Hammer Time! (Part II)

When I dragged my weary sleepless self off the bus, I found myself in an incredibly depressing seedy bus station. Hammer was nowhere to be seen. The clock on the wall informed me that the bus had arrived a whole hour late! I hoped she wasn't pissed. Locating a pay phone, I was able to get in touch with Hammer and explain my cell phone crisis to her. At first she was annoyed, having not heard from me all morning. She thought that I had flaked out on the entire trip. But once we cleared things up, she told me to meet her at Union Station which was just a few blocks away.

My body was exhausted, and the heat was strong, but I made it to the station and our appointed meeting place. Before long, I saw Hammer waving at me. Yay! It had been about a month and a half since I'd seen her, and I missed her! We sat down to eat at a cafe in the station, and caught each other up on what's been going on in our lives. Then Hammer got her Starbucks fix and we popped into Nine West before setting off for her place. Hammer had her bike parked outside. Apparently, she's taken to bicycling everywhere! I haven't been on a bike since the fourth grade, though, and I wasn't about to try it, so we pushed the bike and walked the way home.

Her apartment is really pretty. She's rooming with two lesbians (who are planning their wedding) and who are apparently neat-freaks. The apartment is kept spotless, even with two cats living there! I was pretty much too tired to do anything adventurous, so we settled in her room to chat and watch some TV. (We saw part of It Runs in the Family with Michael Douglas and Uptown Girls with Britney Murphy). I needed to restore myself, so I ironed my hair and carefully applied my makeup. Later, I ironed Hammer's hair for her too and it looked gorgeous!

By 8:00 or so, I felt better, and we were all set to go meet Hammer's brother at his apartment. Hammer even wore high heels! We passed through Union Station again, heading into the subway, and I stopped at the Swatch counter. We looked at all the watches and Hammer tried on the diamond encrusted Swatch before I ended up buying one. It took me forever to decide, but I have a watch now and I'm very happy with my choice. One difference between Washington and NY--in the subway the security guards in D.C. are hard core! They have a rule against food and drink in the subway system and the guard yelled at Hammer to toss her Starbucks. Weird.

I was very excited to meet another member of the Hammer family. Her brother was really nice. He is planning his wedding too (all of this wedding planning is having strange effects on Hammer, I think), and he showed me a picture of his fiancee. Then we were off for Adam's Morgan. We settled in at a Ghanaian restaurant, which seemed like an exotic choice, but all of the food basically tasted the same. It was okay... Hammer and her brother were gossiping about strange relatives and some family drama from a trip their family recently took to Alaska. He also told me about his job which is pretty interesting. After dinner we got ice cream at Maggie Moo's. Hammer's was the most exciting--electric blue cotton candy ice cream with gummy bears!

We had originally planned to make it a bit of a party night, but by that time found that we were both exhausted. I thought could have revved myself up after a few drinks, but we decided against it, instead heading home. Back at her place, we both fell asleep pretty quicky and slept straight through to the next day. Neither of us woke up until after 11:00! In the morning we ate some yogurt and mangos. (She's really into the mango lately!) Then I sent an email to the people who text message me the most frequently telling them that my phone was broken. I included Narc on that list, hoping that he would get the point that if he had answered my text from the previous day, I wouldn't be able to access his response.

With a late start to our day, we gave up our plan to go to the National Gallery and headed instead to Eastern Market. I was very excited to check out the flea market of which Hammer had told me much about. She spends a lot of her weekends there, and she wanted to show me a really cool "Jekyll & Hyde" purse. Unfortunately, the woman who made it had already sold it. I bought two pairs of earrings and a silver chain. Hammer and I strolled around for a while and then ate bagels and lox for lunch. Yum! When we finished at the market, we headed towards the Mall for a look at the Holocaust Musuem.

Hammer is working at the museum this summer and she showed me around the library, etc. Then we passed through their special exhibit on Euthanasia and Eugenics. It was pretty depressing, but as historians, of course, fascinating to us both. (She's already been through the exhibit a million times). Hammer knew a lot about the architecture of the museum. It was really interesting--something I had never thought much about before. She also pointed out some museum highlights, like the Wizard's favorite part--an enourmous block of steel, and the security guard who chided her for drinking water by the elevator.

When we left the museum we decided to go paddle-boating out on the Tidal Basin. For only $8.00 we got the boat for a whole hour. It was pretty brutal paddling out under the beating sun (especially considering I've become pretty out of shape over the past year), but once we made it across to the shade, it was much nicer. We tried to see how many "rules" we could break at once, steering too near to the sea walls and removing our life-vests. Later, we made friends with a passing duck. At one point, Hammer took a picture of me with the Washington Monument in the background. We tried to stage another picture to look like I was giving a blowjob to the monument, but the boat kept drifiting and we couldn't get it to work.

While we were out on the water I used Hammer's phone to check my messages. I was delighted to find that I had two messages from Narc--one on my cell phone and one on my home phone. Basically, he told me to give him a call whenever I got back in from D.C. Yay! I was elated.

After our boat ride, Hammer and I headed back to her place so I could pick up my bag. I called Narc and left him a message telling him that I wouldn't be back in NY until after midnight. Then we rushed off to the bus station. I was supposed to get a bus out of there at 7:00 pm.

We got to the station at 6:30 and I had to grab something for dinner. The line to board the NY bus was insanely long. I ate the only food available--fast food, and Hammer and I went to wait on the line. Unfortunately, they filled up the 7:00 bus and I had to wait for the 8:00. Hammer hugged me goodbye and left to go jog, as she didn't want to be caught after sundown in the "ghetto."

I had a fairly decent bus ride home. At first I thought it was going to suck--the bus driver was crazy and kept tailgating cars all over the place, and the guy behind me was talking on his cell phone and annoying me. Soon enough, though, he hung up the phone, the driver calmed down, and they put on Ocean's 11 which I hadn't seen before. After the movie ended, I listened to my Leonard Cohen CD for a few hours and dreamed about Narc. (I feel stupid writing that here, but it's true).

That night and last night I spent with Narc. But all that's to come in the third (and final) leg of this post.

Again-- To be continued...