Guest Post By AV Flox via BlogHER:

“Did you know that 71 percent of guys would rather have great sex occasionally than not-so-hot sex all the time?” Simone asked me, paging through the February issue of Cosmopolitan.

“Let me see that,” I said, reaching out and scanning the cover of the magazine. “I’m writing an article about how to improve our sex lives.”

Simone turned a page, “well, if anyone can write that, it’s you.”

“Actually…” I started, but I trailed off. The truth is that I need a guide more than anyone.

“I have a theory that the longer we’re exposed to a stimulus, the higher the tolerance, and the less able said stimulus is to engender the effect it once did,” I said, lighting a cigarette.

Simone looked at me for a moment, then smiled, “what?”

In preparation for this piece I did a little crowdsourcing on Twitter, asking over the course of several weeks what people thought was an essential component to good sex. The answer, seven times out of ten was: intimacy.

“Really?” I asked myself over and over as the direct messages and e-mails poured in. It just didn’t jive.

“When I think about dynamite sex, I don’t think about intimacy,” I told my friend Sugar during one of our late night discussions on the phone. “Am I stunted? Do you think about it?”

“Hell no,” she replied. “I just want to be thrown against a wall and devoured.”

BE DESIRED

Sugar and I are in line with Marta Meana, a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and who has been studying sexology since the 1990s. Meana also disagrees intimacy is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

In a piece on the New York Times Magazine by Daniel Bergner, author of The Other Side of Desire, Meana emphasizes the role of being desired and the inherent narcissism in women’s sexuality, which she has gleaned from her laboratory and qualitative research, as well as her clinical work. Desire, she concludes, has “little to do with building better relationships,” or with fostering communication between partners.

“Female desire is not governed by the relational factors that, we like to think, rule women’s sexuality as opposed to men’s,” Meana told Bergner. “Really, women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic.”

She is basically saying that women’s desire is dominated by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need. That’s not to say women don’t want closeness and longevity—they do. But according to Meana, to imagine that these things are the catalysts of desire is incorrect.

“It’s wrong to think that because relationships are what women choose they’re the primary source of women’s desire,” Meana said. For women, “being desired is the orgasm.”

“How do you make yourself desired?” I asked my friends the following night over drinks at The Standard Downtown.

“Can I tell you?” my friend Tess asked, leaning in. “I like to dress up like a hooker and walk by construction sites. Instant desire.”

“Ew!” Sabrina exclaimed, laughing. “Girl, you’re a freak.”

“What? You leave your windows open when you change in case your hot neighbor is home!”

“Mmm,” Sabrina said. “He’s so hot.”

“Does he watch you?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“I like to dress myself in the sluttiest lingerie when no one is home,” I confessed. “There’s stuff I have that my husband has never even seen—not because he wouldn’t like it, but because it’s for me. I wear these things while I work. I love taking a client’s call in nothing but garters, a hat and stilettos.”

“Does desire require an audience?” Sabrina mused.

“You can be your own audience,” Tess said. “And if not, there’s always the internet.”

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It’s my prediction that Downloading Nancy will be one of the most powerful films of 2009 as as Nancy (Amy Brenneman) discovers that masochistic desire blurs the line between pleasure and pain.

The illustrious Inez Lewis played a photographic role in this movie.

When Albert Stockwell comes home from work one day he finds a note from his wife of 15 years, Nancy, saying she has gone to see friends. It is a lie.

After waiting several days, Albert realizes that his wife is missing. Nancy has met her salvation on the Internet in the form of Louis Farley. Louis’s life, like Nancy’s, has become a twisted quest for redemption via smutty chat rooms and alternative websites. Both wounded and alone, Nancy and Louis take comfort in one another through email, pictures and promises.

With Louis, Nancy goes to a different place, one of liberation and fulfillment. It’s a location where pain is pleasure and where the end is the beginning. While she pursues the freedom that she feels will only come with ultimate liberation, Albert is left to put the pieces together and try to salvage what is left.

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As an adult webmistress, blogger and generally geek-loving girl, I always pay attention to the debate on what is the best way to optimize the adult sites and what are the best marketing strategies for adult website owners.

One major question is about the use of Flash in web design and SEO. Most adult marketers think that flash can’t be used and it kills SEO. Well, that only a half truth. You can have a site with a flash lay over that is super duper SEO’d.

Making a flash site that is SEO friendly is not difficult - for someone who knows what they are doing. It takes a time and it takes effort. If you want use Flash, you must use JavaScript to progressively load the Flash content for search engines to index the contents of the Flash files; you must separate content from presentation and behavior.

There are many coding languages, but which one is best is is dependent on the site and its purpose. Just because Flash is COOL, doesn’t mean its better.

You have to think about what the goal of site, what is it supposed to communicate? What is message? Does it fit the medium?

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