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Lies, All Lies Part six
Lies, All Lies
"I love you too," Lisa whispers.
They talk for a long time after that.
Well, Jesse talks, his knuckles running over her prickly fuzz, his breath warm on her neck. Lisa holds him tightly. Her bare chest presses against his, and under the blanket, they are still.
Carolyn is dead. Lisa's hurting badly. At the same time, she knows that she can let go, that she can crash and that Jesse will be there when she does. It's such an immense relief that she cries as he talks, quietly and continuously. The laws of physics dictate that no two things will ever truly touch. Well, she's getting as close as she can.
Lisa has wanted to have sex with Jesse from the day she learnt his name. It had been a desire of curiosity, at the beginning, a kind of what would that be like? The want is still there, but now it's all encompassed in Jesse, Jesse the person, and Lisa knows she'd take him in whatever shape he'd come in.
But her body is exhausted now. Her mind is exhausted. Her eyelids droop, her body slackens, and she falls into a state of half-awake, half-asleep where the only thing real is the man beside her.
An electric clocks beeps, somewhere far in the distance. "I'm gonna be back soon," Jesse murmurs a while afterwards, leaving her with a warm peck on the shoulder. Before Lisa even opens her eyes she can sense him being lifted away, leaving a cold, empty space beside her. The shower turns on, pounding steadily behind a closed door. Lisa drifts into fitful sleep.
When she wakes up, Jesse is there, watching her with a wistful smile on his face. His face is inches from hers. Tendrils of hair peek out from under his cheek.
"How are you?" he whispers.
Lisa isn't a morning person. She waits a few seconds for her brain to defog, but then she remembers everything that happened last night.
"I don't want to talk about it," she says. "Let's talk about you."
Jesse shifts so that he's staring up at the ceiling. "Okay," he says. "Ask what happened to me."
"Fine," she says, her voice rusty. "What happened between you and Ruby?"
He sighs. "That's not what I meant."
The window behind them is open, and it brings in a salty ocean breeze. Lisa shivers, and pulls the covers up to her chin. "I know. But I think… Something happened when the two of you dated. Or afterwards, I don't know. Something that changed you."
Jesse is quiet for a moment, as if he needs time to think, but from his grimace Lisa knows he's just pushing off the inevitable.
"You can say it," Lisa says, running her fingers through his hair. "I won't judge."
"Well, she cheated on me," Jesse says. "But that wasn't it. It was…" he squints, like it hurts to say it. "When I confronted her about it, she laughed and said, 'what, you think we were in a relationship or something?'"
Jesse doesn't know what to do. Everyone mourns in their own way, and his way has always been to Avoid the Subject at All Costs. If you don't think about it, then it doesn't exist. Lisa might be different, though- she might be the type who likes to flesh everything out, to go over the details until they become numb to her.
She's asleep when he wakes up, and when her lashes flutter open he has a moment of anxiety.
God, she's so beautiful. There are beauty marks dotting the underside of her chin, clustered like a hazel constellation. Her lack of hair makes her eyes the more prominent, their shining coffee irises peeking out. He asks her how she is. She won't say. The pain is too fresh for her.
So, like a complete idiot, he begins to talk about himself. Lisa asks about Ruby, and he blubbers out the entire story.
After six months of casual kissing, Ruby wanted to step it up a level. Jesse never 'casually kissed' anyone, but Ruby did. She gave out kisses like politicians give speeches.
But everything changed last summer. She became his, and he became hers, exclusively. Or so he thought.
They would sleep together every night, really sleep, in the literal sense of the word. They never had actual intercourse, because back then, Jesse didn't know if he could. Ruby never set him straight, anyway. It was Ilana who enlightened him.
For a while, Ruby and Brian were Jesse's primary caregivers. The three of them did everything together. After Brian's being AWOL from Jesse's life after the accident, he'd returned full force, with nary an apology and nary a bad word. He learnt how to do strengthening exercises with Jesse and and how to switch his catheter. He did everything for Jesse, short of changing his diaper and doing his bowel program. Those were the only limits.
Ruby was the one who had no limits. She put him to bed every night, all on her own. Sometimes, she even showered together with him, which she claimed to do because it was more efficient. Once Jesse was naked and in his shower chair, Ruby would strip in front of him and throw her clothes in the pile with his. She would borrow his Axe soap and somehow, the musky, startling smell of it made her more alluring. She'd soap him up and then soap herself up, and take the shower head off its hook and wash them both at once. Ruby looked right at him when she scrubbed under his arms, over his legs and around his penis, and when she shaved him or massaged shampoo into his hair. She made him feel like a sexual being again. Sometimes they would even make out under the steady drum of the water.
The day after she cheated on him was one of the most humiliating in Jesse's life. "I don't have feelings for you in that way," Ruby Mitchell Kim said flippantly, when Jesse confronted her over breakfast.
"What the hell does that mean?" Jesse said, feeling crimson rush up his neck and onto his face. "We've been together for months. You… we're together all the time."
She had looked at him condescendingly, sadly, somehow shifting all the blame into an unfortunate misunderstanding. "Jesse, that wasn't anything official. I mean, I've been seeing other people all year."
"But since the beginning of the summer…" Jesse said, refusing to believe what she was saying. The conversation quickly escalated into yelling.
"So I was, what, just a fling for you?" Jesse said.
"No! You weren't a fling, you weren't anything! That's what I'm trying to tell you." Ruby took his limp hand in hers. "I'm sorry, Jesse, but take a look in the mirror. Most people like you have to hire prostitutes because no one will come near them. At least you have me."
Jesse had no retort. Somehow, he landed up on the defensive side in that argument- trying to convince Ruby that he meant something to her. It was becoming clearer and clearer to him, the more he thought about it, that he didn't. He was a warm body to her, something to hold at night. Nothing more. He should have seen it coming- the way Ruby and Brian playfully bumped shoulders when they dressed him, the smiles they shared over his head. Hell, Jesse was the one who introduced the two of them. They bonded over him. It happened right in front of his nose, but he was too infatuated with Ruby to notice.
Gossip on the Sierra spread quickly, and anyway, Ruby and Jesse's voices were pretty loud, because that night Jesse got a phone call from his mother. She admonished him for 'having delusions about the people who work for you. They're getting paid to do it. Don't pretend it's anything else.'"
When he finishes the story, Lisa stares at him solemnly. Half her face is covered in sleep lines from the pillow. "I don't understand," she says. "How was Ruby able to explain away all the... all the intimacy the two of you shared?"
Jesse shrugs, turning his head toward her. "To her, it didn't count. As in, she didn't see me as a boyfriend. She didn't see me as an actual man." He closes his eyes. He can't believe he's saying these things out loud.
"That's why you don't want me to do things for you," Lisa says softly. He opens his eyes and she's scooted closed to him, so that their noses almost touch. "I promise never to do anything that will make you feel uncomfortable," she whispers. "But helping you isn't going to change the way I feel about you. I won't be your primary caregiver, if we can afford it."
"Thank you," Jesse says. "That means a lot to me."
"I'm gonna ask for one thing, though," Lisa says. She sits up and stretches. "You have to be honest with me about yourself. Don't be embarrassed of your body. This is who you are, this is your body now, and I love you. Okay?"
"No more lies," Jesse says, echoing her sentiment from the night before.
He gets a full view as Lisa clips on her bra, then cups each breast and lifts it into place. Paul comes in to get him dressed, and Lisa protests that she can do it. Jesse shoots her a look, but softens immediately.
"I guess we'll have to work this out," Jesse says, and Lisa nods in agreement.
Dustin and Jean-Robert get married in a looming church, hidden by leafy oak trees in a quiet neighbourhood in Quebec City.
"Jean-Robert's parents are very traditional," Dustin explains to Jesse in the minutes before the ceremony starts, while the two of them share a bottle of orange juice. "Which meant that all we had to do was find a non-traditional church that would marry us."
Bridesmaids, groomsmen, and assorted relatives are bustling around them, pinning dresses and straightening ties and generally freaking out. Dustin is hiding in the corner with Jesse, sprawled out on a scratched leather sofa, because he claims to hate being around nervous people.
"Ever try having a conversation with a nervous person?" Dustin says, and takes a swallow of juice. "You say, 'hi,' and they're all like, 'ah! Go away! Don't talk to me now!'"
Jesse follows Dustin's gaze, and sees Jean-Robert hopping around with only one shoe, cursing in French. "Are we talking about your fiancé?"
Dustin crosses his legs. "Yeah. He's really, really scared. Like I said, his family is very traditional. A lot of them are giving him a hard time. But me, I'm excited, not nervous. Why would I be? I love him."
