by Dr. Susan Block.

Lana is a voluptuous 25-year-old brunette with an easy smile, sparkling brown eyes and long chocolate-colored hair neatly parted in the middle. She’s a doting mother and a strong leader in her community with a serious sense of right and wrong. But she also loves to party, and she has a couple of boyfriends, though she enjoys her gal pals just as much, if not more sometimes. In many ways, she’s like a lot of women I know, but Lana is not a woman nor even human. Lana is a bonobo.

I first met Lana in 1996. I was in San Diego on a speaking tour for The 10 Commandments of Pleasure, my book about ethical hedonism, long-term love, trust and lust, which was, to a great extent, inspired by the bonobo apes. Though I’d never before encountered a bonobo in real life, I’d read everything I could find about them and I’d seen them on TV (in those days, we all watched TV). I was fascinated by their uncanny closeness to humans and awed by their amazing but real Make-Love-Not-War, female-empowered “lifestyle,” which I (somewhat anthropomorphically) dubbed The Bonobo Way.

So, I took a few hours off between engagements to visit the San Diego Zoo, which I had heard housed some of these exceedingly rare great apes. All zoos are prisons, in a way, but at least the bonobos have a nice big space at the SD Zoo, with plenty of foliage, a waterfall, a creek, trees to swing from and grass to roll around in. I arrived in mid-afternoon, and to my delight, found three bonobos (two females and a male) engaged in various forms of sexual activity, deep kissing, oral sex, ear-tonguing, masturbation, and even using a rubber ball as a sex toy.

One of the three bonobos, Lana, age 17 at the time, bounded up to the glass partition between us, looked at me for a few seconds, then blew me a quick kiss and went back to playing with her tribe. We met again in the summer of 2003, when she gave me the same sort of greeting—a gesture I observed several of the bonobos giving the many tourists who came by to gawk at them.

On September 10, 2004, I returned to Lana’s domain with a couple of French documentary filmmakers who were interested in learning more about The Bonobo Way after observing my show, my Bonoboville community and one of my sex therapy sessions in which I helped a couple to  “free their inner bonobo.” Now they wanted to see some actual bonobos in action, so off we went to the zoo.

It was a sweltering So Cal day. Maybe because of the heat, the bonobos seemed lethargic, especially compared to how they were the first and second times I’d seen them when they were licking and sucking and pleasuring each other like bi chicks at a swing party (old-school natural, of course). Perhaps there were other reasons that the bonobos weren’t playing with each other sexually this hot Indian Summer morning. The zookeeper, who kindly showed us around, apologized for being late, saying she’d had to “separate the females” and “keep them from bonding” or else they’d “attack the males.” It sounded reasonable enough. But my hunch was that “bonding” is euphemistic Zoo Talk for female-female sex play—also called “genito-genital rubbing” by primatologists, or “hoka-hoka” by the Mogandu people indigenous to the bonobos’ native habitat in the Congo—and that the nice zookeeper was somehow putting the kibosh on female-female sex play.

Female bisexuality is the centerpiece of bonobo society. So, perhaps when the frisky females were physically separated, the rest of the tribe fell into a bit of a funk. This disappointed my French friends, though we still enjoyed seeing the bonobos who—even when they’re not hot and bothered (just hot and bored)—are a delight to behold.

To watch bonobos in action is to look into a funhouse mirror, reflecting our shared hominid soul. They look so similar to us, so almost-human in their physiognomy and mannerisms that when you gaze into their big brown eyes, you feel as if you’ve found the Missing Link.

Akaela huddles with Lana and her baby ..

So, there we were, two groups of great apes on different sides of the glass.

We noticed Lana, now the oldest, the Alpha female of the tribe squatting by the creek with Akaela, a younger female with an expressive face. Akaela made funny faces as Lana calmly took in the scene, a tiny month-old infant nursing at her ample breast.

Suddenly Lana—still holding her baby—turned and bounded right up to the window I was leaning against. She banged on the glass, and looked me in the eye, holding my gaze like she recognized me. I felt an instant sense of intimacy and unspoken communication, as if we were two people drawn to each other who just didn’t speak the same language. At least, not verbally. She put her hand on the glass and I put mine up to meet hers. When I put my other hand on the glass, she put her other hand up to meet mine. Then she leaned back and put her foot on the glass. I kicked off my sandals, perched on the window ledge and put my bare feet up to hers. I felt like the little kid touching fingertips with E.T., except this was no extra-terrestrial; this was a fellow Earthling, my primate cousin, my new friend.

Lana gives me a kiss .. 

Then she kissed me. This was not just a quick peck hello like before, but a slow, dramatic, tantric smooch right on the glass in front of my face. Perhaps it was a good thing there was a partition separating us for the kissing part, because I might have been a bit overwhelmed at getting ape spittle all over my face. But with the glass safely between us, I felt enchanted, drawn into a spiritual and very physical expression of love that I had, quite frankly, never experienced before. This was a deep connection, yet extremely playful at the same time. I kissed her back, our lips meeting but not touching, a modern inter-species same-sex version of Tristan and Isolde.

