I was supposed to wait behind her as she stopped moving at all, until she was ready to being again, no matter how long that took.

I mean...what the fuck?

I thought, enough, and I did what I had to in order to get past, trying to avoid contact as much as possible, and she swears at me.

Well, you know, it's on now. I say to her, "What is it that the corpulent ones are often the most entitled?" before adding, "Look it up on your phone, as they're some of the dumbest, too."

I'm literally the last person in the world/history that you want to be doing this verbal thing with. It's just not going to go how you want it to, no matter who you are.

And not only is it on, but now it's going to continue--actually, it's kind of like what happens with publishing people in this record as they reappear in the pages--because she will see me a bunch more times, given what I'm doing and the shape I'm in, and what she's doing and the shape she is in.

Down I come after reaching the top as she's still only about halfway up, and you know what? She had looked up the word "corpulent," so her rage is even greater. Now she and her husband are both doing the death stare thing with their surplus chins trembling with rage on account of having found their latest thing to be offended by, which is also entry number eleven on that score for the day, probably. So I say, "You can stare all you wish, but we both know you're not gonna catch me."

Once you start something with someone, it's fair game for them to level you. Don't start it, then.

Next time I go up, the two young men start in, but in that mumble-y way, so I say, "What was that, tough guys?" The moment I look someone in the eyes, dead clear in the eyes, and say whatever I say, is the instance the panic and cowardice sets in. The eyes of those other people drop to the ground.

It's stunning to me how people behave. I'm unsure whether they're more stupid or entitled. Probably stupid. But they've so very entitled. Wait your turn. Mind-boggling. It's like you're walking down the sidewalk, and there's a group of people four aside in front of you, and you say, "Excuse me" so you can pass, and they say, "Wait your turn."

How can you not know that isn't how it works? That to me means you can't tell how anything works.

Is that not an emblematic American, though? Someone dumb, out of shape and lazy, entitled, looking to be offended, who believes they are always in the right, and that whatever they feel/want is how it should be, even if that's a matter of spite and projected self-loathing. I have no doubt she'll be a delight at the Thanksgiving dinner table later today, where she's also sure to get more than her money's worth. She's probably a voracious reader. America!

Someone said to me a little while back that anyone who sees me in the Monument has to know that I'm working out. Not true. You can put a banana in front of someone's face and they won't be able to tell it's a banana. Humans now are basically akin to slugs. The slug isn't going to say, "Why, it's a banana!" I'm not exaggerating. This isn't for effect. This is my lived-in experience. Now, if a bunch of other humans were saying that thing was a banana, and it was trending on social media, and there were banana memes, and bananas were all the rage, then the person would think, "Oh, look, it's a banana." But otherwise it's just a thing in front of their jowly face that they don't consciously perceive.

One thing I do like about this, admittedly, is that these people always think I'm some type of athlete in my twenties, and often enough I'll be technically older than they are, though age is one of those things in some ways that is different with me.

I thought, of course, about the people I stepped aside for the other day in the Monument, something which almost never happens, should never happen if I am where I should be, condition-wise, but did happen. I can't conceive of having said, "No, wait your turn." How weird would that have been?

I also strongly suspect that if the woman who was running those stairs with her husband or whatever he was had been in my spot in the Monument yesterday and asked to get by, that the woman who gave me grief would have had no problem letting her pass. I'm sure it would have been a non-issue and done without a second thought. Misandry is the new misogyny.

I'll see people remark that you don't know how close someone is to the edge or their breaking point. How one thing can seal the deal. Yes. I think that's true of many people. Gets to be. And many--most--have already broken for good, and will remain broken until death. I thought about this woman like that after this experience. And how I could, in theory, have knocked her over the edge.

But you know what? All bets are off when you behave like that. It's not up to someone in that case to make sure you're okay, or to create the allowance for you. There's a difference between losing it and snapping because of what you're going through and things coming to an emotional and psychological head, and just being a...insert whatever word you wish. We are always responsible for our behavior. Whatever we're going through. Look at my situation. There isn't anyone who could truthfully claim I take any of it out on them. Rather, they take out whatever they wish on me, with their easy lives, over what wouldn't register as so much as a difficulty or lesser hardship here, given the enormity and totality of my suffering. But I did think about it afterwards, because I think about what I do and say. I vet all of it.

I'm up to forty circuits since the reopening on November 15. Eight days open, five circuits each day. Workmanlike. Will continue to build. Also walked six miles yesterday and did 100 push-ups. I've been less consistent with the latter over the last week and need to do better.

I have much to do today in trying to get through my latest Thanksgiving without anyone. If I should reach out and wish someone a happy Thanksgiving, they are unlikely to even respond. Because this is how people are, and how they certainly are with me. But I will do the best I can in trying to get to tomorrow.

Took a nice photo of the leaf-covered slope leading up to the top of the hill as I was waiting for the Monument to open.