Category — responsibility

Vanessa Knight, the Director of Events and Student Life at Kwantlen, in collaboration with Ashley Fehr (the Chair and Director of Academic Affairs at Kwantlen) recently wrote a piece regarding the availability of late night transit out of downtown Vancouver which really annoyed me.

As a recap, Ms. Knight is miffed that TransLink did not run transit later than usual on Halloween night while she and her “posse” were out “getting their drink on”. Apparently sobering up in the wee hours of a cold November morning while dressed in a slutty, cold-weather-inappropriate costume kind of sucks.

Ms. Knight also complains that TransLink is more concerned with impressing visitors for the Olympics than its own citizens (and unfortunately, that’s probably true) and that McDonald’s has more sense because they stay open late to take advantage of all the drunk people with the munchies.

I don’t disagree with the assertion that public transit should be available late at night for people too inebriated to drive – that’s one of the great things about public transit – but how late is late enough?

Vancouver, a city that tags itself as “world class” (and don’t get me started on that misnomer), has transit that stops running pretty early considering how late the night life in downtown Vancouver runs. Any city that is truly “world class” (I’m looking at you Berlin) has a 24-hour transit system in place – or at least one that runs until 2 or 3 a.m.

And let’s face it; a cab ride from downtown Vancouver to say Burnaby, Surrey or Port Coquitlam etc. can get pretty expensive – and that assumes you can find a cab driver who will take you anywhere if you’re drunk. Most cabbies, quite reasonably, don’t want drunk people in their car.

That being said, TransLink’s operating hours are not exactly a secret. TransLink didn’t just spring this on an unsuspecting public for Halloween – the hours are clearly posted on their website along with maps of every route and time tables for every single stop. Their website isn’t easy to navigate (the maps are hard to get to), but the information is there.

Perhaps the reason TransLink doesn’t run later isn’t just that they don’t care about the citizens of Vancouver, or that they are financially constrained but, perhaps they don’t wish to be perceived as supporting “getting your drink on” at clubs. I bet they also don’t want to clean up the resulting mess of a bunch of drunks with food from those captains of industry at McDonald’s off the bus seats and floors.

Another good reason for transit not to run late: TransLink performs maintenance on buses and train lines at night to ensure that everyone gets a safe ride during their hours of operation. It seems TransLink is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Terminate service at 1 a.m. – people complain. Run transit 24-hours and do the bare minimum for maintenance and repairs – people would complain.

Knowing that Ms. Knight, perhaps you should have planned your night out a little better. And that goes for the “other 200 people” you mentioned and the “hundreds of people trapped downtown” every Friday and Saturday night. You could have done any of the following before headed out dressed as a “slutty version” of anything:

• Rent a hotel room together.
• Share a cab to the closest house and crash.
• Plan your time accordingly and make sure you’re on the last bus home.

These ideas are not beyond your intelligence.

Just for the record, I find it very hard to believe that the same people get “trapped” downtown every weekend. Is their ability to remember when the buses stop running hampered by the amount of alcohol they consume? I could see that happening once or twice, but every weekend? Give me a break – if that’s really the case, then those hundreds of people are morons who drink too much.

I suppose your next argument would be cash flow – but, if you can afford to pay cover charges at clubs and pay more to get drunk at said clubs; you can afford to share the cost of a hotel room or a cab.

Your “bleary eyed $2.50” is hardly an inducement for incurring the extra expense of running transit an hour later.

I’ve seen drunken people on transit here – it’s not pretty: loud, obnoxious, reeking of booze (and, in one case, urine) and a river of vomit under the seats. I sure didn’t envy the poor driver who had to hose down and disinfect the bus that night. I wonder if he appreciated those party-goers $2.50?

Your right to pass out on the bus, be a drunken nuisance, or throw up on yourself does not trump TransLink’s policy of providing their employees with a safe and puke-free environment in which to work.