Jesse smiles. "You, my friend, are a lucky man."
"Lisa's not such a bad catch herself." Dustin hands Jesse the bottle. "Hey, have you made up with Brian yet?"
"Dude, you're gonna be at the altar in ten minutes. You've got more important things to think about." Jesse takes the bottle in both hands, and tilting his head back, manages to lift it high enough to get some liquid into his mouth.
Dustin uncrosses his legs. "Fuck. I think I am nervous."
Behind Jesse, someone clears their throat. Jean-Robert stands there, looking handsome in a gray suit that offsets his chocolate skin. "Je n'ai jamais embrasser quelqu'un en publique," he says bashfully, in his deep, deep voice, as he clenches his fists and unclenches them. [I've never kissed anyone in public.]
"Pratiquons-nous?" Dustin says, standing up. [Shall we practice?]
Jean-Robert hesitates for a moment, then grabs a fistful of Dustin's hair and brings his groom's face to his own, working Dustin's mouth like no one's business.
Jesse sets down the empty Tropicana bottle, and backs away gracefully. He looks up, and there she is, across the room, breathtaking in a skin-tight coral dress. Lisa winks at him, and they share a little smile.
Jesse rolls into a spot in the back, farthest from the aisle. It isn't a spot, really, just a gap between the rows of chairs and the wall. Brian sits next to him, stony faced.
The organ music starts, and Jesse frowns at the woman who stands at the altar. "She's not even an ordained priest," he says. "I talked to her just before. She works for the government and she officiates marriages. Huh. Well, maybe she's a two-in-one."
The heavy double-doors open, and a line of little girls crowned in flower wreaths float down the aisle. They giggle and scatter rose petals that the janitorial staff will have to spend a half hour cleaning up. The procession continues, and Jesse can't understand why there have to be bridesmaids when there is no bride. There should just be double the amount of groomsmen. Aren't gowns more expensive than suits, anyway?
"Jesus Christ, shut up," Brian says. "It's like a running commentary, with you."
"Shhh!" A woman in a large floppy hat and rouged cheeks scolds them from behind.
Dustin walks in first, his face unreadable, followed by Jean-Robert, who looks flushed and happy. The music stops, and the priest/officiator begins reading what are definitely not Bible passages, aloud, from a lined sheet of paper. She repeats each paragraph in English after she says it in French.
Jesse leans forward. "Hey, isn't that a quote from Grease?"
Brian mimics shooting himself in the mouth. "Who wrote this crap?"
They look at each other. "Dustin," they say in unison. Brian guffaws.
"Shhh!" says the woman behind them.
"You may now kiss the groom," the priest/officiator announces. The wedding guests around them lean forward in anticipation.
Jesse smirks. "Imagine if we got married. What a nightmare."
"We'd kill each other," Brian agrees.
They watch as Dustin and Jean-Robert give each other a quick peck on the lips. It reminds Jesse of Prince William and Kate's wedding kiss, which was just for show- the real stuff comes after.
Brian nudges him on the shoulder. Jesse looks over at his friend expectantly, and Brian looks at his lap, then starts to finger his tie. "Hey, I'm sorry, man. About what I said in the pool."
Jesse sets his jaw. "Don't be. I started it."
"No, really. You aren't a wimp, you're just… cautious. After what happened last year, who can blame you?"
Jesse keeps his eyes fixated on the front of the chapel. "Dude, forget about last year. I forgive you. You and Ruby together, that was... inevitable. Just forget about it."
"I will. But you have to forget, too."
"What do you mean?" Jesse says sharply.
"You've finally come around and realized that Lisa isn't like Ruby," Brian says. "She's not some girl fooling around with you to pass the time. She likes you."
"I'm not Ruby, either," Brian says quietly. "I'm not going to run off the second I deem you useless to me. That's not how this works."
Jesse chews the edge of his lip. The ceremony is over, and people are starting to push back their chairs to leave or give the new couple their best wishes.
"I was scared, at the beginning," Brian continues, pinching his tie. He runs a hand over his dark hair. "That's why I deserted you after the accident. I freaked out."
"So what changed?"
"You didn't. That's the point. You were- you are- exactly the same as before. Stubborn as ever. You didn't want to cut your hair even if it would be easier to take care of if it was short. You didn't want to stop wearing contacts, even though they're a pain in the ass. You wear your stuck-up dress shirts every day, even though t-shirts would be a lot easier."
"I'm a sophisticated guy," Jesse says. He fiddles with the joystick on his chair.
"Look, I know I'm a little obsessed with your recovery," Brian says. "It's just… I've done you wrong, man. I bailed on you when you needed me. I'm trying to make up for lost time."
Jesse shakes his head, and smiles. "You don't have to. You already have."
Brian shrugs, and laughs nervously, seemingly at a loss for words. "Cue the theme song for My Little Pony," he says, rolling his eyes.
Katie, sitting next to her brother, perks up. "I love that song!" She says.
Jesse blinks. He hadn't noticed Katie there.
"My Little Pony," she sings, "I used to wonder what friendship could-"
"Okay, thanks Katie," Brian interrupts. "We all know the song."
"Twenty bucks and I won't tell everyone that that's your favourite TV show," Jesse says.
"I hate you," Brian says, punching him in the arm, lightly, this time.
The New England tour aboard the Sierra is officially over. By now, all the passengers will have disembarked, and the cleaning staff will wax the floors and clean out the entire ship in preparation for the next cruise and the next batch of fake-tanned passengers.
For most of the staff, there is a two-day work gap, a time they can use to rest up or tour. Lisa is going to a wedding.
The ceremony is appropriately stretched out with choirs and emotional speeches and whatnot. Lisa had no idea Dustin knew so many people. She overhears conversations switching seamlessly from English to French and back, and she is introduced to the concept of Franglais, or Frenglish, as it's sometimes referred to.
The reception is held in the Marriott, downtown. Apparently, the new couple rented out an entire restaurant. Lisa carpools with nine people she doesn't know, in a dented minivan driven by one of Jean-Robert's brothers. By the time they leave the church, the sun is hanging low, glinting against the windows that they pass. Her face is pressed against the window, and every few seconds the van jolts, sending everyone into nervous titters. Lisa's trying not to fall into the lap of the girl beside her, who just so happens to be none other than the infamous Ruby Mitchell-Kim.
While most of the passengers in the car are already cranky, complaining about creased suits and cramped legs, Ruby seems unflappable. Her French-manicured hands are folded daintily on her lap, and her hair is swept up in a complex updo.
"When they said transportation was included, I didn't think they meant this," she complains, rubbing her nail. "I should have ordered a taxi."
"Casse-toi," the driver says, making a face in the rearview mirror.
Lisa keeps sneaking Ruby glances. They've been on the road for five minutes before Lisa works up the courage to speak.
"Hey," she says lightly. "Can I… ask you something?"
"About Jesse?"
Lisa clears her throat. "Yeah."
Ruby yawns, stretching her arms over her head. She settles back comfortably against the grimy leather seat. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about the weather first?"
Ruby yawns again. "Then I'll be blunt, like you. I don't know you, okay? But I'm going to tell you this because you like Jesse, and you should know what you're getting into." She holds up a small package. "Gum?"
"No. Thanks."
"Okay then," Ruby says. "I bet you want to know how I did what I did. How I was horrible enough to cheat on a poor, disabled boy."
"I never said-"
Ruby flares her nostrils. "Don't judge me," she says. "Wait until you're in my place. Wait until you're stuck with a boyfriend who can't walk or dance or go anywhere, who you have to shower and feed and dress. It didn't exactly turn me on, okay?" She shakes her head in disgust, flyaway hairs shaking with her. "He can't even have sex."
"Of course he can," Lisa says, lowering her voice. "I looked it up. There are ways for quadriplegics to do it."
"You looked it up?" Ruby laughs. "That's adorable. Anyway, he never wanted to. He knows he isn't exactly attractive anymore."
"He knows?" Lisa shoots back, gripping the back of the seat in front of her. "Or is that something you told him, that he'd never be whole or happy again if he was in a wheelchair?"
"Please. You met him just this week," Ruby says. "What right do you have to say that? We took good care of him. I was with him twenty fours a day."
"No wonder he won't let me near him!" Lisa says. She leans forward, needing space. "When I first kissed him, he pushed me away. Right afterwards." She stares up through the front window. The minivan is catching the trail end of rush hour traffic. "I can't blame him, I guess."
"You're so self-righteous," Ruby says. "Listen to what I'm saying. It makes sense. You wouldn't fly in a broken plane, would you? Doesn't matter if you love the plane. The benefits aren't worth all the malfunctions and bumps. You just wouldn't do it."
Lisa smirks. "We are all broken, Ruby, some more than others. Haven't you ever dated any able-bodied, nasty people? Any 'normal' guys who were boring or rude or uncaring? Because I have." A small smile forms on her lips. "And I can't think of anyone I'd rather be with than Jesse."
Ruby snorts. "Wait until I tell him that we've had this conversation."
Lisa narrows her eyes, searching Ruby's face. "You won't," she hisses.
