OBJECTIVE
The aim of this longitudinal case study was a qualitative determination of best practice in sexual intercourse and affiliated activities (referred to hereafter as “relations”) for a thirty-two-year-old female (hereafter the “primary subject”). The study reviewed both uncontrolled data (collected over a seven-year period) and controlled data (collected over a thirty-day period) to assess methods for maximum optimization of physical and emotional affect during relations.
BACKGROUND
Though there is no clinically accepted definition of sexual best practice, criteria generally incorporate permutations of location (and novelty thereof1), posture (and novelty thereof2), overall novelty3, chronology, and quantitative data (measuring duration of action, outcome, and postcoital drop in IQ). Even anecdotally derived definitions are understood to be fluid, due to an evolving marketplace of instructional and/or performance-enhancing videos, books, articles, fitness regimens, grooming techniques, surgical interventions, visualization exercises, supportive footwear, dental modifications, aromatherapeutic houseplants, pedagogical séances, rain dances, ritual feasts, and other goods and services designed to facilitate best practice.
METHODS AND DESIGN
With the input of her long-term research collaborator, a forty-year-old male (hereafter the “secondary subject”), the primary subject accessed a range of performance-enhancing goods and services in three categories during the thirty-day experimental period: (1) audiovisual aids, in which compensated performers demonstrate techniques for best practice; (2) instructional literature, which provides textual and pictorial recommendations for best practice; and (3) “coregasm” exercises, which target muscles engaged in optimal completion of relations.
OUTCOMES
1. Audiovisual aids
Subjects reviewed audiovisual aids recommended for sustained clinical efficacy by the staff at Babeland, a retailer of technology-driven solutions for optimizing relations. Preliminary findings suggest that the subjects’ association of best practice with criteria such as privacy4, seclusion5, and being-in-time contra-indicates spectatorship of relations that are mediated by the cinematographic apparatus. Researchers hypothesized that excessive exposure to audiovisual aids may create an alienation effect6 whereby each partner becomes a critical (or “outside”) observer and/or consumer of an intimate (or “inside”) experience.7 This critical distancing was evident in the subjects’ improvised nomenclature for a noteworthy female performer’s range of vocalizations, including “Sheep on Horseback,” “Goat with Hernia,” “Cow in Massage Chair,” and “Liza Minnelli Gets a Bikini Wax.”
However, between five and twenty minutes’ exposure to audiovisual aids did nonetheless catalyze subjects’ desire for relations, even if this exposure did not necessarily catalyze desire for further audiovisual aids. Thus, research indicates that an audiovisual aid per se, even or especially when abandoned before its conclusion, can prompt broadly imitative behavior and therefore effect optimized relations.
2. Instructional literature
Subjects reviewed a range of recently published instructional literature recommended for sustained clinical efficacy via Amazon.com rankings and algorithms. Preliminary findings suggest that the subjects’ association of best practice with criteria such as spontaneity and improvisation8 contraindicates the arguably overdetermined nature of the selected prescriptive texts, which included role-playing simulations (“Basically, one of you is a virgin/alien and has no idea what sex is. The other person has to explain what they should do”9), directives for inventory management (“Make a list of ten things you want more of in bed, ten things you want less of, and ten new things you’d like to try”10), and elaborate taxonomy (“G-Spot Jiggy,” “Rainbow Arch,” “Lock and Load”11).
Pictorial recommendations were marginally more practicable. Of the two sampled positions not yet enacted by the subjects over the aforementioned seven-year period of uncontrolled data collection, the first position was clinically determined to have inhibitory associations with exigencies occasioned by hiking and/or camping trips lacking in lavatorial facilities. The second position was clinically determined to be extremely awesome.
Overall, subjects’ response to instructional literature largely operated according to a transitive property: Reading the texts inspired attempts at best practice, but these attempts did not necessarily accommodate the instructions contained in the texts (viz., paranormal ideations, produce- and condiment-focused shopping lists, construction of Rainbow Arches). Thus, research indicates that an instructional book per se, even or especially when abandoned before its conclusion, can prompt broadly imitative behavior and therefore effect optimized relations.
3. “Coregasm” exercises
Primary subject reviewed and followed a range of online instructions for exercises recommended for sustained clinical efficacy via Google search. Exercises largely consisted of leg lifts (performed from a lying or suspended position) intended to strengthen and excite the lower-abdominal and pelvic-floor muscles, and also comprised “suspension yoga” positions performed in coordination with a sling-and-pulley system that retails online for $195 plus shipping and handling. Whilst these exercises did provoke the pleasurable tension and quasi-frustration associated with progression toward climax, the primary subject failed to experience an actual “coregasm” in the clinical research setting, unlike previous investigators.12
It should be noted, however, that this section of the study presented unique methodological challenges, as the primary subject would often feel overwhelmingly compelled to return to her place of residence before exercises were well under way, citing “personal matters” that required immediate resolution with the secondary subject. Thus, research indicates that a coregasm workout per se, even or especially when abandoned before its conclusion, can prompt broadly imitative behavior and therefore effect optimized relations.
DISCUSSION
In formulating this project, the subject unwittingly placed herself and the secondary subject within a consumerist-managerial context: “consumerist” in that goods and services were accessed for the purposes of optimizing relations; and “managerial” in that relations were submitted to goal-setting and performance review. After extensive further inquiry, including a close reading of the “commodity fetish” entry on Wikipedia, it was determined that conflation of libidinous consumerism with the libido itself is inadvisable because it beckons market forces and affiliated hazards such as status anxiety and hyper-acquisitiveness into a nonprofit inner sanctum. Subjects risk casting relations in terms roughly equivalent to a PowerPoint presentation on the Kama Sutra featuring anatomical flowcharts and live accompaniment by Paris Hilton and Donald Trump atop a faux-marble conference table, with the lights on.
Subjects’ brief and incomplete foray into the sexual-optimization marketplace was valuable, however, in reaffirming their commitment to a vigorous frontier spirit of inquiry and experimentation in pursuing best practice. This highly variable approach privileges the anticipation of the act as much as the act itself, and is especially vital as a complement to the devotional exclusivity of an optimized long-term collaboration.13
CONCLUSION
The best sex the subjects ever had is the sex they’re having next.