by Dr. Susan Block.

Chag Sameach Purim and Erin Go Bragh. The Irish/Jewish convergence of Purim and St. Patrick’s Day – with pro-bonobo and Free Palestine touches – comes together in one lucky Max Collage, as I continue to try to process my deep grief for my beloved husband, Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/1943 – May 13, 2025) through an auspicious arrangement of sweet-and-spicy  holiday photos.

Read “Purim & St. Paddy free Palestine”

“Purim & St. Paddy free Palestine” memorializes Captain Max’s fondness for the Catholism of his childhood and Judaism of his adopted  faith, as well as his passionate support for a free Palestine, especially in his last years. Together, we created wild, bacchanalian celebrations – Squirting St. Paddy’s Eve, Purim Rising and countless radio shows – retelling these ancient tales through the eyes of sexologists in our Commedia Erotica style.

Regarding the Feasts of Erin and Esther… at first glance, they seem as far apart as Ireland is from Iran. But both holidays revolve around luck, lust, lotteries, triangles, copious amounts of alcohol – green beer or red wine, and whiskey or Schnapps for the deeply observant –  and the erotic, mischievous coming of Spring.

Bottom line: Both Purim and St. Paddy’s are Party Holidays.

Disarming Charms

And both Saint Patrick and Queen Esther were the “Life of the Party,” immigrants in their respective lands of Ireland and Iran who won the day against all odds with nothing but their Weapons of Mass Seduction.

Before he was a Saint, Patrick was a young British prince. Kidnapped and enslaved by Irish pirates, he won his freedom, found Jesus, converted pagans, chased out snakes and evolved into the patron saint of the Emerald Isle – and Irish pubs around the world.

Before she was a Queen, Esther was a Jewess-in-disguise (real name: Hadassah). When her cousin – whom Max and I playfully and rather accurately called “Pimping Cousin Mordecai” in our Purimshpiels – entered her into an imperial beauty contest, the “comely” Esther won the heart of the King of Persia (now Iran) and averted a genocide, thanks to her teasing approach to diplomacy.

You could call Esther’s and Patrick’s talent for winning hearts (and chasing away snakes) without brute force “charm.” Lucky Charms aren’t just a cereal; they put the “Sláinte!” in St. Paddy’s Day. And seductive charm puts the “L’Chaim” (To Life!) in Purim, the feast of the charming and divinely disarming Queen Esther.

Captain Max was a charmer too; he certainly charmed me – and I wasn’t the only one. Maybe I charmed him too. One thing that charmed, disturbed and inspired Max in his last years, even after his stroke, was the plight of the Palestinian people. Max was just a nice Jewish Catholic pagan pro-bonobo boy who couldn’t abide a genocide.

St. Paddy’s Pussy Cookies for Palestine

So, my sixth Max Collage is a kaleidoscope of greens and blues, Irish kisses and hamantaschen — which we called “pussy cookies,” and which Max loved munching as much as me, preferably with a green Guineas. So, with St. Paddy’s photos around the edges, Purim in the center and support for Palestine interspersed throughout, “Purim & St. Paddy free Palestine” conveys my dream that the liberating erotic spirits of Purim, St. Patrick’s Day and Captain Max can somehow come together – like a Spring miracle – to charm the world and disarm the War Machine, freeing Palestine and all oppressed peoples.

In these days when a “Board of Peace” is just an Orwellian-Machiavellian name for more Zio-Casino war crimes, I suppose my collage conveys a pipedream. As Max often said, “the ideal is the enemy of the real.” But if St. Paddy and Queen Esther hadn’t pursued their ideals against all the odds of the real, we wouldn’t have these fun party holidays.

May the spunky spirits of Saint Paddy, Queen Esther and Captain Max stop the Perma Wars – on Palestine, Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, Ukraine, Somalia, Canada, Cuba, Chicago, Minneapolis, LA, and anywhere else I’m forgetting.

May you be as lucky in love as Max and I once were, and may we all live in peace (the real thing).

Click these links for stories of Max’s life, death and legacy of love:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN.
On Substack

My Beloved Max Collage Collection
Max Collage 1: “Family History”
On Substack
Max Collage 2: “On DrSuzy.Tv”

On Substack

Max Collage 3: Travels with Max in France
On Substack
Max Collage 4: Winter Holidays
On Substack

Max Collage 5: Valentine Lupercalia World Bonobo Day
On Counterpunch
On Substack

© February 27, 2026,  Susan Block, Ph.D., aka “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, seen on HBO and many other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950.

by Dr. Susan Block

If you’re too busy or overwhelmed by life or AI to listen to my sixth annual State of the Sexual Union address (2026), delivered live 2/14/2026 on Active Radio hosted by Hartley Pleshaw on WCAP-AM 980 – now available for your aural edification – here’s my single-word 2026 prescription for our very sickened society: Therapy.

We need it. I need it, and I’m pretty sure you do too.

Last year’s State of the Sexual Union (2025) was subtitled the Year of Living Precariously. This year, we have fallen off the Cliff of Precarity into a Sea of Slop, Slime and War Crimes. So, 2026 is our Year of Needing Therapy.

Grief’s a Bitch

I need therapy (and yes, I’m getting some, thank you) primarily because I’m grieving for my beloved husband Max who passed away on May 13, 2025 after a terrible stroke that shattered our world.

Grief is a bitch, Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners. And no, I’m not talking about Erika Kirk. Well, not really…

I’m talking about the deep loss of my Great Love. Essentially, the State of My Sexual Union is grieving. Even when lovely things happen – a hug from a friend, flowers blooming in our Bonoboville garden, a lick from our sweet dog, a colleague composing a beautiful song for us – I still grieve, wishing Max were here to experience them with me.

If the State of Your Sexual Union is that you too are grieving, and even if you’re not, I imagine you could benefit from some therapeutic counseling… at least this crazy-making year of government-issued assault, kidnapping and very bad sex.

Trumped Up Trauma

Whether you’re an innocent victim, a vile perpetrator or *just* an observer watching (and maybe filming) your neighbors getting tackled, beaten, shot and even murdered by Trump’s ICE Ammosexual Incel Army – or perhaps you’re *just* reading about powerful people doing awful things in the Epstein Files – you have been traumatized much of this year.

It hasn’t only been a year, of course. We the Peoples of America (including the Americas that Bad Bunny so boldly and accurately listed) and most of the world have been under assault by the narcissistic and sociopathic proclivities of our so-called *leaders* for centuries. But the most recent assault by the billionaire class (usually the main assaulters) is the subject of my State of the Sexual Union (SOTSU) 2026. Though it includes politics, war, finance, art, the environment and more, it is, to a great degree, a sexual assault.

Read the State of the Sexual Union 2026 on Counterpunch

“The Noblest of Warriors”

My SOTSU 2026 went live early Valentine’s morning, since this year, sadly, I had no Valentine keeping me in bed. Hartley indulged me for a few minutes as I mourned my sweet Valentine, saying his name(s) Pr. Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri, aka “Captain Max,” aka Mickey and more, and singing his praises as my truly amazing husband of 33 years, friend of 40, lover, co-host, producer, publisher, butler, my witness and a great, inspirational Free Speech freedom fighter whose only firearm was his powerful voice.

Hartley joined in on the eulogizing, letting his listeners know that Max was “the noblest of warriors… at the front lines of Free Speech struggles… and a lot of people who’ve never heard of him owe him a great debt of gratitude.”

That warmed my broken heart, and provided a good point to declare, as I had at our Max to the Maximus, “by the powers vested in me as Mayor of Bonoboville,” that Max’s birthday, November 8^th, be celebrated in perpetuity as “Free Speech Day.” Mark your calendar – Sunday, November 8^th, 2026 – to exercise your freedom to speak out about something important to you, or support somebody else’s.

As V-Day was dawning, I then told the story of Lupercalia, the original, ecosexual, communal, Pan-centered and rather kinky Valentine’s Day, as well as the more recently ordained World Bonobo Day, honoring the Love Apes on our High Holiday of Love, our kissing cousins, the bonobos (Pan paniscus), who have long inspired Max and my love for each other, for Bonoboville and for this lovely, crazy-making world of ours.

Epstein Slime & Slop

“This is what so many people have been waiting for all year,” Hartley told his rapt audience as we returned from commercials, “for Dr. Suzy to bestow upon us the State of the Sexual Union (SOTSU). It couldn’t come at a more appropriate time.”

For the past five years, I’ve delivered my SOTSU after the President does his State of the Union (SOTU). This year, I decided to do mine before him, feeling no need to let that lying blowhard go first. All recent U.S. Presidents could reasonably be called war criminals. But the current occupier of the now garishly gold-plated Oval Office has poisoned this past year with words and actions so cruel, dishonest, narcissistic, self-serving, racist, misogynist and simply obnoxious, it’s abusive to the spirit of our country, including our sexual spirit. If anyone in the current U.S. governmental circus of clowns, thieves, fixers, scammers, cover-up queens, close relatives and ammosexual sociopaths had a pinch of integrity, Predator Donald J. Trump wouldn’t even be delivering SOTU 2026. He would be in therapy – mandated by his warden.

And yes, “Predator Trump” suits him so much more than “President”… Indeed, the State of the Sexual Union 2026 has been grossly stained by his “best friend’s” magnum opus: the Epstein Files, and no matter how much he whines, “No one cares,” “I’m exonerated,” “the stock market is through the roof,” or “He stole my masseuse,” that damn stain, like Lady Macbeth’s damn spot (“Out damn spot!”), just won’t come out.

Honestly, My AI advisor advised me to “take the high road” and not soil myself by even mentioning Epstein in my SOTSU 2026. But that would have been rude, as right out the gate, Hartley asked me to address it as “the number one story in the world right now.”

It’s my SOTSU, but it’s Hartley’s show, so I had to respect that. Also, he’s right. Being “America’s #1 Sexologist,” as he so kindly calls me, it was incumbent upon me to address the Epstein variant of the virulent Billionaire Mind Virus (BMV), as part of the “therapy” I was prescribing for us all.

And with that, Hartley gave me “the floor,” slippery with the noxious “natural and unnatural” secretions of the Epstein Files. I pulled on my rubber Power-Booties and stepped through the mess (some of it), trying not to slip and fall on my proverbial ass, as so many have and still are doing.

And oh, what a mess it is.

For most of us, discussing, scrolling through or even just thinking about Epstein and the malevolent powers that he represents triggers grim memories of past traumas or paralyzing fears of future ones. Most of us also have deep, heart-wrenching empathy for the survivors who are coming forward to tell their stories or who were mysteriously killed before they could – or after they did. No wonder we all need therapy.

Zuck Cucked by Epstein

I did manage to refrain from (much) gossiping about the “Who’s who,” “What’s what,” or “Who did what to whom” of the Epstein Files. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, but it is so difficult to tell facts from fantasy, or AI slop from real-life slime, and I didn’t want to step in that particular kind of mess.

Though I must confess I did snigger a bit over one name (over 300 times) and distinctive face in the Epstein Files: Mark Zuck the Cuckerberg – my thirsty nerd nemesis who unjustly deactivated my Meta accounts last year – was and still is an integral part of the Tech Bro branch of Epstein’s swamp, one of a handful of leaders of the expanding Censorship Industrial Complex, all suffering from variants of the BMV.  Epstein’s snapshot of their “wild” 2015 dinner shows a clear sideview of Zuck – so thoroughly cucked, he’s seated right beside the disgraced (but still toxically potent) old bull himself.