Inside, she's trembling. But Ruby just shrugs, and turns away.
The group of guests at the Marriott restaurant is considerably smaller than the group at the chapel. Jesse was surprised when Dustin invited him, since they've only known each other for a week, but Dustin seems to like him, so it's all good. The restaurant has been rearranged into one continuous table, in the shape of a boxy letter C. Jesse's got Brian two seats away, and an empty spot between them, reserved for Lisa. He hopes that he can make up for last night's dinner with this one. He hopes that she's okay.
The lighting in the restaurant is low, an ambient, warm orange with soft shadows. It's making Jesse feel horny. He'd never admit it, but even before his accident, he was never the kind of guy who would just drop his pants with a girl under the bleachers. He could have done it, but he never did. He likes candles, music, all that soppy shit. Still, he regrets all those opportunities for casual sex that he rejected. He wonders if Lisa will even be willing to go that far with him.
She isn't here yet. He's got a great view of the door, and every time it opens, he looks up.
Someone raps on the side of their glass, and everyone quiets. It's Jean-Robert's father, who stands up and raises his slender glass of champagne. He makes a toast in French, and it must be some real good stuff because all of Jean-Robert's family are wiping their eyes. Everyone claps, there are a couple more toasts, and then the grooms start making rounds. Bow-tied waiters bustle around, pushing trays lined with creamy vegetable soup.
Jean-Robert pulls out Lisa's chair. He starts a conversation with Brian, who has a basic grasp on French (he had a huge crush on a Quebecois girl two summers ago, and practically learnt the language so he could talk to her. It was the sad story of unrequited teenage love.)
"I have a question," Jean-Robert says, slowly and haltingly. "In H'english, de word for leenen is also a curse word, no?"
"What are you talking about?" Brian says. He isn't relinquishing his plate to the waitress, taking his time with the entrée, arugula salad.
Jean-Robert looks both ways before whispering, "sheet."
Jesse checks the door. Where is she, already?
"That's not a bad word," Brian says through a mouth full of lettuce and croutons. "You mean shit?"
Jean-Robert's browse creases. "It's the same, no?"
"No, no. Say 'shit.'" Brian takes a sip of water.
"Sheet," Jean-Robert says.
"No. It's more of an Ihhhh. Shihhhht."
"Sheht?"
"No!" Brian brings down his hand to the table. "Shit! Shit!"
The people around them cease conversation to stare. Brian's Adam's apple bobs up and down. "Sorry," he mumbles, picking up his fork.
There is a commotion at the front of the restaurant. Of course, it's Ruby Mitchell Kim sweeping in. Behind her are a jumble of guys, and among them, there she is: the girl of his dreams, her arms held close to her chest, her arresting eyes searching for him.
Jesse rolls up front to greet her, and Lisa leans down to kiss him.
"How are you doing?" he says, as he leads her to the table.
"I'm gonna be okay," she says bluntly. Whenever he's asked her about how she's coping with Carolyn's passing, she gives him the cold shoulder.
They stop at the sink outside the bathrooms. Lisa turns on the tap to wash her hands. "I know you think I'm being unfeeling," she says, reading his mind.
Jesse shakes his head. "Not at all. Everyone grieves in different ways."
Lisa turns off the tap and dries her hands. She takes his hand and laces her fingers through his, doing it for him because he can't. "I don't know how," she says quietly, and her voice breaks a little, a small crack where her emotions seep through. She takes in a shaky breath. "So far, I'm just trying not to think about it."
"Don't do that," Jesse says. "Trust me. It might work for a while, but… you have to let yourself be sad. Remember your teacher, and remember what she meant to you and how you'll miss her. I know it hurts. But you have to."
Lisa says nothing. Dustin saunters up to them, oblivious, and clamps a hand on both of their shoulders. "Are you two taking a room?"
Jesse blinks. "Sorry?"
"A hotel room," Dustin repeats. His cheeks are flushed and the top button of his shirt is open. "It's on me. I reserved a whole bunch on the sixth floor, for whoever wants."
"You can afford that?" Lisa says, aghast. "Oh, right. You're rich, all of you."
"I'm a famous journalist," Dustin says, shrugging modestly.
"I'm not rich," Brian comments, approaching them. He pokes Lisa so she should move over, and he turns on the water. "Reserve me a room," he says. Surveying the restaurant, his gaze falls on the group of girls congregating by the front desk. "Now all I have to do is find someone to share it with."
Lisa heads to the table, with Jesse at her heels. On the way, she stops suddenly, and he almost runs her over.
"Can we sleep together tonight?" Lisa says. Before Jesse can open his mouth, she continues quickly, "look, I know understand if you aren't ready for it, but-"
"Are you kidding?" Jesse says. "You can't imagine how much I want to do it with you."
Lisa smiles shyly. "We'd better reserve a room then. Jesus, how am I gonna sit through an entire meal now?"
Jesse laughs. Then he excuses himself to call Paul Garneau, his temporary PCA. He'll need some equipment brought over to the Marriott.
They kiss in the elevator, all the way up to the sixth floor. When the bell dings, Lisa staggers into hall with Jesse on her arm, both of them giggling at nothing but the wonder and anticipation of what is to come. She fumbles with the hotel key card, and once inside, takes in the room with one giant swoop- queen-sized bed, cream-coloured linen, lots of pillows, textured maroon walls. Jesse reaches for her arm, tugging at her, and she straddles him and holds onto his auburn locks and kisses him hungrily. Jesse begins to wiggle out of his jacket, when there is a knock on the door.
It's a man Lisa recognizes as Jesse's new carer. He's squat, with graying hair and deep crow's feet around his eyes. "Âllo," he says. He's clutching a plastic shopping bag.
Lisa steps aside to let him in, and shoots Jesse a questioning look.
"There are some stuff I need," Jesse says, looking thoroughly embarrassed. He scratches behind his neck. Lisa takes the bag from Paul.
"I will leave you two, eh?" Paul winks.
Jesse clears his throat. "Wait, but-"
"Can't we-"
"Paul, one second," Jesse says. He eyes the shopping bag nervously. "Maybe you should get me ready. I don't know, Lisa, but I think there are some things you won't want to-"
"I do want to," Lisa says. "You can trust me, Jesse."
Paul puts his hands on his hips, bemused. "Perhaps that is a good idea. 'Ow do you say it? Foreplay?"
"Out of the six English words he knows, that has to be one of them," Jesse says darkly.
"We'll see you later," Lisa tells Paul. Paul winks again, and backs away into the hall, the door clicking shut behind him.
"There should be a sort of ring in there," Jesse says, tripping over his words in his haste to get them out. "It goes over my- you know, so I can keep an erection. I've never-"
"Jesse." Lisa drops the bag onto the bed. She crouches in front of him, so that she's looking up at him, and presses a finger to his lips.
"Every part of you turns me on," she says. Deftly, she starts to unbutton his shirt. "So calm down, okay? We can do this."
"My diaper turns you on?"
Lisa smirks. She heaves Jesse onto the bed, and with her arms still around his back and his knees draped over her lap, she leans into his ear and says, "especially your diaper."
She sits him up, and Jesse shrugs out of his jacket and open shirt. He falls back against the pillows, and Lisa turns her back to him, lowering herself and dangling her zipper until she hears it click against his teeth. She hears the zip, and a gust of cool air travels down her back as her dress falls off her shoulders. Jesse licks at the skin around her pastel bra, and he bites at the straps, anxious for it to come off. Lisa reaches down and pulls her bra over head. His shoes, her shoes, they all go flying over the side of the bed. Jesse reaches up and tugs her panties down himself, his face creased in concentration. She is completely bare, hovering over him, her body laid out in the open, and Jesse looks like he's seeing paradise for the very first time. Lisa shimmies his pants down his legs, revealing knobbly knees and frail legs, thin from underuse. His privates are clothed in a disposable undergarment, held firmly on his hips with white straps. The tube from his catheter snakes out the top.
Jesse inhales sharply, and Lisa wishes he could understand the way she feels, and she wishes she could show him how much she loves him and his skinny, gaunt, beautiful arms and legs. She knows she's going to try.
After making sure that an absorbent pad is securely beneath him, Lisa climbs on top of him, lowering her face to his chest. He's propped up with pillows so he can see what she doing, and Lisa smiles mischievously, and plants kisses all down his chest and stomach. His skin is warm, pulsating beneath her with his shallow breaths. He's got that scent of pure man on him, mixed with the soft smell of clean skin. When Lisa's chin brushes material, she props herself on her elbows and glances up at Jesse, and he smiles, giving her the go-ahead.
Lisa peels the straps of his diaper slowly, hearing that scratchy noise and extending it in time, drawing out the anticipation. Somewhere low down inside her she's burning up, her body tingling and trembling. Her heart beats like a hammer, and although Jesse can't sweat, she can do it enough for the both of them. Lisa lifts the flap slowly, then tugs and pulls his diaper from beneath him. She strokes his penis and sucks at it gently.
Jesse, in a hoarse voice, says, "I'm hard," and they revel together in the beauty of it, of the intimacy and love-making that they will do the same way humans have for millions of years. Wetness leaks from Lisa's vagina and onto his leg.