Ms. Knight, as the Events and Student Life Director for the Kwantlen Student Association, couldn’t you find something more important and pressing to write about? This article – written in association with your position at Kwantlen, gives the impression that being inebriated and unable to get home is part of the routine for Kwantlen students. Also, as someone who is in charge of events and student life, you do a poor job of planning your own events and life if you can’t manage to catch a bus out of downtown by 1 a.m.

I’m even more surprised that the Chair and Director of Academic Affairs thinks this is an appropriate story to have associated with Kwantlen.

How would you feel about a $2.50 donation towards finding something resembling journalism at Kwantlen?

The signs are all there: irrationally crabby, moody, easily annoyed and withdrawn.

I need a vacation.

My first thought upon realizing this was “A vacation from what exactly?”

Let’s face it, I have a pretty sweet life. I have a fantastic (and cute!) fiance who has been extremely supportive and encouraging in my quest to run my own business and do what I like for a living. He is my best-friend. We live in a nice apartment, we have lots of books and toys to amuse ourselves with and we eat like kings most nights.

But, amidst all this happy “we”, a canker is blossoming.

I need time alone. I need to get away from our nice apartment, away from my best-friend, away from our toys and routines. I need to regain my sense of space and self. I want to come home with a sense of eagerness and come back to our life with the ability and renewed desire to participate in it fully.

I felt guilty for wanting it, for needing it – I questioned myself about it endlessly. Do I love Joe less if I need to be alone? Does this mean that I’m a selfish person? Does my need to sprawl out across the whole bed without running into anyone supersede my responsibilities to our relationship?

The answer to all those things is no.

I discussed everything with Joe and I should have known that this would be his response: “You should go – a couple of days of doing nothing by yourself will be good for you.”

Rilke said it best:

“I consider the following to be the highest task in the relation between two people: for one to stand guard over the other’s solitude. If the essential nature of both indifference and the crowd consists  in the nonrecognition of solitude, then love and friendship exist in order to continually furnish new opportunities for solitude.”

My thoughts about love and relationships have changed drastically over the past two years. Yet, there is still this nagging voice in my head (the product of too many romantic films and novels) that needing to get away, alone, from your regular life for a few days was disaster in the making. That real love means merging together as one person forever and ever, it means being a mirror for the other, it means bringing them into your fully-realized world where you entertain them with endless delights and teach them how to live within you.

Now I understand fully that those perceptions are all garbage.

I don’t want to submerge myself in someone else’s personality (nor do I want them submerged in mine). I cannot be anyone’s mirror. I refuse to let some half-finished, disorderly mess of a person come and live in the internal world I’m still building for myself because they find it easier than building their own world.

I find myself agreeing with Rilke again:

“[Young people] (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment…:And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future?

And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities…No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are life-preservers of the most varied invention…society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it and easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.”

Before now I had simply withdrawn deeper into myself to come to the solitude I need to be happy. Now I know that Joe and I can create space for the other to live in and leave out all the guilt that is supposed to be associated with needing that space.

So I booked my two day/two night trip to Victoria, BC (I got an amazing deal with Pacific Coach Lines) and that’s that.

Two days of keeping my own counsel and focusing on my own inner needs will go a long way to regaining and preserving my happiness!

Back in July, I wrote a post called To hell with condoms – get a vasectomy! in response to an article I’d read in Details magazine.

To recap that post: The article talks about the joys of free-wheeling sex with no need for condoms since a guy who’s had a vasectomy can’t get anyone pregnant. The article then goes on to give details of a couple of schmucks who think women are essentially crazy bitches who want nothing more than to oops an unwilling guy into fatherhood.

My response was that the writer of the article was irresponsible for failing to mention that vasectomies are pretty damn good at preventing pregnancy, but not STDs. I was also a little horrified that the article seems to support unsafe sex with multiple partners – “swinging from the chandelier sex” – with no mention of ensuring both/all participants safety.

Anyway, since that post went up I’ve had a lot of comments on it (well, for my blog it’s a lot of comments) and as of today that post has been viewed over 800 times.