Ammosexual Incels & Kidnapping Kink

A pro-bonobo man who loves women, Hartley expressed alarm at the expanding ranks of misogynistic, Trump-adoring incels (“involuntary celibates”). I assured him that some are harmlessly pathetic and just need a good dominatrix (a kind of therapy!). More concerning are the “ammosexual incels” channeling their much-denigrated sex drives into wielding phallic weapons of various kinds – which is often all it takes to get a good-paying job assaulting people with ICE.

Trump’s well-known taste for assault extends into many sociopathic directions, but on SOTSU 2026, I focused on his kidnapping or “grab ‘em by the pussy” fetish for capturing people for sexual or political purposes. This is on appalling display in the kidnapping of American citizens and visitors by Trump’s ammosexual ICE army, and even geopolitical actions, such as the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife – in addition to the sordid nonconsensual kidnapping events described in the Epstein files.

Usually, Trump’s kidnapping hijinks are just for sadistic *fun* (eww!) – at the victims’ expense – or to make a political power point or entertain his more bloodthirsty fans. But sometimes it spills over into murder… Whoops, as Epstein would say.

Have I mentioned Trump should be in therapy – supervised by his prison director?

Pro-Bonobo Therapy for All

We the People also need therapy; though not in prison (there are many kinds of counseling and other treatments), and yes, the billionaires should pay for it, as the essential mental health component of Medicare for All. It’s time.

After all, our compromised leaders and their filthy rich donors’ aggrandizements, appetites, kinks, inadequacies, delusions and bottomless desires for domination have been the lethal power behind our collective trauma. Such is the State of the Sexual Union 2026.

As I write this, Epstein files keep dropping like cancer-laced stink bombs, and ICE – though seemingly routed from brave Minneapolis – is continuing its nonconsensual kidnappings around the country. Many peoples are being threatened. Not sexy!

In all the combustible confusion of fact with fantasy and criminality with authority, these don’t seem to be Democrat vs. Republican, Liberal vs. Conservative issues, not this year anyway. “It’s really not about the Red or Blue, it’s just folks like me and you,” is my SOTSU 2026 paraphrase of my wonderful Counterpunch colleague David Rovics – who recently played a fantastic private concert in Bonoboville with his band, the Ministry of Culture (including the lovely Kamala Emanuel), that we’ll release soon.  I was especially touched that David composed a rather catchy new AI Tsuno song entitled “Captain Max, Dr. Suzy and the Bonobo Way.”

And yes, there’s still pro-bonobo goodness in the world, and it’s my fervent SOTSU hope that the make-love-not-war, female-empowered, male-nurturing, sharing, caregiving bonobos can guide us through all this Epstein and ICE slime and crime. The “Epstein class” has captured, censored, deactivated, demoralized and de-eroticized us, putting some eight billion humans and gazillions of other precious life forms under the greasy thumbs of a handful of neoreactionary, sociopathically thirsty rich guys (and a few gals).

Don’t Let the Creeps Kill Your Vibe

Over this Year of Needing Therapy, we’ve all been kidnapped – some of us literally, most of us mentally – by the Trump/Epstein/ICE/Zuck/Zionist/Palantir/PayPal Mafia of Creeps.  That’s a extremel hyphenated adjective, but we now find ourselves in an extreme kink relationship that, for most of us here on the bottom, is inarguably nonconsensual and gross – and that’s part of what turns these creeps on.

I could have had a little fun roleplaying that scenario in less grievous times. Instead, I tried to focus SOTSU 2026 on how we can heal from the Epstein files as they pour forth, demolishing our trust in these creepy leaders and systems – which may be good – but also in each other, which is sad. Unless you too are a sociopath, the stories that emerge from these files are a major turn-off, making some of us lose our own healthy appetites for sex and even love.

As a sex therapist who firmly believes that good sex is vital to our mental and physical health, I encouraged my SOTSU audience not to let the evils of our deeply disturbed rulers destroy us “as good people and as sexual beings.” This is easier said than done, but it’s my hope that we can remember that while people – especially the powerful ones – can make a mess of just about anything, including sex, it’s been proven time and again that good sex is far more likely to heal than harm.

In its healthy form, consenting adult sex builds connection, lowers stress, boosts confidence and tends to make you nicer to be around. A little good sex puts you into a better mood and, if more of us were having it instead of scrolling through slime, slop and manufactured outrage, society might be in a better mood too.  A partner is great (and I miss mine) but not necessary so, I added, “make love to someone you love today… even if that someone is you.”

Farewell Dr. Jane Goodall

Just before the sign-off, it occurred to me that we really should say goodbye to the late great Dr. Jane Goodall, and in that moment of synchronicity, Hartley did just that. RIP Dr. Jane Goodall, a giant of primatology, ecology and love, who sadly passed away shortly after Max. One of my favorite nicknames was “Jane Goodall After Dark” (thank you Tom Quinn).

Dr. Jane made her mark by studying common chimpanzees, but she was a great friend of the bonobos. When I sent her The Bonobo Way, her assistant Chris Hildreth messaged me that she “loved it.” That’s a lot more than I can say about another celebrity (whom I did not name) who had said that he feared he might be misunderstood if he endorsed such a sex-positive book, and now… he’s in the Epstein files.

That guy definitely needs therapy, but honestly, so do we all. The architects of this mess should get theirs in prison. The rest of us just need a couch and some kind of caring counselor (with or without a license, depending on our needs) who can help us untangle whatever we’re dealing with – as individuals and as a society – in this sanity-testing Year of Needing Therapy.

It’s also the Year of the Fire Horse, said to be a time of intense transformation and courage. May we all be brave as fire horses in resisting fascism and transforming tyranny into community. May we go bonobos, give what we can and get what we need.

God and Goddess bless America – all the Americas – and the world.

Listen to Dr. Susan Block’s Full 2026 State of the Sexual Union address on WCAP

Read the 2026 SOTSU transcript.

Listen on YouTube.  Listen on X/Twitter.  Listen on Facebook. Listen on Bsky. Listen on Podbean.  Listen on Soundcloud.  Listen on Pandora.  Listen on Apple Podcasts.  Listen on Instagram. Listen on IHeartRadio.  Listen on Academia. Listen on Amazon.  Listen on FDR Radio. Listen on Rumble.  Listen on Spotify. Listen & Read on Substack.

Read Dr. Susan Block’s SOTSU 2026 Manifesto on COUNTERPUNCH

Check out Dr. Suzy’s 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 “State of the Sexual Union” (SOTSU) addresses.

Read the State of the Sexual Union 2026 on Counterpunch

© February 18, 2026. Susan Block, Ph.D., aka “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist and author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. 

980 WCAP serving the Merrimack Valley.

Hartley Pleshaw

I am Hartley Pleshaw. This is Active Radio and has been the honored custom on this program for several years now. I am most happy to be joined once again for her annual visit, bringing to us all her philosophy of sexual sanity of bonoboism. And then later in the program, she will give us her most anticipated annual State of the Sexual Union address. But now I would very much like to introduce America’s number one sexologist, and the official sex expert of Active Radio, Dr. Susan Block. Dr. Suzy, welcome back.

Dr. Suzy

Happy Valentine’s Day, Hartley.

Hartley Pleshaw

Well, happy Valentine’s Day. Happy…

Dr. Suzy

World Bonobo Day.

Hartley Pleshaw

World Bonobo Day. Happy…

Dr. Suzy

Lupercalia.

Hartley Pleshaw

Lupercalia Day. And if you have any comments or questions for Dr. Suzy, please text us on the Milltown Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and Electrical Tech line. 9784544980 9784544980. We are coming to you today from the Nash Casino Studio here at WCAP. Well, Dr. Suzy.

Dr. Suzy

Yes, Hartley, I’m coming to you at the ungodly hour of 7:08 Pacific time, a.m., Valentine’s morning, 2026, if you’re keeping track, because sadly, I have no Valentine keeping me in bed this year.

Hartley Pleshaw

Well, Dr. Suzy, First of all, thank you for getting up as early as you have gotten up on the West Coast. I’m sorry about our very severe time difference…

Dr. Suzy

I just stayed up all night, really.

Hartley Pleshaw

Well, I know it’s been a very tough year for you personally.

Dr. Suzy

Yeah.

Hartley Pleshaw

And how sad it is that someone who was in love as so much as you were with your darling husband. You lost him a few months ago. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Suzy

May I say his name?

Hartley Pleshaw

Please do. And please tell us.

Dr. Suzy

His full name.

Hartley Pleshaw

All the wonderful things about him.

Dr. Suzy

Well, part of his name: Prince Maximilian  Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri. Captain Max.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

AKA Mickey, my beloved husband of 33 years, and my lover, my Valentine. and my co-producer, and my publisher, a great publisher of many, many magazines and books, and a producer of our show and other shows, but our show for 35 years.

Hartley Pleshaw

Wow.

Dr. Suzy

And my witness, I always say. That’s part of being my love, part of being my friend of 40 years. which is a very important aspect of love. If you don’t have a lover and you have a friend you love, that’s a Valentine.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

But I must say, Hartley, Valentine’s Day is not for widows…. Erica Kirk notwithstanding.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yeah.

Dr. Suzy

It’s not a really political holiday. It’s certainly not religious or patriotic, or you could say the religion is kind of hidden.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

It’s a very personal holiday.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

But politics does affect us personally.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes. On this program today, we’re going to get into what I consider both the fascinating and appalling nexus in today’s America, the America of 2026, between sexual issues and political issues… And first of all, thank you for that lovely tribute to your husband. And I certainly remember listening to you guys on your broadcast, on your podcast. And you guys made a great team. And it’s very sad. Of course, we all lose people in our lives at various times.

Dr. Suzy

Or they lose us. I mean, one way or another. It’s rare when you both go together.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

So it’s kind of part of love, this loss, this grief.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes. Well, I want to thank you for getting through all that. And I know you’re still dealing with it, but-.

Dr. Suzy

I’m still in the process. Last year, I called it my Year of Living Precariously – when I was taking care of Max who was very sick.  He had had a stroke. And you know, I felt a little bit guilty about doing the State of the Sexual Union with you on Active Radio last year, Hartley. But Max, when I told him, he gave me a big smile and nodded. He couldn’t talk, really, but I got the sense that he wanted me to do it.

Hartley Pleshaw

Wow.

Dr. Suzy

And so I did.

Hartley Pleshaw

He was a great man.

Dr. Suzy

He believed in speech, freedom of speech, and speaking out. even when it’s difficult.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes, he had a long career of fighting for, you know, it’s a fight that never ends, especially these days, fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of expression. You know, he was at the front lines on those struggles for much of his life. And a lot of people who’ve never heard of him owe him a great debt of gratitude.

Dr. Suzy

That’s why I declared November 8th his birthday. Free Speech Day.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

By the power vested in me as Mayor of Bonoboville.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

Free Speech Day! Max was a great freedom fighter when it was very difficult. He was not much of a real fighter. I mean, he threw his gun down in the army and quit. But he was a fighter for love.