Once Jesse is prepped, Lisa lowers herself, and then, he is inside her. Jesse whispers her name, again and again, in grunts or whispers as roaring euphoria floods them, riding like waves through their connected bodies. She must touch every inch of him, like an itch that must be scratched, so she explores his arms and his legs and over his waist with her fingers or her tongue.
"Come here," Jesse says, and she scoots forward. Then Jesse's tongue comes up into her, and oh, she's going to die, she's going to die. Every pressure point inside her sings, and when he lets her go she collapses beside him, and they kiss and kiss until their mouths are sore.
"You are perfect," Lisa says, closing her eyes and feeling the curl of his hair, the tenderness of his cheek against hers. "Don't you ever believe otherwise."
She holds his wrist against her beating heart, and they listen, together.
Eight AM, and already the car horns are blaring. New buildings lopped onto old ones, cool stone next to red brick, pine-green railings and colourful awnings. People talking in fast-paced, colourfully-pitched French. Quebec City in the morning.
Jesse's hair rustles as a bus whips past him.
"Sure you want to do this?" Brian asks for the third time, hands crammed into the pockets of his University at Buffalo sweatshirt.
"Yup," Jesse says. He stops at the curb of the sidewalk to check the street name, and then swivels his chair to the right and keeps going. He looked up the directions at the hotel and he's fairly certain he can remember them.
"So, who'd you sleep with last night?" Jesse says. He winces as he bumps over a patch of grass.
"You're only asking so I'll ask you about your hot sex with Lisa," Brian says, walking beside him. "But to answer you, I spent half the night flirting with this girl at the restaurant only to find out that she's asexual. And in a relationship."
"Sounds like an excuse, if you ask me," Jesse says.
"Please. No girl can resist this." Brian lifts his sweatshirt to show Jesse his perfect abs, as if Jesse doesn't know what they look like already.
"I think you're misunderstanding what 'asexual' means," Jesse says. Brian flops Jesse's hair into his eyes. Jesse protests and shakes it away.
But then he stops, right where he is, in front of a storefront with a sign that reads 'coiffure d'homme' in punky lettering. The barbershop has no steps, thankfully.
Brain snorts. "Okay, okay, I'll ask. How was she?" He holds open the door for Jesse to roll through.
"It was… God, it was amazing. The best sex I've ever had in my life."
"Oh, Jesse, please, let us hear all the gory details." Brian puts on a high-pitched falsetto voice. He plops into a seat by the waiting area.
"No, really. It was good. We talked about the accident, after."
"You told Lisa how I pushed you into the pool?"
"Jesus, Brian, not you too."
After his accident, Jesse had to deal with everyone's guilt complexes. He was with five guys when it happened, fooling around near the pool in his backyard and roughhousing as usual, except this time he ended up face down in the shallow end.
Afterwards, it seemed like everyone he knew took responsibility for what had happened to him. That's including his mother, the cleaning lady, and his grandmother, none of whom were even there at the time.
"It happened so fast," Jesse says, pulling up next to his friend. "I don't even remember what happened."
Brian shrugs. "Are you coming with me to New York?"
Jesse grins. "Hell, yeah. If the offer's still open."
"Great," Brian says, his face lighting up.
One of the barber's chairs becomes available, and Jesse rolls up to it. Brian doesn't even have to ask or count down to three; he simply leans forward for Jesse to drape an arm around his shoulder, and lifts him into the raised seat. The hairdressers busy themselves with their scissors and hairspray, and the clients stare into space in their effort not to stare.
Jesse hates it. He's always going to hate being the cripple, the guy whose eyes no one can meet, the guy whose very presence is the elephant in the room: Jeez, wonder what happened to him. The poor guy.
But right now, the terrible feeling melts away, just a little bit. As he watches Brian push his chair to the wall and strike up a conversation with the hairdresser, he thinks damn, I am the luckiest man alive.
It's been right in front of him all this time.
Brian appears beside him, looking pensive. "Are you sure you don't remember who pushed you in?"
Jesse frowns. "Dude, I said I don't. Give it a rest."
Lies, all lies. Of course he remembers. Someone had nabbed Brian's phone, and was holding it out of his reach, taunting him. It had been only a tiny push. Brian's elbow in Jesse's chest, not even seeing what he was doing, tumult all around them. That was all it took.
The hairdresser giggles at something Brian said. She answers back with a heavy accent, a touch of shyness in her voice. A spray of water tickles Jesse's forehead, and he relaxes as he hears the thick snipping of scissors, and Brian's best I'm-trying-to-impress-a-girl voice.
Some truths are best forgotten.
Lisa wakes up to an empty bed. She lets herself lie there for a few minutes, basking in memory of last night. Sleeping with Jesse was… she can't even put it into words. She'll have to pore over a dictionary to find the right ones, but even then, they may not be there.
She chuckles at her own melodrama, and texts Jesse. Then she gets dressed and goes downstairs for breakfast.
Jesse texts back that he'll meet her in ten minutes. Meanwhile, she picks up a Montreal Gazette newspaper that she finds lying on one of the couches in the lounge.
She opens to the first page, and her eyes widen.
When Jesse shows up, he's with Brian, and he's wearing a beanie- the one that she bought for him. Her heart beats just at the sight of him, and after saying hello she pulls his face toward hers and kisses him deeply.
Brian makes vomit noises, and Jesse leans back and scowls at him. "Grow up, Brian."
"Look at this," Lisa says breathlessly, remembering the newspaper. She holds it up for the two boys to see.
"Journalist awards?" Brian says, making a face.
"Read it," Lisa insists.
THE INTERNATIONAL REESE-MARTIN AWARD
The Reese-Martin Award, the most prestigious Journalism prize given to this day, was awarded to a Canadian journalist this year. The prize winner is globally recognized as one of the world's most impacting, far-reaching journalists, deemed worthy of the award by a panel of five previous prize winners.
This year's prize went to Dustin Hoffman, a Montreal-based journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Toronto Star, and numerous other publications across North America and Europe. Hoffman is well known for his educational pamphlets, made in association with…
"Well, fuck me," Brian says, scanning the article. "This is our Dustin?"
Jesse shakes his head. "Wow. And the guy can't even spell."
Lisa looks over the article again. By now, Dustin and Jean-Robert are on the way to the airport, where they'll be flying first class to Vegas.
Brain goes to get coffee, and suddenly Jesse's goofy smile drops. He rolls up to the table. "Pull off my hat," he tells Lisa.
She gets serious at the sound of his voice. Slowly, she tugs at the black beanie, and off it comes with almost no resistance. She gasps.
Jesse's ample waves of hair are gone, and all that's left is a thin layer of fuzz.
"I know you keep your hair short because of your teacher," Jesse says quickly, reaching for her hand. Lisa sits immobile, frozen in place.
"You said you don't know how to grieve," he continues. "Neither do I. No one does, really, but just know that I'm here for you. We can grow our hair back out together, whenever you're ready."
Lisa swallows, and rests her head on his shoulder.
"Say something," Jesse says softly, and she can feel the rumble of his words on his neck.
"I love you," Lisa says, as her eyes well with tears. Through them, she kisses him on the cheek, and she knows it's gonna be okay.
» THE END«
Labels: Lies All Lies
Lovis Johnson March 12, 2016 at 7:14 AM
Very romantic ending. Loved this story a lot. I hope you have more stuff like that in store for us :)
Gemini Sun March 12, 2016 at 4:01 PM
Thank you for your kind words. I'm currently throwing around some ideas, so we'll see...
blueskye March 12, 2016 at 10:39 PM
Oh I loved this story. Perfect ending. I just fell in love with Jesse. Thanks so much for sharing with us.
lynn c March 13, 2016 at 6:59 PM
I'm going to miss Jesse! Thanks so much for the great story.
Absolutely beautiful! Thank you so much for your story, I enjoyed it immensely!
You created realistic characters with their strengths and flaws who just grew on me... You also managed to address truly serious issues in the story and handled them so well. I also liked the way how well everything in your story was connected: for example, at one point you mention how important it was for Jesse not to cut his hair and in the end he has it cut for Lisa; and how the title of the story is explained in the final part of the story, etc. This shows how nicely you had thought everything through and it made reading especially enjoyable!
What do you think about writing a sequel because you already have so well-developed characters? :) If not a sequel, I would be really glad to read ANYTHING by you!
Thank you once again for sharing the story with us!
Gemini Sun March 17, 2016 at 7:48 AM
Thank you! I might do a short story featuring Jesse and Lisa, a kind of epilogue... Stay tuned!
Pepper March 19, 2016 at 9:23 PM
WOW--that was the most incredible story. Thanks so much for sharing it.
Thanks I'm glad you liked it!
Building Love chapter XIV
Building Love Chapter XV
How to Be Cool
Lies, All Lies: Part Two
Lies, All Lies Part 3
Lies, All Lies Part Four
Lies, All Lies Part Five
Margaret's Chance Ch. 6
For The Love Of Not Walking Chapter 10
Skin and Scars Chapter 10
Trapped, Part 2
Table of Contents - He's Not Mr. Perfect


