Episode 4

Doing it our own way

Slowly, the end of the summer camp is approaching. Traditionally, there is always a competition during the last week. This year’s theme is difficult and exciting at the same time: “Love can’t make you sick – or can it?”
The theme causes a lot of confusion, and the camp supervisors help the young people by telling them about the competitions of previous years. Last year’s theme had been “Don’t play with your life” – equally difficult and fascinating.

Now, what is this competition about?
The young people in the camp are supposed to invent and design creative, funny or thought-provoking posters or films.  The necessary material and technical equipment is provided. The young people are working in groups of four to six and have a week in which to prepare.. In the end, three winners are selected, and the other young people don’t come away empty-handed either at the Farewell Party.

Thelma, Natalya, Paolo and Max are racking their brains over this year’s theme. They soon agree that the subject must be sexually transmittable diseases. Natalya has overcome her “acne depression”, as Thelma calls it, long ago and offers the first idea, a song with lyrics that  make Max blush: “Bad girls are fun, but the gonococci quickly come!” “No?” Natalya looks around. “Ah, no, this is better: Everybody is anxious, about AIDS and syphilis!” Roguishly, Natalya winks  from under her hair. “Or even : Better do it with a condom, than become Mum and Dad at random!” Thelma is clutching her belly with laughter, while Max is blushing more deeply with every sentence. Paolo looks rather self-conscious, as inventing these kind of sayings are usually his role. But after a while they all laugh and rhyme around wildly. They are aware however that they won’t win the contest with these kinds of ideas. Max has no better idea than to write a modern fairy tale, and Thelma admits that she is not really creative in that direction. Paolo wraps himself in silence.

Therefore Max, Thelma and Natalya are very surprised when Paolo  arrives late for their meeting on the veranda of the old villa the next day with a roguish smile on his face, and announces: “I have something that will solve our problem!” Under the curious gaze of his friends he pulls a CD out from under his jacket. “I worked a little bit on Eva, she is  in the tent next to you girls, and the other day she showed me last year’s winner when her older sister was in the camp. And because I am such a nice guy, she lent me this until tomorrow!” Thelma tries to take the CD out of his hands, but Paolo holds it tightly. Thelma raises her eyebrows. “And now we look at it with our laser eyes and read what’s on it?” she asks mockingly. Paolo is taking a laptop out of his bag. “They also lent you this?” Natalya grins. “Of course!” Paolo puts the CD into the laptop and starts the film. When the short film ends, the four friends stay unusually quiet for a while. They are impressed. “Don’t play with your life”, Max murmurs quietly. “We could hand in this film for the contest,” suggests Paolo. “Yeah, what a super idea – the same thing twice,” Natalya looks at him sympathetically. “And what does the film want to tell us?” asks Max who is mulling over its content. This question provokes  a lively discussion, and it becomes  quite clear that they all have only a superficial knowledge of the subject.
“Did you know that AIDS can be transmitted by kissing?” Paolo asks. “Oh no, that’s nonsense,” replies Natalya. “You only get AIDS when you have unsafe sex.” And Thelma adds: “But the probability that you get infected is not very high.”

“But even if you get infected, “Max remembers, “Some medication against AIDS has been developed. So now AIDS can be cured.” Natalya does not agree. “We have never heard about this in Romania, and we have a lot of people with the HIVvirus in our country.” - “Before, in my parents’ generation, AIDS didn’t exist.”  Paolo adds, “My father told me that they didn’t know anything about condoms. And he should certainly know, because he was the greatest gigolo of Calabria!” Max is astonished: “Like father like son.” Natalya can’t suppress a giggle. Thelma looks at Paolo with big, round eyes. “But then, where does the disease come from?” Max asks and finds that everyone is looking perplexed. “We don’t seem to know very much,” says Thelma, summing up.

Paolo has had enough. “Listen, we can’t do something about AIDS again. We don’t know much about it, and besides, the subject won the first prize last year. Let’s think about other diseases that you can get, or let’s do something completely different!”
“How do you mean, something completely different?” The others don’t understand what he’s getting  at.

He explains: “Yeah, see, they do this competition every year. Everybody comes up with some nice ideas about AIDS, syphilis or other diseases, about which we should have some knowledge but haven’t, as we have just noticed. But it really gets on my nerves that we only talk about these things when someone from outside makes us, I mean, the supervisors here in the camp, or the media, the television, the newspapers. Do you understand?”