Hartley Pleshaw

Well, sometimes the people who throw down their weapons are the noblest warriors of them all because they fight for a higher thing. We are going to have you deliver the annual State of the Sexual Union Address later on the program. But for right now, let’s talk about Valentine’s Day, its origins, World Bonobo Day and Lupercalia, because of course, a lot of people don’t know this, but you know it. This holiday, a holiday for love, existed long before the title of Valentine’s Day or Saint Valentine’s Day was affixed to it. Tell us about how this holiday of love came to be.

Dr. Suzy

Friends, Romans, country women and men… to paraphrase the great romantic Mark Antony.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

Lend me your ears. I come to bury Valentine’s Day, not to praise it…. because it’s kind of a fake holiday. It’s the High Holiday of Love. It ought to be special, romantic, but it feels a little forced. Why is that? Part of the answer lies in history, because it was kind of concocted by the early Catholic Church and imposed on the Pan-loving peoples of the area, of Rome, and beyond. And it was shaped by the Victorian greeting card industry that sweetened it up with a little Sea’s chocolate and polished it with De Beers diamonds and abetted it by Amazon. And now you have this feast of Saint Valentine based upon a sexless Christian fairy tale starring the celibate Saint Valentine.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

And it’s a story of this Christian priest who was arrested for marrying couples in secret because mean old Emperor Claudius had outlawed marriage, vainly attempting to restore his potency in a weakening imperial army in his collapsing empire. And then supposedly he converted the jailer’s blind daughter to Christianity just before he was executed. And that morning she found a card in his cell, addressed to her and signed, Your Valentine. And not only is she deeply moved, but she can now see the card, meaning that his saintly ophthalmological skills cured her of her blindness.

And it’s a very touching tale of great Valentiny ideals, but as Max would say, “the ideal is the enemy of the real.” And in reality, there were about 10 Christian martyrs named Valentine, and none of them healed a jailer’s blind daughter or left a card. So it’s all made-up.

And it’s made-up on top of this very wild, very primal Roman holiday that was outlawed by the Church. And it was ruled, in a sense, by the Lord of the Wild, Pan, who was turned into the devil. The holiday was called Lupercalia. It was also ruled by the wolf, the Luper. And it was the origin holiday for the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, who were supposedly nursed by a wolf, a she-wolf. And it’s very wild. It’s, in fact, got all these very powerful animals in it, pagan gods of the Roman-Grecian variety. And it was practiced since the founding of ancient Rome. It’s older than Rome itself.

By the way, Max was born in Rome, and we loved this holiday, this origin of Valentine’s Day, because it was done at the same time of year when these kind of fraternities of people that were said to be descended from Romulus and Remus. People, I say, they were men, although in our own celebrations of Lupercalia, we did it with men and women and everybody in between. And they would go into a cave and meet together. They were kind of rivals, so they would have this peaceful truce. and they would sacrifice a goat and eat it and drink wine and cut the strips into little whips that they called Februa. Sound familiar? Oh, yes. It’s where we get our month of February. Happy Februa! And then they would run through the countryside, whipping people. Supposedly, I hope this might have been true, it was consenting adults only. I hope, maybe not always, but the idea was that it was for luck and fertility. And yes, they believed that getting a little smack in the rear or on the hands by the Februa  would bring them luck and make them fertile and probably excite them into having some sex during this week of running around that they had called the Lupercal, which is celebrated actually in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Well, the Christian Church just decided it was too wild. And they outlawed it. It was what Barbara Ehrenreich, one of my idols, might call collective joy, or you could say communal ecstasy. Not that everybody was having sex with everybody, but it was a time of Bacchanalian pleasures and joys and artistic expressions and a little bit of whacking, because love can be painful. Yeah, I was almost going to cry there.

Anyway, you could celebrate Lupercalia if Valentine’s Day gives you a toothache with all the chocolate and artificial glaze. But you could also celebrate World Bonobo Day. Yes. Thank you, Congress from 2018. If you’re any kind of lover of love, you don’t have to be in a couple. That’s what always bothered Max and me, even though we were very much in a couple. The pressure of coupling on Valentine’s Day is very, well, anxiety-producing, creates performance pressure of all kinds, and pressure is the enemy of pleasure. And you want to be able to just be a little free-feeling, to really feel your feelings at this time of year when there’s a glimmer of spring in the air.

So take a cue from the Love Apes about love. Our closest genetic cousins truly embody the spirit of true love. They’re the Make Love Not War bonobos. They’re also the Peace Apes, having never been seen killing each other in the wild or captivity. so far yes and they’re called Pan Paniscus in Latin, so they too are ruled by Pan.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes, Dr. Suzy we have to go to a break now but when we come back yes we will hear the annual State of the Sexual Union address from Dr. Susan Block. I know you’ve all been waiting for it for a year now, well we’re about to hear it here on Active Radio! I am Hartley Pleshaw, this is WCAP AM 980 and all where everybody gets it the voice of the Valley stay tuned….

Ladies and gentlemen of the listening audience, as is the custom here on active radio, once a year, according to the active radio constitution, we are to be addressed as to the State of the Sexual Union by the official Sexologist of Active Radio, America’s number one sexologist, Dr. Susan Block. I’m Hartley Pleshaw. This is Active Radio, and this is what so many people have been waiting for all year, Dr. Suzy, to bestow upon us. the State of the Sexual Union. It couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, this being Valentine’s Day and Monday being President’s Day. Here we are in America, 2026. So many things are going crazy sexually and otherwise. Now could never be a better time to hear Dr. Susan Block and her State of the Sexual Union address. Dr. Suzy, welcome. The floor is yours.

Dr. Suzy

Wow, that’s a lot of pressure, and we all know pressure’s the enemy of pleasure, but hey, it’s also a great motivator. So, Brothers and Sisters, Hartley, listeners to Active Radio and beyond…

The State of the Sexual Union 2026 Is in need of therapy.

Yep, that’s the general state. There are specifics that I’m going to get into. I’ve always done my State of the Sexual Union after the president does the State of the Union. But really there’s no reason I can’t do mine before his as I’m doing today.  I just won’t be commenting on what he says, but he’s really just said and done so much awful stuff. such, to say the least, turnoffs, I don’t need to listen to him before I address these things.

This past year alone, if anyone in the government had integrity, Donald J. Trump would not even be delivering the State of the Union 2026. He would be in therapy, mandated by his cell supervisor. That’s my sex therapeutic assessment.

And this isn’t Red or Blue as said by my Counterpunch colleague, David Rovics, who I just met and is always on tour, so catch him sometime. He just wrote a song called “Captain Max, Dr. Suzy and the Bonobo Way.” And he says, “There’s really no such thing as Red or Blue. There’s just folks like me and you.” There’s not liberal or conservative, or left or right even.

It’s really the billionaires – now mostly tech lords with massive sex problem –  versus the rest of us. We have sex problems too, but not generally as massive.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

And they use the President of the United States as well as his State of the Union address because he’s incredibly corrupt.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

And this kind of corruption is really the opposite of good sex.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes…. Well, of course, the number one story in the world right now, it could seem to be, would be the Epstein Files and what we’re learning about the upper crust elite in this country and the world is just how perverted and how sick and how wretched they all are. And this is obviously the kind of behavior those people were engaging in was obviously degenerate sexual behavior. And whenever a new revelation comes out about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their powerful pals, thanks to you, Dr. Suzy, I now have a perspective on this sort of thing I would not have otherwise had. And that is when people are not sexually healthy, when they are not understanding of the joys of sexuality, then instead, they turn into monsters, as these people so obviously did. And I can’t help but think, well, I’ll put the question to you, Dr. Suzy. As you observe the whole Epstein phenomenon and how terrible these people have dealt with the sexual problems of their own lives and the unspeakable damage and criminality they’ve inflicted on other people. The floor is yours, Dr. Suzy.

Dr. Suzy

Ooh, it’s a slippery floor. Slippery with all kinds of toxic fluids, natural and unnatural. And yes, the Epstein files have certainly poisoned the well with these fluids, the well of milk and honey and good sex and good feelings. And we all feel horrible and disgusted.

I could comment and gossip on exactly what is in the files. One problem I have is I don’t know how much is true and not true. That’s part of the problem we all have, not trusting what we see and hear, partly because of AI, partly because we’re lied to all the time.

But we know at least a large portion of this horror that’s pouring forth is true. And it’s very, very disturbing and certainly does not make for a happy Valentine’s Day. Not for anybody. So I could talk about all these guys  – and there were women too, not just guys – but my general assessment of the State of the Sexual Union 2026 is THERAPY. They all need therapy – and not the kind of therapy where they control their therapists. There are different kinds. Not massage therapy, okay?  But sex therapy, yes. Talking sex therapy to work out some of these horrible problems.

And right now, we ALL need sex therapy. In my own practice over these last years, but especially months, as these Epstein files have slowly and then quickly poured out, many people are traumatized in many ways. And I only talk with adults, so I don’t want to speak about anybody but adults, but I’m sure that other people are traumatized too. But many men and women are traumatized by triggered memories of being abused themselves. It’s unfortunately very common, though not at these levels, to my knowledge. Of course, I’m surprised at the level of violence and cover-up that has been revealed to us, especially these last few days. even.

There’s also a sympathetic trauma for the victims, even if you were not abused. How can you enjoy anything when this nightmare comes pouring out, all these nightmare scenarios that are attached to pleasure, that are attached to images of people having fun at parties? And we want to have fun too at parties and dress up and enjoy ourselves. And then we find out there’s this horrible thing, many terrible things connected to governments, to our government, has been happening.

Whom can we trust? There are many people now traumatized by paranoia, fear. What can we trust? Nothing. Maybe we can’t even trust our own lovers. Maybe we can. I would think so. I would hope you could trust your lover. But then again, we see all these images of honeypots, people with people they can’t trust.

People are traumatized by fear of exposure. Maybe they’re doing something wrong, but maybe they’re not even doing anything wrong. They just are afraid of their privacy being ripped away as they see these very private communications come pouring out.

On top of that, they know that surveillance exists in all their devices. We’re always being asked to get our picture taken and show this and show that and put in five step verification. And it’s very anxiety producing. I’m getting anxious just talking about it, but I hear about it all the time.

And that fear can give you intense performance anxiety, make you not want to make love at all. And before you jump in here, let me just give a pitch for making love, because I am a love doctor, and I know it’s disgusting. It’s disgusting to me right now, partly because I’m a widow, and partly because of these Epstein files.

But if we stop making love, we will hurt ourselves. Let us not let these liars and thieves steal our own sexuality away from us, either through censorship or through self-censorship.

Let us be good people, but let us continue to be sexual beings.

Hartley Pleshaw

Well said. Dr. Suzy, we have to go to another break now, but when we come back, we’ll have more with our guest, Dr. Susan Block, America’s number one sexologist here on Active Radio. I am Hartley Pleshaw here on WCAP. We are coming to you from the Nash Casino studio at WCAP. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

Well, when it comes to sexual healing, you’ve come to the right place today because my guest on the program is America’s number one sexologist, Dr. Susan Block. I am Hartley Pleshaw.

Dr. Suzy, not to dwell too much on the sordid and revolting situation with the Epstein files, but this is just my opinion, and you’re free to give me yours, and that’s why you’re here today, as a matter of fact. Ever since Donald Trump became president, the first term, but especially this term, there seems to be, at least from my outsider observation, a kind of sexual undercurrent with him and his administration. And it isn’t just the Epstein files, as revolting as they are. but the whole incel phenomenon, the fact that a good portion of Mr. Trump’s constituency seems to be, if I can get rather blunt here, seems to be made-up of angry guys who can’t get laid and who hate women. Am I exaggerating the case?