text:
<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class PostsSeeder extends Seeder {

    public function run()
    {
        // Uncomment the below to wipe the table clean before populating
        DB::table('posts')->delete();

        $posts = array(
            ['id' => 1, 'title' => 'Task 1', 'subject' => 'task-1', 'status' => 1, 'completed' => false, 'description' => 'My first task', 'created_at' => new DateTime, 'updated_at' => new DateTime],
            ['id' => 2, 'title' => 'Task 2', 'subject' => 'task-2', 'status' => 2, 'completed' => false, 'description' => 'My first task', 'created_at' => new DateTime, 'updated_at' => new DateTime],
            ['id' => 3, 'title' => 'Task 3', 'subject' => 'task-3', 'status' => 3, 'completed' => false, 'description' => 'My first task', 'created_at' => new DateTime, 'updated_at' => new DateTime],

        );

        //// Uncomment the below to run the seeder
        DB::table('posts')->insert($posts);
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Colin Harrington
Colin Harrington is an educator, writer, and the Events Planner at The Bookstore in Lenox.
Articles by Colin Harrington
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Future Only Rattles When You Pick It Up' by David Giannini
Thursday, 9 May 2019 - What succeeds best is Giannini's elevated grasp of writing poetry that holds up the freedom and inventiveness of words, positioning words as Emily Dickinson might: spare, poignant and celebratory.
BOOK REVIEW: 'Dirt' by Denise Gosliner Orenstein
Saturday, 27 Apr 2019 - One day a one-eyed, pudgy Shetland pony appears when Yonder is out gathering rotting pumpkins and squash. Yonder discovers soon enough that the pony understands her without her having to speak and they instantly become friends for life.
BOOK REVIEW: 'daddy closet' by CD Nelsen
Monday, 2 Apr 2018 - The chapbook is a brilliant work of art in its way of revealing how seemingly fleeting events in our lives can have enormous impact on memory, leaving lasting impressions in spite of or because of the careless actions of others.
BOOK REVIEW: 'To Catch a Nazi' by Kenneth Markel
Sunday, 10 Dec 2017 - David Menard's mission is vengeful and deeply personal and he is finally given every chance to carry it out. The story involves the Israeli Mossad, the CIA and the help of many kindred spirits.
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Duration,' Dave Fromm's novel of lifelong loyalties
Wednesday, 15 Nov 2017 - The importance of bonds between friends from the past and the intriguing opportunities to rekindle what may have been left behind is a central theme in this novel by local author Dave Fromm.
BOOK REVIEW: 'Hellfire in Brick City: A Novel of Morality and Mortality'
Tuesday, 14 Nov 2017 - It would be unfair to say how this novel ends before the reader has had a chance to get involved personally, but this story does build to a potential fireball and the climax is at once unpredicted and perfectly crafted.
EDGECAST VIDEO: Wesley Brown on his new novel, 'Dance of the Infidels'
Wednesday, 20 Sep 2017 - The Bookstore in Lenox will be celebrating the publication of Wesley Brown's new novel and audio book, "Dance of the Infidels," on Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, at 5:30. Brown summons up the smoky clubs and gritty streets of a long-gone New York City, one that moved in the frenetic rhythms of jazz.
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction'
Sunday, 19 Jun 2016 - At last we have available a truly complete guide that opens the doors to world literature.
BOOK REVIEW: 'Flaubert and Don Quijote: How Cervantes influenced 'Madame Bovary'
Tuesday, 28 Jul 2015 - This is a wonderful new book: innovative, in-depth, lucid in its examination of the details of both Cervantes' and Flaubert's lives, and important in its recognition of the need to compare what more often would be read separately as great French and Spanish literatures.
Book Review: 'Mapping Shangrila,' essays on a world of mystery
Friday, 20 Mar 2015 - The Bookstore in Lenox will host a reading of "Mapping Shangrila," with editor and Bard College at Simon's Rock instructor Chris Coggins, on Sunday, March 22, at 3 p.m. He will present a slide show of photos collected in his travels and investigations in the various lands discussed in the essays. A book signing will follow the event.
Book Review: 'To the Village Square,' a history of the safe energy movement
Sunday, 21 Dec 2014 - The book is homage to the power of grass roots democracy, organized protest movements and speakers, who are dedicated to a safe and clean environment creating power that is responsible and safe for people everywhere.
God is love -- but get it in writing.
— Gypsy Rose Lee

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The ObserverBusiness
Huge rise in subsidies for Europe's farmers
Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sat 23 Sep 2006 19.11 EDT
Europe's farmers received a record €48.5bn (£33bn) in subsidies from the controversial Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2005, a jump of more than 11 per cent on a year earlier.
Although the European Union (EU) insists the CAP has been reformed, farm spending gobbled up almost half the EU's entire budget - 46 per cent - last year, according to new data released by the European Commission.
France, whose President, Jacques Chirac, has been a fervent defender of the CAP, was the largest beneficiary of taxpayers' money, with its farmers receiving more than €10bn (£7bn).
Jack Thurston, of the campaign group farmsubsidy.org, which calls for EU member countries to disclose how the money is spent, described the increase from 2004 as 'dramatic'.
'Farm subsidies are creeping towards half of all money spent by Brussels in the name of the EU. It is time European citizens knew where their money is going.'
Britain has repeatedly called for radical reform of the CAP, which was created to safeguard food security after the Second World War; but Chirac and then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder struck a deal in 2002 which will see subsidies continue rising until next year/. After that the budget will be frozen in real terms until 2013.
A spokesman for the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs said the CAP was 'increasingly out of step with the need for Europe to respond to the challenges of globalisation'.
New EU member states accounted for some of the rise in spending in 2005, but they still only get a fraction of the cash - Polish farmers received just €1.5bn, for example.
Agricultural subsidies have been the major sticking point in the stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks, and campaigners said the figures undermined the EU's argument that it has already made significant reforms to farm support.
'Rising CAP spending, and at this fast a rate, makes statements from Peter Mandelson that Europe is making substantial concessions at the WTO seem somewhat tongue-in-cheek,' said Matt Griffith, trade campaigner at aid agency Cafod.


text:
FeaturesNews
First look: The New Inspector Sejer novel
Today we got our hands on what looks to be some solid gold Nordic noir. Yes, Harvill Secker has sent us an early copy of The Drowned Boy, the latest by Norwegian writer Karin Fossum which is out 4 June. The cover is simple but enticing,…
Free books in February
Well, under Labour we had the credit crunch, and since then we've had five years of austerity under the ConDem coalition. We know things have been tight, tight, tight in the wallet department for hard working lovers of crime fiction. So we're going to help…
The Murder of Harriet Krohn
Written by Karin Fossum, translated by James Anderson — "This Inspector Sejer, the policeman who's leading the Hamsund murder case, hasn't had a single unsolved murder in his whole career. And he's over fifty. How about that?" The words, uttered by a daughter who is…
Written by Sander Jakobsen — The idea of the wicked preacher man is a powerful one in crime fiction and beyond – just think of Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. However, The Preacher is not about a Bible-thumping baddie. Thorkild Christensen, the unassuming…
Well, all my excellent colleagues here at Crime Fiction Lover have weighed in with their favourite books of 2013, and one thing I love about it is that everybody's tastes and ranges of reading are so different. Now it's my turn and, well, the choices…
Jeremy Megraw: Top five books of 2013
By Jeremy Megraw
OK, so you've decided to give the gift of crime this holiday. Blood-splattered wrapping paper, check. Crime scene tape ribbon, check. All that's lacking is a choice selection of books that your noir-loving loved one can hunker down with for a good holiday read. Well,…
NTN: The Stone Boy
By Andre
Written by Sophie Loubière, translated by Nora Mahony — Sophie Loubière won the Prix Lion Noir in France with this tricksy yet subtle psychological thriller. She has written several books but The Stone Boy is the first to be translated into English, so we're claiming…
CIS: Shroud for a Nightingale revisited
Written by PD James — Has it really been 42 years since this PD James novel came out, one of her best-known and most-loved works? Although it was her fourth book featuring poet and police detective Adam Dalgliesh, it was the first, and certainly not…


