by Dr. Susan Block.     

It’s Valentine’s Season 2023—the High Holidays of Love—including Valentine’s Day, Galentine’s Day (for Girlfriends), World Bonobo Day, Tortellini Day and the original pagan Valentine’s Day, Lupercalia.

Valentine’s Day traditionally celebrates romantic love between couples, which Capt’n Max and I have been blessed to enjoy—throughout over 30 years of marriage… and counting! Senescent senior sex machines that we are, we even had some hot orgasmic V-Day foreplay the morning of this show—with no heart attacks or cramps, and only the good kind of “strokes.”

That’s the Valentine’s spirit!

Nevertheless, I’ve never liked the stress, commercialism and exclusivity of V-Day, which is one of many reasons I enjoy Lupercalia and World Bonobo Day, both of which celebrate a more inclusive love—on the kinky, consensual, pan-sensual, polyamorous Pan-Horns of Lust—in the greater community of humanity and the rest of nature.

So, off and on, throughout this romantic ride, in between current events, Valentine fantasies and poignant memories (Max’s first girlfriend Virginia Huggins and my former lover Spalding Gray both met tragic endings), we tell the history of Lupercalia, the original februa-flogging Holiday of the Heart, Valentine’s Day before it was sanitized, desexualized and grossly commercialized by the Catholic Church, the Holy See and See’s Candies, Hallmark Cards and all the other purveyors of chocolate, diamonds and impossible dreams in the Capitalocene.

So, if the sugar-coated hype of V-Day gives you a toothache, try celebrating Lupercalia—floggers not flowers! Better to have your buns beaten (consensually) on Lupercalia than your heart broken (painfully) on Valentine’s Day.

If you’re pro-bonobo like us, you’ll also want to celebrate World Bonobo Day on February 14, honoring humanity’s closest Great Ape cousins, the Make-Love-Not-War, female-empowered, male-nurturing, sharing caring, peace-through-pleasure-loving bonobos. You can go see the real bonobos in the Congo (rather difficult) or at the zoo (a much easier option), and give The Bonobo Way (over 50 five-star Amazon reviews!) to someone you love—even if that someone is you.  It’s also a good time to donate to help save our highly endangered Valentine cousins from imminent extinction—so they can help us save ourselves—and also because bonobos are too cute to go extinct.

Here’s some no-stress V-Day foreplay: watch “Sex Before the Internet,” a new documentary series on Vice TV produced by former ABC news president James Goldstone. I’m in episode 5—premiering this Tuesday—discussing HBO’s “Real Sex” & “Radio Sex TV,” which reigned through the 1990s, aka “before the Internet” poisoned our brains and censored our creativity. My segment director Brian Epstein says I’m “a star” in the show (which also features former HBO Veep Sheila Nevins and “Real Sex” producer Patti Kaplan), but I haven’t watched it yet and neither have you (as of this writing), so we’ll see!

In other news, Dark Brandon shot down the Chinese spy balloon, but the Orange Hot Air Balloon is still running for president. Meanwhile, the “Phony Cafone,” Ron DeSantis, is fast turning Florida into Gilead, banning books and forcing girls to report their menstrual periods.

And no, despite myriad fruitless phone calls, chats and emails (Hello out there, Susan Wojcicki!), we still haven’t found a human to resurrect our YouTube channel. Are we making progress? Did Sisyphus get that rock up the hill?

Our Love Train’s name is FDR (F*ck Da Rich), but some people are hungry enough to EAT the Rich, with a side of Armie Hammer, living legendary cannibal (though he’s never actually eaten any human—rich or poor—as far as we know), now telling his side of a stomach-churning story which, he reveals, began with him feeling powerless when he was molested by his Church pastor, and turned that trauma into a passion for control (and human flesh?). This stimulates a discussion of Churchly molestations and other devastating religious sexual hypocrisies in the Dining Car.

Speaking of feeling powerless before authoritarian hypocrites, that’s how I feel as I try and try—to no avail—to reach YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

At the dawn of Christianity, the Church Fathers terminated the truth of lusty Lupercalia, in favor of the fake news of Saint Valentine’s Day. In 2023, YouTube terminated my channel and so many other independent voices in favor of fascistic homogeneity and corporate control.

The Church has long tried to terminate, censor, and smear Pan as Satan, but nothing could be further from the truth.  It is only natural that this playfully amorous spirit, the horned horny “God” of Nature and the Wild, be the patron saint of Lupercalia, the bonobos (as well, it happens, the City of Arcadia that surrounds Bonoboville). In the wake of the fake holiday that is Valentine’s day, let’s keep Pan’s bonoboësque Lupercalian legacy alive.  

© Feb. 4,  2023 Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is 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 626-461-5950.