Dr. Suzy

Well, there is a certain contingent of the ammosexual incel mentality that is a part of the Trump fan club. I wrote “Ammosexual Incels” a while ago. because they have been gaining power, and a lot of influencers try to appeal to them. If you make love, you don’t want to make war. But if you’re kind of anti-sex, which the incels tend to be, and so they put a lot of their sexuality, which doesn’t just go away, their erotic desire, into weapons, the weapons of their words very often, and into actual weapons, their gun collection or jet fighter planes. Trump has a lot of power, which translates to firepower, and that’s very impressive to his incel contingent.

Both Epstein and Trump attract people for their weaknesses. These people might be powerful in the world, but they find their weaknesses. Trump makes up names for people. Epstein would find weaknesses and blackmail or take advantage and use these people for their look, or their position in life, or their money, or their youth, or their talent. And then they make them weaker. They always make them weaker. There’s Trump’s first wife, buried in his golf course, having supposedly fallen down the stairs. They’re vampires, people like that.

Trump has a kidnapping kink, I think. Kidnapping. It’s going on right now of American citizens, of visitors to this country, and presidents of other countries are being kidnapped. There’s definitely a kidnapping fetish going on. And sometimes that spills over into murder. Whoops (as Epstein might say).

We all need therapy, we need it, and instead we give these billionaires control.

America – including all the Americas, as Bad Bunny would say, and the whole world is being assaulted – is under sexual assault, other types of assault. Financial assault, for sure, and of course, Valentine’s Day is expensive. Love is expensive. Luxury is expensive. Therapy is expensive.

But we need it because we’re being assaulted. in every way, every day, by a handful of billionaires and their handlers. It’s not red or blue or even left or right, not really, although I tend to lean left. But it isn’t that. It’s a handful of billionaires who may or may not pretend to be this or that type of politics. As we can see, they’re all kind of making it up.

By the way, my own nemesis, Mark Zuckerberg Cuckerberg, is in the files. 300 times. And of course he is. All these thirsty nerds with billions of dollars are in there. And they don’t all have the same kinks, although Epstein brought them low. Finding weakness, just like Trump does. That’s why they couldn’t stay friends. They were too similar, both wanting that power. After all, Trump’s biggest beef with Epstein was “he stole a masseuse from me.” What pettiness have we been led by?

I feel like we’re all in a kink relationship, and it’s not very consensual, although some of us voted for him.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes.

Dr. Suzy

And I love you all.  No violence, no bad wishes to anyone. And I have clients who have different types of politics. We all need love, and we all need sex, and if you don’t have it, you start to lose it. Use it or lose it! It’s true of free speech if we don’t keep exercising it.

I wasn’t even sure I could say the word sex on this show. Thank you, Hartley, for allowing that. You can’t use it a lot these days.

Hartley Pleshaw

Free speech lives here, I’ll say that.

Dr. Suzy

Yeah, and use your own sexuality – don’t lose it! If you’re afraid to do it with other people, do it with yourself. Make love to someone you love tonight, even if that someone is you.

Hartley Pleshaw

Very affirmative advice, Dr. Suzy. And Dr. Suzy, regrettably, we’re coming up toward the end of the show, but I certainly wanted to end it on a positive note. Well, maybe a little sad because I could not help but when I learned last year when Dr. Jane Goodall passed away.

Dr. Suzy

I was just thinking of Dr. Jane Goodall and how I had to squeeze her in. Thank you, Hartley.

Hartley Pleshaw

I’m thinking of how much you love the bonobos and how she devoted her life to…

Dr. Suzy

She gave me an endorsement for the Bonobo Way. She told me, she wrote it in an e-mail, “I love the Bonobo Way,” and I will always appreciate that about her.  Unlike some people who were afraid because of scandal, and now they’re in the Epstein files – oh my God!

Dr. Jane Goodall is not in the Epstein files. And we owe her such a debt of gratitude. And I’m so glad to end on a note of Rest in Peace, dear Dr. Jane, I love you.

Hartley Pleshaw

Well, I didn’t even know that you two had connected, but I’m thinking that was a natural connection, because both of you, in different ways, but in certainly significant and important ways, have taught us that our first cousins, a lot of other members of the animal kingdom, but certainly our simian relatives are so much like us in many ways, and when it comes to the bonobos, significantly better than we are in many ways.

Dr. Suzy

Absolutely. One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever gotten in my early days of the Bonobo Way came from a journalist named Tom Quinn, who called me “Jane Goodall After Dark”

Hartley Pleshaw

Well said.

Dr. Suzy

And yes, Dr. Jane loved bonobos. I mean, she taught us so much about chimps. She taught us some things about Trump too.

Hartley Pleshaw

Yes, indeed. Dr. Suzy, again, it looks like the clock on the wall is approaching the end for us, at least for this time and for this year, but we will continue this conversation in the future. If people want to know more about you and engage you and listen to your productions and so forth, and read your work, you mentioned Counterpunch. That’s where I discovered you when I read Counterpunch. Tell us about all the various ways that we can contact you and learn from you.

Dr. Suzy

Well, I have an article in CounterPunch right now “Valentine Blues, The High Holidays of Love in Low Times.” You can certainly find me there and on my own website, drsusanblock.com, where I write about everything. and on drsusanblockinstitute.com as well as at the institute that you can call. Can I give the phone number?

Hartley Pleshaw

Please do. Okay.

Dr. Suzy

213. 291-9497, 213-291-9497. Operators are lounging by…. because we believe in lounging, darling. Yes. We are therapists to help you with your sexuality as well as life coaches to help you with all types of problems and pleasures of life.

Certainly, the issues that we’ve been talking about during our State of the Sexual Union today are anti anti-aphrodisiacs.  And it’s important to keep your Eros alive, and it’s not always easy – whether you’re a widow like me and mourning Max or your Max, or whether you’re just overwhelmed by the problems of the world, so you just don’t feel sexy, then you might need some help with that. It’s a time of great loneliness and alienation right now, so people do need a lot of encouragement in that area because I think they get a lot of discouragement from world affairs.

And if you don’t have a Valentine, that’s okay. Celebrate Lupercalia. Give yourself a spanking. I’m sure you deserve it.

Happy World Bonobo Day. Give to the Bonobos.

Hartley Pleshaw

Wonderful to talk to you again. Thanks so much for joining us. I’m Hartley Pleshaw 980 WCAP, Lowell, Haverhill, Lawrence, Methuen, Nashua, and Salem, New Hampshire, serving the Merrimack Valley.

by Dr. Susan Block.

Valentine’s Day is on its way, the shopping sites flashing rosy red hearts, but I’ve got the Valentine blues… how about you?

It’s my first V-Day in over three decades without my beloved Captain Max (RIP Max 11/8/1943 – 5/13/2025), aka Pr. Maximillian R. Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri, aka Mickey, my husband of 33 years, publisher, producer, butler, witness, Great Love and #1 lover, my Valentine.

I miss Max every day in so many big and little ways. It’s personal, of course, and Valentine’s Day is a very personal – as opposed to religious or patriotic – holiday, whether you celebrate with hearts and flowers, whips and panties, tears and recriminations, or platinum and pre-nups.

Yet politics affects us personally, and V-Day 2026 may be particularly tough to navigate through all the dystopian violence, lies from on high, political division and sexual suspicion.  Sprinkle in vicious fascism, über-militarism, infuriating nepotism, hyper-monetization, rampant censorship, environmental devastation, deep interpersonal alienation and the utter emotional exhaustion of it all – and who gives a candied heart about effing Valentine’s Day?

But V-Day is D-Day for Lovers, the High Holiday of Love. High or lowbrow, as everyone knows, it ought to be special, romantic, heartfelt, passionate, in the pink and perfect… and it hardly ever is.

Indeed, ever since its brutal Medieval imposition on the Pan-loving peoples of early Christendom, the artificially sweetened festival of forced fake love called the Feast of Saint Valentine has fostered far more pain (St. Valentine’s Day Massacre anyone?) than pleasure.

V-Day Widow

What can you do for the Valentine blues? There is no cure. I’m no Erika Kirk – bragging about how much cash she stashed from Charlie’s mega-funeral – but putting together another “Max Collage” has helped to put me in the pink, with streaks of Valentine red, Lupercalian scarlet and bonobo rose.  Sailing through images of Max from Valentines Past is a bittersweet journey on the high seas of so many heartfelt memories.

Snapshots from France trigger remembrances of Valentine’s eve, 2002: Max waiting for me on a bustling French Riviera street corner as I emerge from a taxi, flying like a fighter jet into his warm strong arms, the boulevard crowd cheering, “C’est l’amour!” – as if we’re all in a French New Wave movie.

Not that Max and I were Jean-Luc Godard, though Breathless was a favorite Valentine flick, and we filmed many of our V-Days in Bonoboville, plus a few during Sex Week at Yale, a decade of great sex-educational Valentine Seasons… until a well-funded religious group forced a cowardly Yale to shut it down. Then there was V-Day 2017, canoodling on Venice Beach as the sun set into the Pacific, many great Lupercalias in Bonoboville, a World Bonobo Day at the Zoo and a delicious V-Day 2024 of chocolate, storytelling, Absinthe and orgasms, swathed in our Palestinian keffiyehs. That was our last Holiday of Hearts before Max was struck like lightning by a terrible stroke that paralyzed the entire right side of his body, and the left (rational) side of his brain.

On V-Day 2025, there were no Valentine orgasms for me and Max. In Hollywood-Kaiser hospital’s stroke ward, Max couldn’t even eat the Valentine chocolates I brought him, though he did lick one chocolate and grin with a little pleasure – or just a remembrance of pleasures past – and we shared a few chocolate-flavored kisses, flowers, hand squeezes and a slurred “I love you” between medical procedures. Now even that’s gone. Bella Ciao, bye-bye love.

Sigh. Valentine’s Day is not for widows, Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners. Especially not during these challenging times for love of all kinds.

Sexless Saint Valentine

To be sure, V-Day Fatigue goes much farther back than “these times,” horrifying as they are. Though Max and I ate up romance on the daily, we were never hungry for Valentine’s Day. Like a strawberry glazed in sugary, chemical-laced icing; the real juicy fruit is in there somewhere, but the sickly-sweet frosting disguises, sanitizes and monetizes it beyond recognition… then leaves you with a toothache.

“Friends, Romans, Countrywomen, lend me your ears,” to rephrase Shakespeare’s Marc Antony, “I’ve come to bury Valentine’s Day, not to praise it.”

Concocted by the early Catholic Church, shaped by the Victorian greeting card industry, sweetened by See’s, polished by DeBeers and abetted by Amazon, all this Hallmark Classic Fakery is based upon a cute and sexless Christian romance starring the celibate Saint Valentine.

As the story opens in 4^th century pagan Rome (Max’s birthplace), mean old Emperor Claudius has outlawed marriage in a vain attempt to restore potency to his weakening imperial army. After all, when you make love, you’re less inclined to make war, and Claudius wants fighters not lovers. Enter Valentine, a Christian priest arrested for marrying couples in secret who, while awaiting execution, converts his jailer’s blind daughter to Christianity, whereupon she falls madly (but chastely) in love with him. Then, just after the priest’s execution, the jailer’s blind daughter finds a card in his cell addressed to her and signed, “Your Valentine.” Not only is she deeply moved by this loving gesture, but the fact that she can now see the card means Valentine’s saintly ophthalmological skills have cured her of her blindness.