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Danske Bank to pay up to $16 million in total to overcharged customers
04 September, 2020, 02:15 pm
Last modified: 04 September, 2020, 02:22 pm
A Danske bank sign is seen on a bank's headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark October 22, 2019. REUTERS/Nikolaj Skydsgaard.
Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO) will compensate about 900 customers up to 100 million Danish crowns ($15.93 million) in total after overcharging them for investment products, it said on Friday.
The bank said last year that it had failed to inform customers it expected poor performance from its Flexinvest Fri investment product and continued to sell it to new customers after raising fees associated with it in 2017.
Saudi overtures to wary Biden team driven by worries over Iran, economy
EU executive criticises national plans for post-Covid revival
TikTok owner ByteDance launches Douyin Pay, its mobile payment service for China


Here, he shares the ten choices he thinks every woman should make, like owning a polka-dot Louis Vuitton wallet, personalized stationery, and more.
Marc Jacobs has always been fashion's cool kid—eternally adored in a supremely fickle world.
The designer celebrates the individual, especially women with a flair for artistic, even eccentric, self-expression. "I'm a bit of an exhibitionist," he says. "I think most people like attention.' Jacobs draws on street-style blogs and music (this season, the Oliver! Sound Track) for inspiration.
So what does Marc say we should all have?


text:
Parveen Kaur (born 19 October 1988) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for playing Christine in Beyond and scientist Saanvi Bahl in Manifest.

Early life
Parveen was born on 1988-10-19 and raised in Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada. She is of Punjabi ethnicity and a Sikh. At the age of 18, she moved to Toronto. She is a practitioner of yoga, hot yoga and mindfulness.

Career
Kaur only decided to pursue an acting career in her 20s after leaving high school early.
Kaur's first recurring role came in Guillermo del Toro's horror drama series The Strain in 2018, Kaur starred in the movie  Through Black Spruce   which premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Kaur starred as Saanvi for 4 seasons (44 episodes) of Manifest between 2018 and 2022.

Awards
Kaur received the 2017 MISAFF Star presented by ACTRA at the 6th annual Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival in Mississauga, Ontario.

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

21st-century Canadian actresses
1988 births
Actresses from Toronto
Canadian film actresses
Canadian actresses of Indian descent
Canadian people of Punjabi descent
Canadian Sikhs
Canadian television actresses
Living people

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
The Employment Situation of Immigrants and Natives in June 2020
Download a PDF of this Backgrounder.
Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center. Jason Richwine, PhD, is a public policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., and a contributing writer at National Review.
An analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of public-use data released earlier this month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that while there was some improvement in the number and share of native-born Americans and immigrants (legal and illegal) out of work, unemployment remains extraordinarily high. The unemployment rate improved slightly more for immigrants than for the native-born between May and June, but native unemployment at 10.7 percent remains a good deal lower than the 13.8 percent for immigrants. Despite the recent improvement, the 18.1 million unemployed immigrants and natives in June is still nearly three times what it was in June last year. While workers of every education level have experienced significant job losses during the Covid-19 shutdown, the situation for workers without a college education is especially bleak. It remains extremely difficult to justify the continued entry of new immigrants on the grounds of any "labor shortage".
Among the findings:
The unemployment rate for native-born Americans (ages 16-plus) was 10.7 percent in June. While lower than the 12.4 percent in May, it is still almost three times what it was before Covid-19 hit. Among immigrants (ages 16-plus), the rate was 13.8 percent in June, compared to 15.8 percent in May. The immigrant rate is still nearly four times what it was before Covid-19. (Figure 1, Table 1B)
The number of natives and immigrants unemployed declined by about 12 percent for both groups between May and June. Still, the number of natives and immigrants unemployed stood at 18.1 million, nearly three times what it was in February, before Covid-19 hit. (Figure 2, Table 1A)
In addition to the unemployed, there were 45.7 million working-age (16-64) native-born and 9.4 million working-age immigrants entirely out of the labor force — neither working nor looking for work. This is still 1.7 million higher for the native-born and 800,000 higher for immigrants than it was in February. (Table 2A)
We estimate the unemployment rate for legal immigrants in June was 13.3 percent, an improvement from the 15.6 percent in May. The rate for illegal immigrants was 15.1 percent, an improvement from 16.4 percent in May. (Our estimates by legal status are approximations only.) (Table 4B)
Among the less-educated:
The unemployment rate for the native-born (ages 25-plus) without a bachelor's degree was 10.8 percent in June, compared to 6.6 percent for those with at least a bachelor's. Among immigrants (ages 25-plus), 16.3 percent without a bachelor's degree were unemployed, compared to 8.9 percent with a bachelor's. (Table 1B)
The unemployment rate (combined immigrant and native-born) in many jobs typically performed by the less-educated has improved but remains high. (Table 3C)
28.5 percent for food preparers and servers
21.4 percent for maids and housekeepers
20.1 percent for retail salespersons
15 percent for construction laborers
7.2 percent for health care aides and nursing assistants
The Covid-19 shutdown has exacerbated the long-term decline in the labor force participation rate (share working or looking for work) of the less-educated. In June 2020, only 67 percent of working-age (16-64) natives without a bachelor's degree were in the labor force, down from 72 percent in 2007 and 76 percent in 2000. (Figure 5)
Focusing only on men who are of prime working age (25 to 54) still shows a long-term decline in labor force participation. The share of these native-born men without a bachelors in the labor force was 83 percent in June 2020, compared to 88 percent in June 2007 and 90 percent in June 2000. (Figure 6)
Data and Methods
This report uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine the employment situation in the United States as of June 2020, with particular attention paid to differences between immigrants and natives. Based on a monthly survey of 60,000 households, the CPS is the nation's primary source for the unemployment rate and other labor force statistics. The sample is weighted to reflect the actual size and demographic makeup of the civilian non-institutionalized population. The raw data used in this analysis comes directly from the Census Bureau, which collects the data for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.1
Key Concepts and Terms. The labor force includes all workers, plus non-workers who have actively looked for work in the four weeks prior to the survey. The standard unemployment rate, referred to by the BLS as the U-3 rate, is calculated by dividing the number actively looking for work by the number in the labor force. The labor force participation rate is simply the share of people in the labor force.
Definition of Immigrant. The foreign-born in the CPS are all persons who were not U.S. citizens at birth. They include naturalized citizens, permanent residents (green card holders), temporary visitors, guestworkers, and illegal aliens. We use the term "immigrant" to encompass all of these foreign-born individuals. In Tables 1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B we report figures separately for non-citizens and naturalized citizens. Tables 4A, 4B, 5A, and 5B report figures for legal immigrants and illegal immigrants separately.
Identifying Illegal Immigrants. Prior research indicates that most illegal immigrants are included in Census data. To determine which respondents are most likely to be illegal aliens, CIS first excludes immigrant respondents who are almost certainly not illegal aliens — for example, spouses of native-born citizens; veterans; people who have government jobs; Cubans (because of special rules for that country); immigrants who arrived before 1980 (because the 1986 amnesty should have already covered them); people in certain occupations requiring licensing, screening, or a government background check (e.g., doctors, pharmacists, and law enforcement); and people likely to be on student visas.
The remaining candidates are weighted to replicate known characteristics of the illegal population (population size, age, gender, region or country of origin, state of residence, and length of residence in the United States). CIS has previously used the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the source of those known characteristics; however, DHS data were last published in 2015. For more recent data, we turn to 2018 estimates from the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), including their estimates of educational attainment.2 The resulting illegal population, which consists of a weighted set of CPS respondents, is designed to match CMS on the characteristics listed above. However, we do not adjust the number of illegal immigrants for undercount in the CPS.3 Estimates for legal immigrants are calculated simply by subtracting estimated counts of illegal immigrants from the total immigrant population.
All of our findings that separate immigrants by legal status should be considered rough approximations only. Because we do not have information about the illegal immigrant population in 2020, we are forced to take the known characteristics of illegal aliens from 2018 and apply them to the new labor market data in 2020. The primary weakness of this approach is that it assumes the illegal immigrant population still has the same demographic profile (population size, age, gender, etc.) as it did in 2018.
Matching Published BLS Tables. In this report, all statistics covering the entire population, such as the headline unemployment rate, match those published by the BLS. However, the counts and percentages for sub-populations will in some cases be slightly different. The reason is that the Census Bureau adds "perturbations" to the public-use microdata to protect respondent confidentiality. Fortunately, the Census Bureau states that any differences between published figures and those calculated from the public-use data will be so small that they "fall well within the sampling variability associated with CPS estimates".4 In other words, there should be no meaningful difference between statistics calculated from the pubic-use data and those published by the BLS.
Finally, the figures in this report are not seasonally adjusted. Unadjusted figures are conceptually simpler and easier for other researchers to replicate.5 Also, the limited number of statistics on the foreign-born published in the BLS monthly "Employment Situation" reports are also not seasonally adjusted.
Potential Problems with the Data. The BLS reports a potential problem with the CPS for March, April, May, and June.6 First, the response rates in all these months were significantly lower than prior months. This increased the sampling error of the surveys for these months. However, "BLS was still able to obtain estimates that met our standards for accuracy and reliability," according to statement from the bureau. Second, interviewers who administered the survey miscoded some respondents as employed when they were on furlough temporarily laid off, or in similar situations. They should have been considered temporarily laid off and coded as unemployed. The number unemployed and the unemployment rate would be higher in March through June if these individuals were counted as unemployed. Neither the Census Bureau, which collects the data, nor the BLS has altered the data in response to these issues. Our analysis takes the raw CPS data as provided; and our results match published non-seasonally adjusted figures, with the caveats about perturbations in public use data discussed above.
1 "Basic Monthly CPS", U.S. Census Bureau, undated.
2 "State-Level Unauthorized Population and Eligible-to-Naturalize Estimates", Center for Migration Studies, undated.
3 In 2018, CMS estimated a total illegal immigrant population of 10.6 million, which includes an undercount adjustment for those missed in Census Bureau data. Our analysis of the CPS totals to 9.8 million illegal immigrants, reflecting a 7.5 percent undercount.
4 "Monthly Current Population Survey Public Use Microdata Files", U.S. Census Bureau, undated.
5 "Table A-7. Employment status of the civilian population by nativity and sex, not seasonally adjusted", U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2, 2020.
6 For a brief discussion of the problems with the CPS beginning in March, see the section entitled, "Coronavirus (COVID-19) Impact on June 2020 Establishment and Household Survey Data" at the bottom of the June Employment Situation press release. For a more detailed look at the issues see the statement issued by BLS on the matter for June.
Source: The Employment Situation of Immigrants and Natives in June 2020