Two beings of just slightly different species, but totally different worlds, drawn to each other. Why? Well, I know why I was drawn to Lana. I’ve been studying bonobos for years, thinking about why they are so peaceful, sexual and female-empowered, how we are like them and how we are not, how they have sex with so much sensitivity and savoir faire, and how they use sex to reduce violence in their societies. Bonobos had grown mythic in my mind. And now here was one who apparently wanted very much to communicate something to me. I felt as if I’d been touched by an angel who looked like a chimpanzee.

Playing Footsie …

Of course, it’s harder for me to say why Lana was drawn to me. One of the many visitors who frequent the ape exhibits, an assertive, matronly lady I called the “Ape Doyenne,” at first proclaimed, “She’s angry with you,” when she saw Lana—later joined by Akaela making faces and Mchumba doing handstands—banging on the glass. However, soon enough, she noticed how Lana gently touched the glass just where I touched it, kissed me through the glass and looked into my eyes with such intimacy, and she adjusted her opinion.

“She likes your hat,” she declared.

“I prefer to think she likes my personality,” I quipped.

Yet she was right. My wide-brimmed white straw hat did radiate like a halo around my long hair. Maybe I was Lana’s “angel.” Perhaps our almost universal notion that angels have bright halos is pre-human, who knows? Then as Lana continued to “chat” with me like a best girlfriend, in between kisses and communing via hands and feet, the Ape Doyenne had to acknowledge our connection.

“I hope you appreciate how much attention Lana is paying you,” she said. “She never does that with anybody. You should feel honored.”

I certainly did feel honored. I only wish I knew what she was trying to tell me. Perhaps it was just “girl talk.” Maybe she was asking, “What’s with the halo, lady?” Was she flirting with me? Perhaps she was one of the female bonobos that the zookeeper had “separated” from another female and, feeling sexually frustrated, she focused some of her intense libido on a “safe” target that wouldn’t get her into trouble with the zookeeper—me.

My French friends were so impressed, they insisted that Lana somehow recognized me as a bonobo advocate among humans, and she was greeting me, ambassador-to-ambassador, as the Alpha female of the San Diego Zoo tribe, to give me her encouragement and blessing.

That’s some pretty grandiose anthropomorphizing, but there’s no doubt I came away from my Close Encounter of the Bonobo Kind feeling greatly encouraged and truly blessed.

Kissing through the Looking Glass 

In “On Tortoises, Monkeys and Men,” Dr. Tony Rose writes about “profound interspecies events (PIEs)” which he describes as “natural epiphanies… reunion(s) of humanity and nature” that occur when “humans experience profound connections with animals.” My meeting with Lana was the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to a PIE, but what did it mean? I can only guess about what it meant to Lana, but for me, it was a physical affirmation of a powerful connection between our two species that I believe could save us both.

In these deadly times of human war and environmental destruction, it is vital that we reach out and learn from our kissin’ cousins who hold the erotic key to peace: the bonobos.

Perhaps Lana and I were reaching out to each other through the glass because we both (human and bonobo) need each other more than ever now. Not Lana herself; she and her tiny baby—who’s all grown up now—are pretty well taken care of in their plush digs at the San Diego Zoo (though I couldn’t help but worry about that zookeeper). However, the bonobos as a species are highly endangered, thanks to the toll on their numbers taken by human war, bushmeat poaching and destruction of the Congolese rain forest. Ironically enough, though they’ve been decimated by humans, now bonobos need human help to survive as a species. They even need the help of humans like me, controversial as we may be in these censorious times, because we love them, and we spread the Gospel of the Bonobos to our fellow humans everywhere.

With Lana and Akaela.

Now it’s 2022, and we are still trying to shake up humanity to a different way of doing business and living life, the Bonobo Way, the way of love, not war, the way of sustainable sharing, female empowerment, male well-being, and peace through pleasure.

As I think back to my bonobo encounter, I can’t help but wonder if Lana’s kiss and offered hand were not only for me, but my entire species. Our world may have worsened in many ways since then, but at least, we’ve kept the bonobos from going extinct. We must continue our efforts, as the wars and the poaching continue. It’s worth it! In saving the bonobos, we just might save ourselves.

Almost two decades later, I believe more than ever that the Bonobo Way is the way of the future, if there is to be a future, for all of us.

Reaching Out 

All photos are stills from “Lana & Me” (Videographer: Theron Marks) unless otherwise indicated.… 

Video Length 00:16:30  Date: September 10, 2004

© September 10, 2004 – 2022 by Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” a world-renowned LA sex therapist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For speaking engagements, call 213-291-9497.