The others look confused. “Not really,” says Natalya, and Max and Thelma agree.
Paolo tries harder. “See, I don’t want to make a movie like last year. This one here is far too professional anyway, and we wouldn’t have any chance, given the fact that we are already too late anyway. Why not do something on the subject of:  we only start to think about things when the media try to make us do so? You get it now?”

Paolo looks questioningly at the small group and continues: “The message I want to send is: Let’s look at it ourselves!” Max, Thelma and Natalya stand in front of Paolo with open mouths. What he says is not complicated but turns everything upside down .Thelma is very impressed: never has she seen Paolo like this during the last weeks – so excited, so committed. Enthusiastically she agrees with him: “Yes, Let’s look at it ourselves! That’s a motto I like! If we can’t win the competition, then why not go down in history as having the best outsider idea ever?” Thelma and Max nod and immediately share their first ideas. The ice is broken, they start  work.

Movie

Don’t play with your life

Paolo is unusually excited: Today there will be the announcement if they won anything in the competition or not, and if, as Natalya says, they won a “special award for missing the point in an especially ingenious way”, or if they failed completely. Apart from that, Paolo is very happy that Thelma was so enthusiastic about his idea. Without her, he would have never had this idea, and without her he wouldn’t have cared so much and wouldn’t have put so much effort – he knows himself well enough to be sure of that. Paolo thinks about his own words and how difficult it had been to explain it to the others: "Look, I don’t want to make a film like for example the one from last year. That one is way too professional for us. We wouldn’t have the slightest chance, the more so as we are already so much behind time. If we don’t want to make a film, then let’s do something about the subject that we only start to think about something when the media want us to do so."

"Exactly," Paolo affirms again in his mind. That was the crucial point, and now it is important that the jury also gets the point: Why do we as teenagers always let ourselves be pushed on that kind of subjects only from the outside? Why do we only deal with the subjects that others set for us?

			Everything clear? No? Then read some helpful hints and information here. This will make it easy for you. The Hints and Info section also open in a new window, so you will have everything within your view. Press here for the Hints & Info section about sexually transmitted diseases!

 

Hints & Info

Skin is an important sensory organ for humans: it routes sensory perceptions to the brain. In sexual encounters, sensory perception plays an important role. Touching each other creates feelings of lust and satisfaction in various ways.

If in petting without intercourse, oral or anal sex or vaginal intercourse, sex always means skin contact between two people and usually the exchange of body fluids like semen, vaginal fluid or even blood. Sexual encounters in their different forms are exciting, but can also lead to infection with a disease. This kind of diseases is called “sexually transmitted diseases (STD)” or “sexually transmitted infections (STI)”. Among these are e. g. infections with chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, hepatitis B, herpes, genital warts and HIV / AIDS.
These diseases are caused by germs (mostly viruses or bacteria), that can be transmitted in any kind of sexual contact by the mucosa of the sexual organs or (less often) the mouth.

More information here: Definition, Transmission and Diseases.

Most sexually transmitted diseases become noticeable by unpleasant symptoms in the genital area or around the mouth: the skin changes, you may observe discharges, pain, itching or burning. Sometimes you may not notice this immediately, and thus we may have and spread an infection to other people unknowingly.
This can be rather awkward for yourself and your partner/s. In this, it is important to know that sexually transmitted diseases can cause irreparable secondary damages, like e. g. sterility (i.e. the inability to reproduce), chronic diseases or the life-threatening general immunodeficiency (AIDS), an illness that makes the body defenceless against all sorts of germs.

More Information here: Consequences and Myths.

Who knows one's body and who knows about sexually transmitted infections, how they are treated and how one can protect oneself, can enjoy sexuality without consequences for one's health and one's partner's health. Sexually transmitted diseases can be avoided through Safer Sex, above all the proper use of condoms. Also, there are vaccines against some diseases in the meanwhile.

More Information here: Protection.

But if you should catch an infection anyway, please be alert when you notice the first symptoms, take them serious, talk to your partner and see your doctor. In many of these diseases it is true that, if you notice them and have them treated early, the chance of healing is very good.

More Information here: Treatment.

Catching a sexually transmitted infection is something that can happen to everyone – it is not a reason for shame. If you look for information and protect your partner/s by practising Safer Sex, you can avoid sexually transmitted diseases and enjoy sex untroubled.