This was the most memorable sunrise I've witnessed! A storm was rolling in from the west and the few of us gathered for sunrise were hoping that day would break before the rains came. The moment the sun peeked above the horizon, we were hit with incredible winds and sideways driving rain drops. It took my camera pack and a strong grip on the tripod to keep the camera steady, but I kept shooting as the skies lit up. It was a really special morning!


Sunset during July 4th weekend in Beach Haven, NJ.
I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to capture the sunrise while in LBI for Fourth of July weekend. There's a small jetty that captured my attention the last time I was in Beach Haven, so that's where I immediately went to.
I took this after the sun had already set in Beach Haven, NJ during Memorial Day Weekend. The warm tones and stillness of the water add to the feeling of calm.
Long exposure of the bay in Beach Haven, NJ during sunset over Memorial Day weekend.


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Cool Listings, Design, Interiors, Park Slope
This renovated Park Slope co-op, asking $995K, has its own Instagram account
By Emily Nonko, Wed, September 13, 2017
If there was a contest for most popular apartments in New York City, this one would be in the running as the winner. Apartment #3L at the Park Slope co-op 749 Union Street has been profiled in Lonny and Architectural Digest. It has its own Instagram account. And it was designed by Dan Mazzarini, the former director of store design at Ralph Lauren who went on to open his own design firm, BHDM. Envisioned as a black-and-white bachelor pad with a sleek, modern kitchen, the apartment is now looking for its next owner at an ask of $995,000.
Read more about the reno


This shirt is on sale right now for $4.99!! They are super long (which I love being tall) and super comfortable and cute! The links in this post contain affiliate links and I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you make a purchase after clicking on my link.


Flavius Valentinianus Augustus, also known as Valentinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 364 to 375. Upon becoming emperor he made his brother Valens co-emperor, giving him rule of the east while Valentinian retained the west.
Valentinian fought successfully against the Alamanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians. His brilliant general Count Theodosius defeated a revolt in Africa and the Great Conspiracy, a coordinated assault on Roman Britain by Picts, Scots, and Saxons. He rebuilt and improved the fortifications along the frontiers, even building fortresses in enemy territory.
He is often considered to be the "last great western emperor", and founded the Valentinian Dynasty, with his sons Gratian and Valentinian II succeeding him in the western half of the empire.
(7) Valentinian I 367-375 A.D.
(8) Valentinian I 367-375 A.D.
(9) Valentinian I 364-375 A.D.


Here's five hand-picked selections from the week of July 20, 2015. Find something else interesting? Feel free to leave it in the comments.
What Brands Can Learn from Customer Conversations on Social Media - Social Times. Monitoring the conversation on social networks is a great way to get insights that help you build a better product or service. This is a great summary of how/why.
Using Social Media Without Jeopardizing Your Career - Harvard Business Review. Whether it's your brand "voice" or your own personal social account, there is plenty of sound advice in this piece. Well worth a read.
NASA's Social Media Strategy Is Genius—And Kinda Maddening - Wired. Very interesting explanation of how complicated the "exclusivity" of NASA's Pluto photo was while it was posted only to Instagram. There are lessons here for brands, though, relating to social media as a source for news.
5 steps to social media-enriched conferences - Kansas City Business Journal. This article will help you think through the steps needed to make social an integral part of a conference or other event. Very detail oriented.
15 best digital marketing stats from this week - Ecoconsultancy Blog. A number of surprising, data-driven facts here relating to all things social. Many are presented in simple-to-follow infograph form.


