NEW ORLEANS — As "Let's Get It On" played at Buffa's bar in the Marigny neighborhood here on Wednesday afternoon and Hurricane Isaac whipped in the background, Kamil Martin, a 47-year-old bricklayer drinking a Dickel-and-Coke in jeans and a blue T-shirt, reflected on why hurricanes make people, you know, want to have sex.

Martin hadn't had sex during this storm — not yet, anyway — but he did during Hurricane Katrina seven years ago with a simple philosophy: "Let's fuck like rabbits before we die."

"It was fantastic," he said.

In a study released in June, Trojan (of course) reported that 70 percent of Americans have had sex in "extreme weather," and that people have sex more often and with greater satisfaction when it is hot and it rains. Seven percent of Americans have had sex during a hurricane, especially in Miami (27 percent of the city's residents), according to Trojan. A maybe too-long search on Craigslist in the New Orleans area on Wednesday afternoon — there were more serious things to worry about, after all — revealed more than 100 personal ads posted about Hurricane Isaac.

"It could just be a matter of there's nothing else to do except sit around and watch the rain, so why not get it on? Why not have some sex?" California-based sex therapist Stephanie Buehler said in a phone interview.

Buehler also said that a physical connection between sexual excitement and danger — of which there remains plenty in this case, as Isaac floods streets throughout the state here — could be legitimate. "If something dangerous is brewing, people do get heightened senses at those times, and I wonder if because if they have heightened senses they feel aroused, and that arousal leads them to think this might be a good time to have a partner."

In many of the Craigslist ads here, posters asked for a causal sexual encounter during the storm, like one man who asked for "hurricane stress relief." About six hours before the storm was scheduled to hit, one woman posted looking for a woman to be her "sweetie" for "something long term or not."

New York-based sex coach Amy Levine said it makes sense for people to prepare for, uh, recreational activities. "For many that may include movies, video games, books etc. and, for some it's finding a sex partner to roll around the sheets with when the hurricane hits," she wrote in an e-mail. "Not to mention, it can give them something to distract them knowing how dire the situation was with Katrina."

At a table inside Buffa's, the smoky bar with orange lighting in New Orleans — Isaac passed through the city lighter than in surrounding areas — Mike Denney, 37, a hotel host and server who also has fond bedroom memories of Katrina, said a young woman confessed her feelings for him during this storm. "She stroked my arm and said 'I've had my eyes on you,'" he said.

Denney, of course, thanks the hurricane. "Absolutely — and the tons of alcohol we were consuming... It's like the last day at camp. Like 'Oh my god, everything is going to change after this storm.'"

Unfortunately, Denney said, nothing physical happened. "That's the bad part: absolutely nothing," he said. "She just revealed her feelings. But now I know."

Smoking a Camel Light in an Alabama T-shirt, 29-year-old Voltaire Casino (really) said he had driven into the storm from Houston to make sure Carolyn Jan was not alone. He said he would drive anywhere for the 27-year-old waitress. "I don't care if the earth was falling off."

Casino brought water, chicken, and rice for her from Texas and spent the night with Jan and Biff, her 75-pound pitbull Husky.

"When you're stuck in the same room with someone with no power, you're sure to figure out who somebody is. Right there, you're family."

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