What a touching tale of pure ideals! But alas and alack (a big lack), the ideal is the enemy of the real, as Max used to say, and in reality, there were several Christian martyrs named “Valentine,” and no evidence that any of them healed a jailer’s blind daughter or left her a farewell card.

However, the ideal is more compelling than the real – as well as more marketable – according to Hallmark, See’s, DeBeers and Amazon, who have worked hard over the centuries to provide tools for a V-Day fraught with pressure (the enemy of pleasure) to purchase their products that simulate the real romance that money just can’t buy.

Lupercalia: The Original Valentine’s Day

How can anyone find or share true love and romance when such virulent hate, war, genocide, police brutality, ICE insanity and profound grief – for the innocent victims of the current madness, for our loved ones, for the world – bleeds out through our newsfeeds, onto our streets and into our lives?

That’s a trillion-dollar question that I, in my widow’s grief, am in no shape to answer. However, if your current need is just to have a good, stimulating, less commercial, more authentic V-Day, then, as the influencers say, do your research! You’ll discover what Max and I learned in the early, pre-AI 2000s: that deep inside the phony, chaste Valentine glaze is the original, primeval, communal, whip-smacking, heartfelt feast for all the senses – including your sense of history – with nothing saintly or celibate about it.

Festeggiamo LUPERCALIA!

As for the “whip-smacking,” it was done with little goatskin whips called Februa, from which we derive our month of February, and from this we learn that the Lupercalian heart of the season has always been a little kinky.

So… if the candy-coated stress of Valentine’s Day gives you a toothache, don’t beat yourself up over it—beat someone else! And no, you ammosexual incels and ICE thugs out there, that is NOT a call to violence or abuse of any kind. On the contrary, I’m simply and peacefully suggesting that you give your special someone a consenting-adult flogging to celebrate the original, primeval, pre-Roman V-Day of Lupercalia…. Or, better yet, take one yourself. I’m sure you deserve it.

Best to restrict Lupercalian floggings to between you and your “special someone,” since consent can be a lot tougher to read in party settings. That said, the most authentic way to reclaim V-Day’s Lupercalian roots is communally (besides, not everyone has a special someone), and in that spirit, for almost two decades, Max and I whipped up wild, wolf-howling Lupercals at the little Love Church of The Bonobo Way in the village of Bonoboville.

To dramatize our political points, we’d stage public Lupercalian floggings of submissive volunteers masked as authoritarian characters such as Trump, Putin, Bush, Cheney, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Kavanaugh, Commedia del’Arte-style. Yet the passion of Lupercalia is beyond the political and even the personal. It’s beyond human, as it marks the coming of spring for all of Mother Earth’s fauna and flora with organic, erotic, ecosexual purification – communal ecstasy rather than the hopelessly unromantic monetization of St. Valentine and Amazon.

Maybe it’s my grief talking, but Lupercalia beats a broken heart and an empty wallet any V-Day.

V-Day is World Bonobo Day

Broken-hearted or blissful, married, single, in a couple, a throuple, a commune or a convent, you can honor love with the world’s greatest lovers and officially go bonobos on Valentine’s Day because Valentine’s Day, February 14^th, thanks to U.S. House Resolution 738 (115^th Congress, 2018) is also World Bonobo Day.

If any nonhuman animal embodies the spirit of true love, it’s the “make love not war” bonobo ape. You can gain Valentine inspiration to live in more loving ways from the source: the remarkable Love Apes of the rainforest. Our closest genetic cousins, bonobos are also the Peace Apes, having never been seen killing each other in the wild or captivity (thus far!).

Max and I were inspired by bonobos every day of our love lives together since we first *discovered* them on PBS in 1993.  Here’s an intriguing Valentine connection: the bonobo’s Latin name is Pan paniscus. So, Lupercalia and World Bonobo Day are linked through Pan, the Spirit of the Wild… and certainly no “Saint.”

Gift Idea: Make a donation in your Valentine’s name to Lola ya Bonobo and/or Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI), both actively helping to save the wild bonobos from extinction, and give them the receipt inside a Valentine card.

Gift Idea 2: Give The Bonobo Way for Valentine’s Day to friends, lovers and your friends’ lovers. Spread the Bonobo Word of Love from the Love Apes. Give it to someone you love, even if that someone is YOU.

In these times of escalating brutality under color of law, greed, injustice, degradation and sorrow, just the existence of bonobos is a heartening reminder that peace through pleasure is possible for apes like us. It sure helps to keep this V-Day Widow going amid all the grief and madness.

This February 14, honor World Bonobo Day. Stop the killing. Break the ICE. Spread the love.

Need to Talk?

If you really want to “go bonobos” – or Lupercalian – you might also want to give yourself the Valentine gift of telephone sex therapy with the Dr. Susan Block Institute.

Release your “inner bonobo,” learn to please your Valentine, discover more about yourself and why you might not have a Valentine, go under Valentine Erotic Hypnosis for the ultimate hearts-and-flowers fantasy, enter the Erotic Theater of the Mind and roleplay a stimulating Lupercalian spanking, explore other kinks, transformations and fetishes, or just delve deeply into whatever you need to talk about that you can’t talk about anywhere else. You can talk to us.

Whatever you’re going through, we’re here for you …

With Valentine Bonobo Lupercalian Love,
Dr. Suzy

If and when you’re in the mood, click these links for stories of my Valentine Max’s extraordinary life, heartbreaking death and inspirational legacy of love:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN.
On Substack

My Beloved Max Collage Collection
Max Collage 1: “Family History”
On Substack

Max Collage 2: “On DrSuzy.Tv”
On Substack

Max Collage 3: Travels with Max in France
On Substack

Max Collage 4: Winter Holidays
On Substack

© January 29,  2026  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950.

by Dr. Susan Block.

Happy New Year, Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners… though frankly, I’m not too happy about it. Old 2024 may have been an Annus Horribilis, but 2025 marked The End. Finis for me. That is, on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, my beloved husband of 33 years, publisher, producer, muse, witness, sweetheart, best friend and better half, Max, aka Pr. Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri, aka “Captain Max,” aka Mickey, passed away, and nothing else much matters to me now.

Maybe you know how that feels.

I have lost the love of my life, and since my life revolved around love, I have lost my life.

It was my first New Year’s Eve without kissing Max in 18 years.

Physically and mentally, I am, as they say, a ghost of my former self.

At least, that’s how I feel.

READ “GO BONOBOS in 2026” on COUNTERPUNCH

Yes, it’s personal, but “the personal is political,” isn’t it?

From the tearstained corners of my bleary eyes, I see the world being torn apart – as my darling Max has been torn away… leaving me in tears – ripped clothes and crying.

Not that I don’t enjoy a few laughs of the gallows genre. Laughter is a mental orgasm, healing the pain of loss with a balm of endorphins, if only for a moment.

Of course, life isn’t as funny as it used to be with Max. Even after the stroke took away his ability to tell jokes, he’d roll his eyes and wrinkle his nose into the funniest faces that made me laugh so hard, I’d forget for a moment that he couldn’t walk or talk, and that all his doctors said he didn’t have a chance.

There’s nothing like the laughter of love.

Now those laughs are gone, though other types of humor will do; even dumb political jokes can ease the pain. The mainstream media inadvertently serves up the occasional dish of comic relief in its frantic attempts to be relevant, but its shameless sugar-babyish pandering to its billionaire sugar-daddies is getting deadlier (and less mainstream) every day, so it really isn’t funny anymore. Especially when what you think is only a joke – like, say, the U.S. President casually declaring, “We’re just going to kill people” turns out to be real.

Or has grief broken my funny bone?

Social media isn’t much better, what with our all-powerful Tech Lords censoring pretty much everyone but their own nakedly self-absorbed self-interests. Moreover, their Artificial Ignorance is so baked into the feeds they force-feed us that we need to do deep research to distinguish fantasy from reality, and this little old weeping widow is just not motivated to bother.

Are you?

Does all this interconnectedness to everything just make you feel less connected to anything – especially anything that matters?

Breath of Eros

Sigh. I wish I had something sexier to say at the grand opening of another Happy Nude Rear, but my sex partner is gone.

Of course, Capt’n Max was so much more than “my sex partner,” although good sex (eros) is the essence of life, and, in this mourning sexologist’s view, the bedrock of human well-being, a happy marriage and a less violent society.

I’m thankful to have been blessed by the Breath of Eros for over 40 years of artistic collaboration and friendship overlapping 33 years of love and marriage – before Eros’ evil twin Thanatos (death) took my love away.

It almost took my breath away.

But I’m still here (much to my adversaries’ chagrin) and, though I’m not so sure why (except to keep Max’s legacy alive), I’m thankful for that too.

With all these tears, I’m also grateful for veils. Not veils that censor or suppress, but veils that reveal as they conceal – from the sheer white veil of the bride that conceals her beauty as it reveals her hope for the future to the shadowy black veil of the widow that shields her anguish as it displays the glory of her grief.

Bonoboville Still Breathes

While I’m feeling thankful, let me also give thanks to the real-life human community we call Bonoboville that keeps going in the face of relentless attacks by unscrupulous extortionists, liars and one city government, that began in the wake of Max’s stroke and escalated after his death, despite the complete and utter lack of merit to all of their claims.

More about that later, but in the meantime… Go Bonobos for us!

Max and I brought Bonoboville to life 32 years ago, having *discovered* – at the tail end of The Nature of Sex on PBS – a then-obscure species of ape called bonobos. It was about a year after our rather traditional wedding, and we knew we both loathed war and loved making love, but we didn’t know they were so intimately connected. Then suddenly, it all made sense…

Utterly captivated by these Make-Love-Not-War bonobos – as well as each other (call it the honeymoon phase, if you’re cynical, but the feeling lasted over three decades) – we began crafting both traditional and unorthodox therapies to “release your inner bonobo” (with other consenting adults only; we were among the first in modern times to focus on the importance of “enthusiastic consent”), and we called the community that organically grew around us “Bonoboville.”

Captain Max was the Founding Father, the George Washington of Bonoboville; interestingly, one of Max’s more illustrious ancestors, Gaetano Filangieri, Fifth Prince of Satriano, was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and correspondent with Thomas Jefferson regarding matters of the day, like liberty, equality and revolution.

And rather like Betsy Ross is said to have sewn up a flag, I stitched together The Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure, female empowerment (females rule Bonoboville), male well-being (we nurture and support our dudes), ecosexual intelligence (save our planet!), a strong sense of real connection (community is key), caring and caregiving, as well as sharing resources.

For 33 years, romance ruled our lives. Born into “nobility” on both his Lobkowicz/Bohemian and Filangieri sides, but raised for revolution by relatives who escaped the Nazis, Max conjured a real-life fairytale existence for us, infused with art, zany and erotic adventures, political free speech activism, revolution and evolution.

But no couple is an island, and the key to our longevity was (and is) community, both in theory and in the living breathing reality of Bonoboville. Now that community is keeping me afloat (with a little turbulence) as I try to navigate through the dark and stormy seas of tears, without Capt’n Max at the helm.