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text:
6 Ways to Combat Public Health Emergencies With Google Cloud's Smart Analytics Tools
By Chris Lehman | Head of Engineering | Google Cloud
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the impact of data on infectious disease research and public health emergency response. Today, warehousing raw data is a common practice; however, the real value lies in the ability to apply smart analytics and distill real-time, actionable intelligence from extremely large data sets. In addition to aiding researchers' quests to develop treatments and vaccines, smart analytics empower public health officials and local governments to assess a population's risk of contagion, track an outbreak's spread, determine when, where, and how to allocate resources, and dispense timely and accurate information to concerned citizens.
Here are 6 ways that Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless smart analytics solutions give government agencies and public-sector organizations the tools they need to make data-driven decisions during COVID-19 and other public health emergencies:
1. Eliminate Overhead & Run Analytics at Scale
During a public health emergency, time is of the essence, and agencies' financial resources are stretched thin. Agencies that use traditional data warehouse solutions spend the overwhelming majority of their time (85%) on systems engineering work, leaving scant resources to devote to data analysis.
BigQuery, Google's serverless warehousing solution, eliminates this massive operational overhead. Data analysts can concentrate on deriving critical insights without having to concern themselves with the underlying infrastructure or overcome scaling, performance, or cost constraints. Automatic resource provisioning on a multi-tenant distributed architecture enables analysts to execute even the largest, most complex queries quickly; even as datasets grow from gigabytes to petabytes, BigQuery continues to scale literally without any additional effort from the user. It just works.
In addition to saving time, BigQuery also saves cash-strapped government agencies money. No upfront commitment is required — pay for only what you use. And, according to Enterprise Strategy Group, BigQuery's three-year TCO is 26% to 34% lower than cloud data warehouse alternatives.
2. Enable Everyone to Develop Machine Learning Models
The development of data-driven models is critical to combat the spread of infectious disease, improve care, and accelerate research efforts.
BigQuery ML abstracts away the complexity of traditional ML solutions and enables users to build and deploy ML models using only basic SQL. This allows users who understand the data but don't have extensive knowledge of coding or advanced algorithms to automate common ML tasks and hyperparameter tuning. BigQuery ML operates inside BigQuery, working on the data right at the source.
Through September 15, 2020, organizations can use BigQuery ML to train advanced machine learning models using data from the COVID-19 Public Dataset Program right inside BigQuery at no additional cost.
3. Cut Down on Prep Work When Integrating Other Agencies' Data
By integrating internal data sets with information provided by other government agencies and public health organizations, local public health and government agencies can identify infection, hospitalization, and mortality trends, which allows for educated resource planning. Unfortunately, before analysts can begin working with this data, it must be extracted, transformed, and loaded.
Cloud Data Fusion, Google's fully managed, cloud-native data integration service, significantly simplifies and speeds up this process. Analysts can choose from over 150 preconfigured connectors and transformations that support a wide variety of data sources and formats, or they can create custom connections and transformations that can be validated, shared, and reused across teams. Cloud Data Fusion's graphical, no-code interface enables analysts to deploy ETL/ELT data pipelines simply by pointing and clicking, then manage and explore data pipelines and data sets within a central control center.
4. Query Data Stored in Other Clouds Without Paying Egress Fees
Since about 93% of cloud-powered organizations use more than one public cloud, the data that analysts need to make decisions is scattered across multiple clouds. Historically, working with data across clouds has been extremely difficult, yet exporting data incurs data transfer fees, also known as egress fees. These fees are quite high, typically ranging from USD $0.05 to $0.20 per GB. Additionally, analysts must wait for the data export to complete before the information can be loaded and analyzed.
BigQuery Omni, currently available in private alpha, solves this problem by allowing GCP customers to query data stored in GCP, AWS, and (coming soon) Azure without having to move or copy data and pay egress fees. By decoupling compute and storage functions, BigQuery Omni's query engine runs the necessary compute on clusters in the same region where the data resides. There is no need to move or copy raw data out of the other public cloud, perform data prep, manage clusters, or provision resources. All computation occurs within BigQuery's multi-tenant service, within the region where the data is located.
5. Make Insights Easily Accessible to all Decision Makers
Most of the decision makers at government agencies and public health organizations are not data scientists, yet they are tasked with making high-stakes, data-driven decisions. Looker democratizes data analytics by bringing the power of BigQuery to the entire organization using an intuitive self-service analytics platform that makes it simple to describe data and define analytics, giving everyone in the organization a consistent and reliable picture of conditions on the ground. Using Looker, anyone in the organization can analyze, explore, and create visualizations, then share them with a simple link.
By combining BigQuery and Looker, Commonwealth Care Alliance (CCA) built an analytics data architecture to deliver valuable information and predictive insights to its clinicians. When the COVID-19 outbreak began, the team was able to build COVID-19 monitoring dashboards within a day, then integrate COVID-19 information into existing clinical dashboards. As the pandemic evolves, CCA rapidly iterates its dashboards so that clinicians can utilize the most current information to update and guide data and care strategies.
HCA Healthcare and SADA combined BigQuery with Looker, in addition to a variety of other GCP tools, to build the National Response Portal (NRP), which collects COVID-19 data and makes it easily accessible to healthcare providers and policymakers. Through this centralized platform, decision-makers can view data on critical metrics such as case and death counts, as well as advanced, ML-based predictions for cases, deaths, and hospital admissions. Data is collected directly from hospitals as well as public data sources, with a special emphasis on the impact of public policy and behavior on the spread of the disease.
6. Use Streaming Analytics to Respond in Real Time
As COVID-19 has proven, public health emergencies move fast, and organizations may have real-time data streaming in from multiple sources, including social media activity, websites, and mobile apps. Analyzing this data in real time can provide agencies with valuable insights into metrics such as hospital capacity, emergency call center volume, and compliance with social distancing and other health mandates. Agencies can also gauge public sentiment and design outreach programs.
GCP's streaming analytics tools enable organizations to capture immediate insights from large-scale real-time data streams. Resource provisioning is automated and abstracted, so analytics are accessible to data analysts as well as data scientists.
Organizations can use Pub/Sub to ingest and analyze hundreds of millions of events per second, from applications or devices located virtually anywhere; leverage BigQuery's streaming API to directly stream millions of events per second into their data warehouse for lightning-fast, SQL-based analysis; or deploy more responsive, efficient, and supportable streaming pipelines with Dataflow. Dataflow, based on the open source Apache Beam project, is especially powerful because it provides a harmonized interface for working with both batch and streaming data.
During an infectious disease outbreak, combining historical data with real-time and forecast reporting helps public health and government authorities to allocate resources and save lives. GCP's smart analytics tools give authorities easy access to the most current and accurate information, enabling them to make critical data-driven decisions.
Upcoming #SADASays Post-Session Recaps: Week 5
To learn more about generating instant insights from data at any scale with a serverless, fully managed analytics platform, be sure to check out SADA's Next OnAir post-session recaps on Thursdays. Here's what's coming up on August 13th:
#SADASays With Chris Lehman & Gautam Pandya – Post-Keynote Commentary
Join SADA's Chris Lehman, Head of Engineering, and Gautam Pandya, Senior Data Engineer, as they discuss the Week 5 Next OnAir Keynote: What's New and What's Next in Smart Analytics.
#SADASays With Gautam Pandya & Ankit Mukhija – Post-Session Commentary
Listen in as SADA's Gautam Pandya, Senior Data Engineer, and Ankit Mukhija, Data Engineer, discuss Building a Petabyte Scale Reporting Pipeline on GCP from Week 5 of Next OnAir.
#SADASays With Ankit Mukhija and Prakash Gunasekaran – Post-Session Commentary
Listen in as Ankit Mukhija and Prakash Gunasekaran, Data Engineers at SADA, discuss What's New in BigQuery, Google Cloud's Modern Data Warehouse from Week 5 of Next OnAir.


text:
When a "thank you" isn't enough
Though marathon and heated debates are nothing new to the members of the Students' Legislative Council, one is brewing that will hit a little closer to home for its members.
Under the current system, any Students' Union commissioner is eligible for a maximum of $300 per month, awarded at the discretion of the Vice-President of the portfolio. At the Jan. 15 SLC meeting, some commissioners voiced concerns about possible conflicts of interest in this arrangement.
"There is a general feeling among commissioners that you have to stay on the good side of the VPs, because they are the ones who control their pay," said External Commissioner Nick Vuckovic. "Under the current system, it's almost as if we are more employees of our executives than we are elected officials representing the students."
The issue has not historically been a problem, however some believe that it would be best to eliminate the potential for abuse.
"If you have problems like last year, with commissioners forming a shadow cabinet, and talk of impeachments, there could have been problems when the same people who you're speaking out against are the ones who determine your salary," said Events Commissioner Ian Thorner.
Other commissioners feel the concerns are needless.
"It's like any other workplace issue," said Events Commissioner Oliver Ho. "If you have a problem with your supervisor, you have to take it up with them. The process is pretty objective. All the executives meet to review the remuneration for each commissioner."
Vuckovic and Thorner are researching alternative methods of renumeration.
"Remuneration should be put into the hands of a neutral body," said Operations and Finance Commissioner Mark Counsell. "The SU does have a human resources manager on staff who would be able to handle it."
"Having this in the hands of someone independent from SLC would encourage more impartial debate," agreed Vuckovic.
There is also some concern that the amount of the honouraria may be insufficient for the time invested by the commissioner.
"In order to receive the maximum of $300 per month, a commissioner is expected to work at least 20 hours a week," said Counsell. "That works out to only $3.75 an hour."
Others don't believe that the amount that commissioners are paid is a problem.
"The honouraria wasn't intended to pay commissioners minimum wage," explained Ho. "This is a volunteer position, and the honouraria is just a token sum of money to say thank you for your time. Remuneration is just the money, there are other benefits that commissioners receive such as use of the SU office space and occasional access to shows [in the ballroom]."
Thorner and Vuckovic plan to readdress the issue at the Jan. 29 SLC meeting.
Published January 24, 2002 By Masoud
Throwing a handgranade at the crotch of journalism


text:
Casino Money
County not betting on casino revenue
By TOM GIAMBRONI/Staff Writer
LISBON - Columbiana County could receive $5.2 million a year in gambling tax revenue resulting from the recently passed state Issue 3, with $2.1 million of that going to local school districts.
These figures came from an analysis of the state ballot issue passed by voters in the Nov. 3 election, which allows placing casinos in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo. The analysis was performed by the group pushing the ballot issue.
County Commissioner Penny Traina was provided a copy of the analysis at a late September meeting of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio. According to the analysis, the casinos would generate an estimated $651 million in tax revenue in 2012, with the money to be distributed among every school district and all 88 counties. State government would also receive a share of the proceeds.
County schools would reportedly receive $2.1 million, with Columbiana County commissioners getting the remaining $3.1 million.
Traina remains skeptical, pointing to what occurred in the early 1970s when the lottery came to Ohio. The tax revenue generated by the lottery was to go for education but there ended up being no real net gain, as the state legislature eventually began using the new funding to take the place of existing school funding.
"A concern is are we going to supplant revenue (received from the state) or is it going to supplement it," she said.
But if the projections hold true, Traina said they would obviously be thrilled to have an extra $3.1 million to work with every year.
"Oh, gosh, it wouldn't be like we would spend it all, but it certainly would help cushion the (budget) shortfalls we experience every year," she said. "We would continue to be conservative in how we spend it, but it would give us flexibility."
The extra money would come at a time when county revenue from the sales tax and other sources has begun to drop due to the lingering recession. It would also provide commissioners with some extra money they could use as matching funds needed to secure state and federal grants for economic development projects.
But Traina said commissioners would still be careful how they spent any extra money, mindful of the need to avoid putting the county in precarious situation if the tax revenue declined or dried up.
"Just because you have that extra revenue doesn't mean you should spend it," she said.
Issue 3 may not survive in its current form, however. Gambling opponents are preparing a ballot issue of their own for the May election that would address what they say are weaknesses in Issue 3.
tgiambroni@mojonews.com