Charlie, I want to request that you not wash your body at all on Friday, come as you are, and use no deodorant, so, I can lick your armpits very thoroughly as well as other parts. I hope that is all right with you. If not, I still want to see you and won't insist.

This, from the sixty three year old this morning. But this is really exciting news because I made this Friday the deadline by which I would tell Iris I would pay my rent by when she asked me about it, which thankfully, she has still yet to do. So I just need to see two other people this week and I will be able to pay my rent. Hopefully, the weekly regular will contact me tomorrow and then I will only need to see one person by Friday, which is a fairly easy task.

Niki yesterday, when I told her I did not meet up with someone I was supposed to tie up, sounded shocked and worried, said, "Why? How are you going to pay your rent?" And I told her that I don't worry about these things, that they always work out. I have developed such a zen attitude toward money lately and it is really not good, because it is totally supported by my luck with money, how whenever I seem to need it, right at that moment, one of these two regulars will contact me, or I will find out that the Princeton Review has work to do, or they will send me a paycheck even though I didn't work there lately - things like that. Whenever things seem dire, it will be right on that day without fail that I will be contacted by the regular, like he can somehow sense that I might need money. And so yeah, yesterday, I was being totally serious when I said that everything will work out because without fail it always seems to. Everything has worked out for the past six months since I have quit the Strand and things worked out for the year and a half I was there making no money at all. But yes, I know that my zen attitude is really just a spree of good luck and that these things can only go so far before luck runs out, so yes, the job hunt is starting.

PS- I love Nabakov. Reading him is what reading is supposed to do to you, to make you more sensitive to the life outside the book. And I think now, on this my fourth book of his, I am just starting to get his voice, and get his humor. It wasn't really until my second or third Philip Roth book that I felt at ease with him. It's just like meeting a new friend, at first your banter seems a little forced. You are not yet on the same wavelength and so they or you don't always catch or respond to all the jokes or references. It takes time. Timing is everything. And now, I wonder what it would be like to read Lolita again, the first book I read by him, the first (and usually only) book people read by him, that the writing seemed kind of dry to me then, impressive, but definitely dry and not someone I felt entirely at ease around. I am sure I would enjoy it so much more now, but sadly for both Lolita and for me, that rereading or first real reading will probably never occur because there are so many other Nabakov books to read, and so many Philip Roth ones, and god, there really is no end. People that read the same books over and over again, or even just twice really impress me because they have a patience or an acceptance that they will never read everything that true as it is, I just cannot accept. I see the rows and rows of fiction titles, most of which I have never read and feel like I am wasting time even reading multiple titles by single authors, that there is Trollope and Updike and Winterson and basically everyone that I have still yet to even encounter.