The Bonobo Way of Grief

At least, the Bonobo Way still guides me.  Bonobos are, of course, now well-known for great sex. I’m proud to say that this is partly thanks to Max and me, along with a few savvy scientists, who helped to make these “hippie apes” famous for having such fabulous sex that it reduces violence and has completely eliminated murder and war in bonobo society (so far).

If only we humans could do that too! Could we? What do bonobos know that we don’t? 

Bonobos are our closest living great ape cousins, after all, and I believe that the pro-bonobo drive to make-love-not-war – in addition to more violent, greedy urges – is within us all. It’s what drove Max and I to share The Bonobo Way. It’s what’s driving me now to write this somewhat perky piece, even though I’m calling it out from a dark, deep, bottomless well of grief.

Here in the darkness, I am discovering that bonobos are not just remarkable for how they handle Eros, but also Thanatos. As sightings and studies show, bonobos grieve – exhibiting personal feelings of sorrow due to a loved one’s death. They also mourn – publicly wailing, grooming and attending to the bodies of their dead friends.

For instance, a Mpechi Forest patrol team came upon a tribe of bonobos gathered solemnly around the corpse of a deceased female under a canopy with the area surrounding her cleared of twigs and debris. No signs of injury were apparent; it seemed she had died of natural causes, and her beloved bonobo community was grieving her loss.

The human patrol team buried her body while the other bonobos watched in apparent sadness and cautious curiosity. The team put up a sign reading, “Cimitière bonobo” (bonobo cemetery), and marked her grave with a cross. A few days later, the patrol team noticed that several bonobos stayed close to the grave, some even building their nests to sleep in the tree above it. This “bonobo mourning” period continued for at least another month.

Anthropodenial is the Lie

Of course, the humans dug and marked the dead bonobo’s grave, but her fellow bonobos mourned over it for weeks.

And no, it isn’t anthropomorphizing to call it “mourning.” However, to deny bonobos their deep grief, awareness of death, public expressions of sorrow and care for the dead could be called “anthropodenial.” 

According to “A Concept of Death in Genus Pan: Implications for Human Evolution” by Dr. Katherine H. McLean, University of Auckland, “Frans de Waal (2019) coined the term anthropodenial for when researchers reject similarities between humans and our close relatives to keep humans on an evolutionary pedestal. Many scholars criticise anthropomorphism (Gruber & Clay, 2016), but I believe anthropodenial is worse. If two closely related taxa act similarly under similar circumstances, then it is reasonable to believe they are similarly driven. Therefore, I describe [bonobo and chimp] emotional response to death as grief, and the behaviours that stem from it, such as grooming and keeping vigil, as mourning.”

Max and I met the late, great Dr. Frans de Waal (October 29, 1948 – March 14, 2024) back in 1998 at the LA Library. Ten years later, I was touched when Frans defended me against The New Yorker’s attempt to mock my “anthropomorphizing” of bonobo sex, pointing out the New Yorker’s “anthropodenial.” Now Frans’ work is being utilized to defend the perception that bonobos (Pan paniscus) mourn their fallen comrades – more or less like we do.

More research on bonobos is needed in this emerging field of evolutionary primate thanatology. But it’s not hard to imagine that bonobos might well be even more attuned to death than humans are, given the remarkable lengths they go to in order to avoid killing each other.

Some nay-saying war-enthusiasts point out that bonobos can be “aggressive” like it’s some sort of trump card (and let’s not get started on that pitiful excuse for a primate who gives orangutans a bad name). But nobody called bonobos angels; they’re animals like us. The fact that bonobos are not completely nonviolent but just *know* – or are taught by their elders – where and how to draw the line before fighting devolves into murder makes them even more remarkable.

It also renders more feasible – albeit remote in our current homicidal climate – the possibility of humans living “the Bonobo Way.”

Everyone Grieves for Someone

Nevertheless, you don’t have to be bonobo to grieve deeply. Common chimpanzees (Pan troglodyte), known to commit murder and engage in territorial wars, also grieve and even mourn their dead friends and lovers, as Dr. Jane Goodall showed us so well. Dr. Jane “loved” The Bonobo Way and aptly compared Trump to an “aggressive” male chimp “competing for dominance”; sadly, we also lost Dr. Jane in 2025.

Since there are far greater numbers of common chimps than bonobos in the wild and captivity, more examples of chimp grief have been documented. “Cases of chimpanzees exhibiting distress after a death are numerous,” Dr. McLean continues, “one male made persistent ‘wraaah’ calls (a known sign of emotional distress), whimpered, watched the body for hours, and became agitated if others approached it (Teleki, 1973)… after a male failed to rouse a female he was bonded with, he screamed, tore at his hair, tried to prevent the body’s removal, and spent days moaning and crying (Fiore, 2013)…. after the death of an older female, her close friend and daughter groomed the body and kept vigil through the night—they also refused to eat for weeks post-death and exhibited disturbed sleep (Anderson et al., 2010).”

Sounds like me. What about you?

When it comes to mourning role models, I’d rather look to the bonobos than, say, Erika Kirk.

Mourning Chic

Seriously, is public grieving now all the rage, or is it just me?

With loads of extra-judicial snuff films mixed into the rising death count, it seemed like endless funeral processions marched and swayed through 2025 – from the anguished infant burials in Gaza to the grandiose hosannahs – with fireworks – filling American stadiums for a mysteriously assassinated celebrity-turned-deity.

This is Mourning in America – with no apologies to Ronald Reagan whose demented rhinestone cowboy charm is at least partly to blame.

Indeed, a grotesque parallel to my personal grief is that 2025 was the Year of Mourning Chic.

According to all the grief experts, “everyone grieves differently,” and far be it from me to judge another widow’s tears, pyrotechnics nor her widow’s weeds of skin-tight, black pleather pants. After all, I wore a black miniskirt to Max’s cremation.  

That said, when it comes to my personal mourning role models, I’d rather look to the bonobos than, say, Erika Kirk.

Though I have to hand it to the Widow Kirk for that flawless eyeliner (another thing she and JD have in common). Grief, grift or glycerin, the former Trump pageant girl’s mournful gaze is eternally camera-ready, while my own crying eyes resemble two spotted salmon floundering in mudpuddles on either side of the pink baby lobster that is my nose.

Where’s that damn veil?

Grief is the Price of Love

Veiling, grifting and glycerin tears might be human inventions, though primates do engage in trickery.  But real, authentic grief pervades the food chain.

Many creatures, including some of our pets and farm animals, and maybe even our oldest trees, seem to register the passing of their companions, carrying the loss in ways both shared and solitary.

Bonobos may be most emotional about it though. After all, bonobos are the “love apes,” and grief is the price we pay for love.

Since Max’s and my love was so deep, wide, and high as the sky, I am now paying the price.

Bonobo Project 2026

Still, my New Year’s resolution is to “go bonobos” in 2026, aka MMXXVI. That’s a lot of numerals, but Max was from Rome, an empire of great aqueducts and a lousy numbering system.  Roman or Arabic (we don’t need Sharia Law to make us prefer Arab numerals); Israeli or Palestinian (Free Palestine already!); America First, Last, or just entreating all the Gods, Goddesses and Billionaires that we don’t collapse (at least not this year) – I hope you go bonobos too.  Call it My Project 2026.

And yes, it was my last year’s New Year’s Resolution and My Project 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015…

But I’m trying again – with tears and many not unreasonable fears – slipping and falling, grieving and mourning, weeping and wailing, moving and shaking, tripping and swinging into the 12th Great Year of the Bonobo.

Amen and Awomen. Here we go…

Save the Bonobos

If there’s any hope for us humans going bonobos – even if our chances are tinier than a war-profiteering billionaire’s manhood – we must do all we can to keep the real bonobos alive and thriving in their native habitat of the Congolese Rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – as well as in sanctuaries, primate centers and (the better) zoos.

• Lola ya Bonobo (Bonobo Paradise) is a bonobo sanctuary outside Kinshasa in the DRC, sometimes called the “richest land with the poorest people,” currently being decimated over cobalt mining so essential to our precious smartphones and other devices. Lola ya Bonobo, founded by visionary Claudine André,  rescues orphans of the devastating “bushmeat” trade – exacerbated by the population displacements caused by logging and mining. Lola cares for these little bonobo “refugees” like family, and eventually releases them back into the wild. Donations are administered by Friends of Bonobos, including our friends, Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare, authors of Survival of the Friendliest, as well as Ashley Stone and Amanda Kuttner, all of whom tirelessly help Lola to keep studying and saving bonobos.
• The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI), founded by another great pro-bonobo friend, Sally Coxe, is developing the Bonobo Peace Forest, saving many bonobos, often giving the orphans to Lola ya Bonobo. BCI also provides much-needed food, medical care, school supplies and jobs to Indigenous villagers who live close to the bonobos in the Congolese Rainforest, and who protect their precious and vulnerable wild populations from the ruthless, desperate or just uninformed poachers who shoot them for bushmeat.

Give what you can (get that good Giving Feeling!), and go bonobos (Happy Nude Rear!) – as much as your circumstances legally and ethically permit.

Even if you’re grieving – for the love of your life or for the world you once knew – it’s (always) a good time to go bonobos.

READ “GO BONOBOS in 2026” on COUNTERPUNCH

© January 1, 2026. Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist and author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950.

“Max Winter Holidays”                                                                Collage: Susan Block

by Dr. Susan Block.

You could say I have a collage fetish. Like a sexual or sacred fetish object that both soothes and stimulates the fetishist, I find that making collages both soothes my grief for Max and stimulates my memories of our wild and beautiful life together.

Making collages is also my way of turning indecision into art. About the only thing I was ever absolutely sure of in life was my love for Max, and now he’s gone. Other than that, even though strong-willed, I can be indecisive – what a  combo! I’ve never liked choosing just one photo when I love so many, each telling its own special story. So, I put them all in a group – like group sex – and voilà: a collage.

This particular group is gathered around Captain Max, aka Pr. Maximillian R. Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/1943 – 5/13/2025), aka Mickey, over the winter holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Xmas, Krampus, Hanukkah, including Max’s last “Hanukkah for Palestine,” and New Year’s, including the world-renowned Suzy Awards. Here in Bonoboville, aka Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy, we often celebrated the Winter Solstice festivals of light in the darkness according to the ancient, very merry, pagan styles with great Saturnalian bacchanals, shows, parties, fire play and sacred-fetishistic art exhibitions. We also held many of the more traditional Judeo-Christian-ish family feasts where Chef Max would show off his culinary flair. Over the years, we paid our respects in some way to all the Gods and Goddesses, “just in case,” as Max would say,  especially around the Winter Solstice season.

This resulted in a multitude of holy and unholy celebrations and images (though Santa Max was usually working behind-the-scenes), conjuring up, upon first glance, a holy-dazed hurricane. However, if you let its shimmering lights and festive colors draw you in to better see a particular photo that catches your eye, you may find yourself going off on a soothing yet stimulating winter holiday adventure with Capt’n Max.

Happy Holidays. Peace on Earth. Pleasure for All. Be Bonobo. Celebrate in style – but please remember that many of us are grieving this holiday season – whether our loved ones passed away in Pasadena or Palestine. These are tough times. Cherish those you love, for you never know when or even how you might lose them.

