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Most people remember their first time, even though sometimes they might not want to.
For a 17-year-old boy on the precipice of becoming a man, it was a setup by his dad with an amorous older woman.
For a 26-year-old actor/musician, it was rape at the hands of his wrestling coach.
For a 61-year-old woman, it was an alcohol-induced blackout before a Beatles concert she missed.
All true stories, all told candidly and voluntarily and then converted to comic-book format. About a dozen adorned the walls of the 2006 Seattle Erotic Art Festival as part of "The Virgin Project" by local graphic novelists Kevin D. (K.D.) Boze and Stasia Kato -- two of about 400 artists from around the world who participated in the fourth annual celebration of "sex positive" life. Several thousand over-18 adults passed through the doors from Friday to Sunday at Consolidated Works.
Although it was Boze's fourth time attending the festival, it was his first time as an artist.
Boze and Kato manned a corner where their work was being displayed. People stopped by to talk to them about the process, their work or to tell their own deflowering stories.
"As unlikely as they seem, they're all real stories," Boze said. "That's the special thing about this -- the story is already there."
Boze said the stories on display were collected over a couple of years. The names have all been changed and the person's occupation generalized, but the heart of each story remains true.
The project began with a round of stories told by friends, Boze said, after a night at the theater. One story -- the actor/musician raped by his wrestling coach -- hushed the rest.
"He told us, 'If you're not ready to hear the answer, don't ask the question,' " Boze remembered. "The courage it took to tell that. ... It got the ball rolling."
While some of the stories are the stuff of nightmares -- a woman violated by the husband of a best friend, held down by the best friend while it happened -- some are lighthearted, like the stoned college three-way.
Boze and Kato hope the work attracts a publisher who's willing to put the pages into a book.
The duo's performance art was in line with the festival's evolution into an arena that allowed attendees to get close up to art that engaged every sense.
It was a little bit Hustler, a little bit "Interview With a Vampire" meets "Underworld" (less Goth, more skin); a little bit raunch, a little bit finesse. It was a lot red and black, lace, leather, pleather, chaps and the usual fetish is as fetish does. It's also a softer side of flowing gowns and peasants' dresses. It's gay, straight and everything else.
There was a costume theme of the "Deities of Eros" that found winners in a toga-dressed couple channeling Hades and Persephone, a blue Krishna dude and a Pig God.
While the sign leading into ConWorks read, "No Full Nudity," pretty much everything but -- lots of butts -- went.
The color that stood out on Coralee Lynn Rose was red: red platform heels, red bag and red wig. And that's about it. She had some barely there green straps and tassles covering what needed covering, but otherwise her lean, pale body was its own open, mobile artwork as she hunched perfectly still amid inflated blue furniture.
The labyrinth of ConWorks accommodated bodies of all shapes and sizes on the walls and walking about, usually escorted by a volunteer who showed them the art, the cinema, a cabaret room with aerialists and trapeze artists and other performers.
Pretty boys smeared in some kind of edible grease -- to lick or not to lick was the question that never got answered -- walked around in black combat boots, white ribbed undershirts and white tighty-whitey/boxer hybrid undies. They served all kinds of goodies on their trays, including such delights as sperm-shaped chocolate.
Following Boze's confessor theme, one woman wore a simple black T-shirt asking, "Tell Me What Turns You On" and used a recorder to tape answers.
But such is the effect of the SEAF, where the people attending are usually just as interesting -- if not more so -- as the art.
But the art on the walls was still worth more than a passing glance. "Thar She Blows" by Justin Gibbens illustrated squid on whale love (and no, nothing to do with the Oscar-nominated movie). Bunnies in ecstasy gave the great outdoors a whole new happy, frolicky feeling in the panoramic photo, "Proof of Homosexuality in Nature" by Steven Edward Miller. Steve Jensen found wood and made "Naturally Knotty Man" and its counterpart, "Naturally Knotty Woman." And Boris Starosta's triumvirate of titillation, "Memory," "Fantasy" and "Hunger" gave attendees a stereoscopic eyeful of phantom fantasies, and then some.
The auction art lined the walls of a room where performances -- dancers, mimes and other bodies in motion -- kept people coming back. "Nookie Cookie" by Cory Marc -- is this really a fortune you want to crack? -- and Starosta's "Azi in Tub/Womb with Umbilicus" showed range in a place where nothing is usual and where the fourth time may be just as good -- or better -- than the first.
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