In the last month, here are the search terms used to find that post (and my comments in italics):

• how old you have to be to get a vasectomy (in Vancouver, most clinics seem to think 30 is a good age)
• lied about vasectomy to be promiscuous (way to spread disease and cause unwanted pregnancies jerk)
• dating a man who’s had a vasectomy (well, you’re unlikely to get pregnant)
• vasectomy std condom
• do you still need to use a condom if you’ve had a vasectomy (you do if you’re worried about STDs)
• pregnant condom vasectomy
• vasectomy for 23 year old (I’d wait a little longer – but that’s just me)
• can a woman become pregnant after her man has had a vasectomy (less than 1% chance)
• should i get a vasectomy (Google is not a Magic 8 Ball – talk to your doctor)

I think what worries me most is that people have the idea that vasectomies put an end to STDs. As though the inability to get a woman pregnant also bestows magical, disease-repelling powers. This is most certainly false.

I’ve noticed too that not one of the search terms used to find that post since it went up in July has had anything about getting tested for STDs. Not one.

If you’re not sure about yourself – get tested. If you’re worried about catching one from your partner, get tested together.

A lot of people will say “But, I’m in a long-term monogamous relationship! I haven’t got a disease – and neither does my Significant Other!”

And if you both came to that relationship as virgins – then yeah, you’re probably safe. But if you didn’t, if you’ve had other partners and had unprotected sex with any of them or had some random one-nighter where you’re not sure if you were safe or not then getting tested is a good way to set your mind at ease.

I figure it’s a way of being respectful of yourself and your partner to say “I’m no angel but I know I want to have something serious with you – so I’m getting tested to make sure nothing I’ve done in my past affects our future together.”

As for screwing around with random people – if that’s your thing then be prepared to be safe about it. Condoms don’t take up a lot of space. Put one in your jacket pocket or your purse – even if you’ve had a vasectomy or have been told that you’re safe because he had a vasectomy.

I probably seem like a pushy bitch when it comes to condom use – but I feel very strongly about it.

I also want to address the most recent comment on the July post from JR.  JR said that condoms “have a failure rate of 10-15%” and that vasectomies only have a “failure rate of 0.1%”.

Let’s get something cleared up about the failure rate of condoms: ‘typical’ use of condoms has a failure rate of  10 to 18%. Typical use means you are NOT using the condoms properly. Perfect use of condoms has a 2% failure rate and coupled with spermicides and other contraceptives that rate falls further.

‘Typical’ use of condoms includes:

• Uncovered contact with your partner before putting on a condom (pre-ejaculate contains sperm!).
• Not rolling the condom down the entire length of the penis.
• Staying inside your partner after ejaculation and allowing the penis to become flaccid.
• Not holding/securing the condom as you pull out of your partner.
• Not washing yourself thoroughly after removing the condom.
• Improper storing of condom (in wallet, direct sunlight etc.).
• Tears in the condom from removing it from the packet (i.e., with teeth, sharp fingernails etc.).
• Using oil-based lubricants with the condom (oil breaks down the latex).
• Using a very old condom (they can dry out and break down even in the packet).
• “double-bagging”  (i.e., using two condoms at the same time) this actually increases the risk of condom failure.

‘Perfect’ use of condoms is making an effort to NOT do the things on the above list – and even then, you have as much as a 2% chance of sex leading to an unplanned pregnancy.

As for vasectomies, JR is correct – there is a less than 1% chance of failure. Though, men must be cautioned that the rates of success do vary slightly depending on the surgical technique used and the surgeon himself.

I think vasectomies are pretty great at preventing pregnancy – it’s the closest you can get to a guarantee aside from abstaining (and what fun would that be?) – but a vasectomy DOES NOT prevent you from giving or receiving sexually transmitted diseases.

So, just to recap: I am NOT against vasectomies. I am against unprotected sex with multiple partners – vasectomy or not! – and I think that Details magazine was remiss in not addressing this in their article.

And JR, if you’re reading this, you should really refrain from identifying with truly “thoughtful and caring” men if you’re going to say women are “dumb” and refer to us as “stupid hormone ravaged PMS’ing c**ts!”