Then click these links for stories of Max’s extraordinary life and heartbreaking death:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

My Beloved Max Collage Collection
Max Collage 1: “Family History”
On Substack
Max Collage 2: “On DrSuzy.Tv”
On Substack
Max Collage 3: “Travels with Max in France”
On Substack

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN.
On Substack
On Facebook Events
On Meetup

© October 28,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950.

Capt’n Max in France.                                                                         Collage: Susan Block.

by Dr. Susan Block.

Travels with Max were always a great adventure, especially in France. From the chic museums of Paris to the hot yachts of St. Tropez, from the Hollywood parties of Cannes and fine cafés of Toulon to the libertine clubs of Toulouse, my darling Max loved France. Though he was born in Italy, Max preferred the laissez-faire approach of the French. That might have had something to do with him being unjustly pursued at the time under false charges that were eventually dropped. Beyond that, he adored the art, architecture, cuisine, French poodles and sexy French ladies on the nude beaches of the French Riviera – Ooh la la!  He also got a kick out of being mistaken for Jack Nicholson (when he shaved) and Sean Connery (when he didn’t). Check out the way he holds my feet like he’s steering a ship into Cannes Harbor…

And come with me on a trip to France with Captain Max, aka Prince Maximillian Rudolf Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/2025 – 5/13/2025) – my bon vivant husband of 33 years – in collage #3 of my “Max Collage Collection,” assembled with love, tears and photos from Max’s beautiful life and times in France. 

Ah oui, la vie est belle…

Then click these links for stories of Max’s extraordinary life and heartbreaking death:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

My Beloved Max Collage Collection
Max Collage 1: “Family History”
On Substack
Max Collage 2: “On DrSuzy.Tv”
On Substack

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN.
On Substack
On Facebook Events
On Meetup

© October 22,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. 

Capt’n Max on the Show.                                                                   Collage: Susan Block.

by Dr. Susan Block.

Forty years of Captain Max live on The Dr. Susan Block Show takes center stage on Max Collage 2: “On DrSuzy-Tv,” the second in “My Beloved Max: Collage Collection.”

The word “collage” comes from the French coller, meaning “to glue,” and my digital collages of photos from the extraordinary life of Prince Maximillian Rudolf Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/2025 – 5/13/2025) – my darling husband of 33 years – are “glued” together with love and tears.

Laughter too. Max made a lot of funny faces. What a character he was. Max could always make me laugh – even through tears of sorrow (I miss him so!).

That’s one of many reasons Max loved producing and performing on The Dr. Susan Block Show and FDR Radio (almost) every Saturday night for (almost) 40 years. It was his stage as much as mine, and it gave him the opportunity to portray his own fairy-tale cast of characters, with corresponding hats, accents, jokes and quirks in our own version of Commedia Dell’Arte that we called Commedia Erotica. There was Max the Butler, Capt’n Max and Mario Faccia Tosta the Italian Arms Dealer, to name a few.

The show was also Max’s platform to exercise his Free Speech rights and passionately express his opinions on sex, politics, art and culture. Pr. Max was a prince who put his life on the line for “No Kings.” He often said, “It’s Monarchy or Anarchy,” and though he preferred something more center-left, if he had to choose, he was an anarchist.

And then there were our breathtaking, almost-anarchistic, bacchanalian after-parties. Max loved to party. Even more, Max loved to create the party, produce the show, host the Speakeasy, oversee the salon, make the magic happen for everyone.

Max certainly made it happen for me, giving me the energy, love, improvisational seasoning (we never rehearsed; we were always live) and inspiration to put on thousands of marvelous, mind-blowing and utterly unique shows with him. His magical creations entertained, educated and inspired people all over the world, most of whom will never forget Captain Max.

I am eternally grateful to the wonderful photographers of The Dr. Susan Block Show, like Jux Lii and Alex Saglimbeni, who preserved those precious moments in these photos featured in “My Beloved Max” collages, so I could stick them together with digital glue, plus rivers of tears of grief and laughter, and then share them with you right now.

So, on with the show! Click the collage to see the little lazzi (scenes) of Capt’n Max on DrSuzy.Tv.

Then click these links for stories of Max’s extraordinary life and heartbreaking death:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN.
On Substack
On Facebook Events
On Meetup

My Beloved Max Collage Collection
Max Collage 1: “Family History”
On Substack

© October 18,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. 

Max Lobkowicz Filangieri Family/History.                                     Collage: Susan Block

by Dr. Susan Block.

Collages are collisions of images and emotions. This “Family/History” collage is made up of images of my beloved Max, featuring his early life in Rome, Naples and Genoa, Italy; the great ship Italia that took Pr. Maximillian R. Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/1943 – 5/13/2025), aka “Mickey,” aka “Captain Max,” and fellow refugees, to America, starting in Montclair, New Jersey, before migrating to LA where he connected with a wide variety of fellow travelers, including me…

As for the emotions colliding with the images that make up this collage (thank you Canva)… well, mainly, I was feeling the pain of having lost my darling Max, but also the pleasure of ogling and combining these snapshots of my handsome hubby taken before I met him, with the images of us together – in sickness and in health – our show, our wedding, a little mixing of our families and close friends (including a few bonobos cousins), as well as a show where we talked about Max’s aristocratic Lobkowicz and Filangieri ancestry. Then I trimmed and fit all the pain, pleasure and imagery into a mosaic that tells a story – history that is HIS story (though not his whole story; remember, I’m making a collage series) – that I think my darling Max might like. “The goal is the journey,” as Max often said, and what a journey through life he took.

Make sure to click on the collage to see all the little parts of the story.

And click the following links for stories of Max’s extraordinary life and heartbreaking death:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN
On Substack
On Facebook Events
On Meetup

© October 6,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. 

Max blows out his birthday candles on Rhiannon’s chest. Cake: Foraged Foods. Photo: Jux Lii. November 5, 2016. Scroll down to see it uncensored.

by Dr. Susan Block.

Recently, my deep “Grieving Process” took my breath away – literally – as every respiratory branch on my tracheobronchial tree closed up shop, all airways *on strike* against the new working conditions of Life After Max.

It’s been months since my beloved husband of 33 years and best-friend of 40, Pr. Maximillian R. Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (11/8/1943 – 5/13/2025) passed away, but I miss Max more every day. Maybe that’s why – combined with the stress of fighting to save Bonoboville from unspeakable attacks and having also managed to give myself a compressed spinal fracture doing a handstand (at my age) – my vital signs dropped like an osmium rock.

Read “Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake” on COUNTERPUNCH

Is There Life After Max?

So, off I lurched to Urgent Care, and as soon as sweet Dr. Kim saw this gasping, weeping widow, he had his nurse wheel me down to the ER, admitting me into a room where I could swear that, several months earlier, I had visited my darling post-stroke Max.

Thus began my Kaiser Hospital *Holiday* Weekend – a two-day blitz of blood, pee and mucus tests, x-rays, CT-scans and getting stabbed black-and-blue with IVs before being diagnosed with a bronchiectasis flare of bacterial pneumonia. Not viral, thank Goddess, but still gross and potentially lethal.

I’ve had my beefs with Kaiser and the U.S. Medical-Industrial Complex – mostly regarding Max’s care – but they helped me to heal before, and they seem to be helping me to heal again, despite my grim shape and bad attitude.

On Albuterol Xtra. Photo: Selfie

Sucking down oxygen and Albuterol, I scrolled through the Theater of Cruelty searing my rheumy eyes – starving Palestinians slaughtered in U.S.-funded Zionist killing fields; hard-working American immigrants (even fire fighters) disappeared by ICE Gestapo; ammosexual incels committing mass-shootings; Trumpocalyptic Department of WAR committing mass murder, bullying Venezuela; neo-Puritanical algorithms choking our voices like this mucus was choking my airways, the healing pleasures of sexuality perverted into nonconsensual sadistic domination, whole towns drowning or burning up in Capitalogenic climate change, poor people hurt and dying every day, lonely people never knowing true love like I was blessed to have shared with Max…

Yes indeed, when drunk on melancholy, there’s nothing like focusing on people much worse off than you to sober you up. It’s the Stoic way. So, there I lay, swaddled in hospital sheets, suspended in medical time, feeling horrible about *the news,* but grateful to have been so in love for 40 years of this life – and lucky just to be alive… though without my darling Max, it was hard to say what for.

I tried counting my reasons-to-live, like sheep: to honor Max’s memory, to tell his amazing but (mostly) true stories, the legacy of our lives together, and our hope for a better way, a way to help others, along with ourselves, a way we called The Bonobo Way of female empowerment, male nurturing, consenting-adult ecosexuality, sharing, caregiving and peace through pleasure.

But how could I do any of that with this corpus of crumbling clay and all airways on strike? I felt so bad, I almost canceled my whole week’s appointments. I almost canceled my whole life! Then late Sunday, my grief-clogged respiratory system opened like the parting of the Red Sea, and suddenly my Hospital Holiday was over. Not that my pneumonia was over, but a new physician named Dr. Kee gave me the keys: strong Levaquin antibiotics and Prednisone, aka Steroids.

Superwoman Steroids

Ah, steroids! Basically, there are two kinds: anabolic for athletes and corticosteroids for us old folks. For both, the ‘Roid is a miracle drug. It is also a very dangerous “controlled substance” with a host of dramatic reactions and goofy side effects. It made me feel like I was flying with the stars – breathing so easy – even on Mars! Yes, Elon, anyone can Occupy Mars on ‘Roids. The problem – whether anabolic or corticosteroids – is what at first strengthens eventually weakens and destroys you, if you take enough. That would happen rather quickly on Mars.

Getting interview on steroids. Photo: Harry Sapien

But back down here on the Goddess’ Green Earth, and at the strong part of the Corticosteroidal curve, I felt invincible, still deeply grieving Max, but hyper and high enough energy to keep all my appointments, even doing a four-hour UK media interview that is too top secret to say more, except that I was “brilliant” – or so the Brits assured me as I rattled on. If there was any “brilliance” involved, the credit goes to my super-supportive Bonoboville crew, as well as those Superwoman Steroids, giving me the gift of gab and the energy of a Motorbunny turned up to “high” and on “swivel.”

Even when my body gave out, my brain kept racing, sleep always just a dream, steroidal delusions churning with afterlife fantasies, astral projections and legit concerns:

How could I live without my darling Max? Why did he have that terrible stroke? Could I have prevented it? How? Could I have more effectively eased his pain or somehow saved him from Death? Why did people talk about Max’s “spirit” floating around like a benevolent Ghostbusters franchise? Even if that were true, what good would it do if I couldn’t feel his arms – or (in his last post-stroke year) his one good arm – around me? Oh, why did he die? Would he want me to join him or go on living for some reason? What reason? How would he want me to fight for Bonoboville? Or would he opt for flight? How would he want me to go on helping people and contributing to this increasingly fascist world? The same as before or differently? What would Max do?

Bonoboville Crew. Photo: Selfie

Happy Birthday Rhiannon Aarons

One thing I knew Max would do would be to wish our dear friend Rhiannon Aarons a Happy Birthday. A frequent Dr. Susan Block Show guest, fellow DomCon’er (featured in two of our Bonobo Way presentations, once while dressed as Stormy Daniels, another time as a kinky bonobo), a sexy lefty political activist, and a real-life Hot Wife MILF, Rhiannon is also a distinguished art history professor, filmmaker, a 10x winner of the “Most Well-Rounded Kinkster” SUZY award, and a good friend to this weeping widow.

Eros and Thanatos are divine brothers, but not many humans can handle both with grace. Some of my most fabulous, life-affirming show guests can’t seem to face Max’s death, let alone my sorrow, and others who comfort me are in no way the life of the party. There are only a few who can juggle Eros and Thanatos – bottomless grief and topless cake – and Rhiannon is one of the few.

It helped that this was a black and white party, as inky black suited my mourning mood – festooned with commemorative Capt’n Max buttons, his cremation ashes packed into a couple of pendants, and his wedding ring around my neck. Accompanied by Christina in white and Tom in black and white, Bonoboville went On-the-Road again.

Rhiannon’s soirée was no Bacchanal, but rather a very tasty front yard dinner party, featuring a scrumptious, multi-flavored birthday cake conjured by Rhiannon’s hubby Jonny Minton‘s “Foraged Foods” partner in the Baking Arts.

Photo by Andrew Dunbar. Video Still: Tom

Our first of three birthday gifts, in keeping with the theme, was a striking black-and-white photo, taken by whimsical Australian photographer Andrew Dunbar, of a lovely bespectacled lady, her cheerfully impudent tongue sticking out to reveal what looks like a piercing… and then you realize it’s a metal spider. What makes it special is that Rhiannon is making a film (rumor has it I’m in it for three seconds) of an award-winning script about spiders, spidery humans and the sticky webs we weave.

We also gave her an original, signed hardcopy of my third book (I’d already given her The Bonobo Way on her first show), The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. After three decades, it’s a perennial and, though the times have dramatically changed, all the commandments still apply. Check them out and prove me wrong!  The power to make peace through pleasure is the greatest power we have.

Our last gift was the most personal, but also the most taboo (this was a family party). So, I patiently munched on Foraged Foods, reminisced about Max and me in Cannes with fellow filmmakers, gazed upon candy-spouting piñatas, and waited until all minors had left the premises.

Rhiannon opens her Topless Cake Pic by Jux Lii. Video: Tom

Birthday Cake Theater Therapy

Then the moment arrived. The Birthday Girl tore off the wrapping, and her eyes widened – though she had been forewarned that this would be a gift for her “closet collection” –  as she giggled with gleeful recognition, waving it around, half-hiding it and half-showing it off.

Taken by great Bonoboville photographer Jux Lii, it was a print of Rhiannon herself in all her “well-rounded” topless glory. Not that this was just any topless photo. Most of her ample bosom was covered by a large Foraged Foods cake with (not quite) 73 tall candles, all ablaze for Capt’n Max’s 73^rd birthday, as he blew out all those flickering flames with one formidable puff, smoke billowing all around us. Max’s airways were certainly not on strike, not that night anyway.

Max blows out his birthday candles on Rhiannon’s chest (uncensored). Cake: Foraged Foods. Photo: Jux Lii. November 5, 2016

More than the cake holder, Rhiannon was also the sweetest ingredient – the cheesecake, so to speak – her strawberry-pink areola peeking out from under the cake on the uncensored version.

This dramatic and rather dangerous (don’t try it at home!) Birthday Cake Theater took place one unforgettable night in Bonoboville, on a show we called “V Without Violence,” November 5^th, 2016… Remember, remember, the 5^th of November… The Guy Fawkes Day refrain filled the air, and Anonymous masks were everywhere.

Gazing into that 2016 photo in 2025 –  like a crystal ball in reverse – took me back to a past I so wished could be present, if for no other reason but that my darling Max would be alive again. But there were other reasons. Indeed, it seemed like it was a whole different era – a time of eros and innocence and so much fun – that Saturday night before Election Tuesday, November 8^th (Max’s real birthday), and the electoral dysfunction of 2016.

Not that Capitalogenic fascism and Neo-Puritanical censorship weren’t already well under way, but they were hidden within the velvet glove of Obama’s eloquence. Hillary, with her chickenhawk ways, was not so *likeable,* but at least she could be counted on for female empowerment and picking a liberal SCOTUS or two, so almost all our guests – including the Netflix crew that was filming us that night – was voting for her.  Max liked Hillary more than I did, clutching his Mrs. Clinton Mask-on-a-Stick close to his heart through much of that show. Like her or not – Remember, remember, the 5^th of November – all the pollsters were serenely confident Hillary would win.

Within three short November days, that serenity would go up in Trumpish smoke and gaudy gold mirrors, and our ecstatic erotic joy would be engulfed by the Trumpocalypse, and then the Coronapocalypse, the Billionaire Mind Virus, the Zionist horrors of Gaza and the ICE raids of America. Yes, tyranny had been creeping up on us, but soon enough we’d be under the boot of Fascism on Steroids.

Also, soon – far too soon – Max would be gone.

But that wild night in 2016, we were happy bacchanalian bonobo sapiens sharing free speech, free love and topless cake with erotic theater therapy, celebrating Capt’n Max’s birthday and the second anniversary of The Bonobo Way, gearing up for a “woman in charge,” blissfully unaware we were headed skull-first into Trumpty Dumpty’s wall.

Of course, some of us were secretly scared as our (pre-X) Twitter feeds filled with Hillary’s Emails and Podesta’s “Spirit Cooking.” But on the surface, we couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine that a cretinous creep like the Trumpus would win the White House – let alone win it again and turn it into the Gold House. We were living a dream, and in for a rude awakening from which some of us sleepyheads are still trying to wake up – even as we’re chastised for being “woke.”

Except Max. Sadly, there would be no more wake-up calls for my darling Max.

Showing off the Taboo Pic of Capt’n Max blowing out his candles, with Tom, Christina, James the Realtor and Birthday Gal Rhiannon. Photo: Group Selfie

Well, it was a nice moment, sharing memories of Max with friends. So, there’s hope, you might say.

Hope is the one great (potentially) evil spirit that Pandora left in her Box when she let all the other evils fly out into the world… or is it the one great good?

Both a blessing and curse, even at the bottom of the bottomless barrel of hopelessness – aka, Life Without Max – there is the thin, damaged wildcard of hope.

Read “Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake” on COUNTERPUNCH

Not sure what that portends, but there really is something to look forward to coming up soon: Max to the Maximus will be on Max’s birthday Saturday November 8, 2025, to be declared “Free Speech Day,” in tribute to Max’s Free Speech legacy as well as the 11^th anniversary of The Bonobo Way.

Whether you’re good with grief or an award-winning party animal or one of those rare bonobo sapiens who can juggle both, join us in Bonoboville or on the air somewhere as we honor, mourn and CELEBRATE MAX to the Maximus – with bonobo love.

© Septenber 4,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. Email her at drsusanblock@gmail.com and you will get a reply

“The Goal is the Journey,” was my beloved, dearly departed Capt’n Max’s motto, and a very special juncture in our journey through life, love, death and more love is about to occur: Max to the MAXIMUS!

On what would be Max’s 82^nd birthday – Saturday, November 8^th, 2025 – the citizens of Bonoboville and I will hold a bonoboësque, multi-media, multi-cultural celebration of the remarkable life, storybook romance and historic “free speech” legacy of Pr. Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri (November 8, 1943 – May 13, 2025), affectionately known to family and friends as “Mickey,” and to fans and other friends as “Captain Max.”  

Doors will open at the Womb Room Sanctuary of the little Love Church of The Bonobo Way at Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy (where we speak about things, like love and death, that are not so easy to speak about) in the Dr. Susan Block Institute of Bonoboville, LA.  Remembrance rituals, heartfelt eulogies and testimonials from around the world, prayers to all the Gods and Goddesses (“just in case,” as Max would say), music, films, food, drink, flowers and festivities will flow on through the night.

For address, more information, and to RVSP, call 626.461.5950.

The “Max to the MAXIMUS” Memorial will also be broadcast live on DrSusanBlock.com as well as on X/Twitter @DrSuzy, Facebook: Villa Bonobo, IG: Bonoboville and our Bonoboville Youtube channel.

The word “Maximus” means “the greatest” in Latin,” Dr. Suzy explains, “and Max was the greatest Latin lover! He was also a great visionary artist, journalist and freedom-fighter, my greatest partner, producer, publisher, designer, muse and my ‘witness’ throughout our 40-year love affair and 33-year marriage, chock-full of international romance, epic shows, legendary HBO specials, stimulating Speakeasies, Bedside Chats and wild Bacchanals in our vibrant intentional community of Bonoboville, our little island of peace through pleasure, female empowerment, male well-being, sharing, caring and love in a sea of pain, a state of hate and a world of war.

Born in the middle of war, at the Vatican Hospital as WWII Allied bombs fell on Rome, Max chose a path of peace. On his father’s side, he traced his aristocratic ancestry back to the Lobkowicz princes of medieval Prague, and through his mother, he was descended from Enlightenment philosopher, Prince Gaetano Filangieri, whose writings on liberty and equality influenced Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, as well as the work of his friend Benjamin Franklin, and over two centuries later, the work of his descendent, Max.

Following in Gaetano Filangieri’s footsteps and inspired by the jovial mysticism of George Gurdjieff, Max’s philosophy of life could be summed up by his motto, “The Goal is the Journey.” A trailblazing publisher, revolutionary radio artist and connoisseur of the arts of love, Max published The L.A. Star (with Paul and Shirley Eberle) Love Magazine (with Willem de Ridder), Hate Magazine, Finger Magazine, God, Charles Gatewood’s Forbidden Photographs, Annie Sprinkle’s Hot Sh*t, The Sprinkle Report, The Brentwood Bla Bla, Beverly Hills the Magazine, Meetings with Remarkable People, The Pearl, Lasse Braun’s Lady Caligula, Dr. Susan Block’s Journal, The 10 Commandments of Pleasure (third American edition), Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy Magazine, Dr. Block’s Pleasure Shop and Block’s most recent book The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure. He also produced Colin Hicks in Italy, Mickey Caballero on Radio Genoa, The Dr. Susan Block Show (since 1991) on 100 stations across America and featured on HBO, Dr. Suzy’s Bedside Chats, Bedtime Stories, Desert Susan and F.D.R. Radio, which he co-hosted, and produced several acclaimed art exhibits, including Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy of Erotic Art (featured on HBO’s Real Sex 25), “Sex Acts” in Soho, “Erotic Art of the Apocalypse” in DTLA and “Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace” in Cannes, France.

Max is survived by his brother Pr. Charles Lobkowicz; son Michael Leblovic; daughter Daniele Macdonald; daughter Kari Schiaman; son Jonathan Dreksler; grandchildren Anna Baer, Talia Amato, Paige Belmont, Madix Leblovic, Jacob Schiaman, Juliet Schiaman; great grandchildren Taylor Amato, Levon Baer; niece Giovanella Lobkowicz; cousins Giovanni Rossi Filangieri and Anna Aliena Ciriello; and many beloved friends – and by me, his devoted “Admiral” Suzy.

Though my heart is still – and always will be – broken from the loss of my Great Love, I choose to celebrate the extraordinary, exhilarating life he lived; a life that touched and inspired me and so many others. I also want to honor Max’s passionate belief in free speech and consenting-adult free love, his fierce opposition to war, occupation and police brutality, his visionary liberation therapy, his marvelous magazines pioneering ‘reader-written media’ long before ‘social media,’ his whimsical humor, his love for the bonobos, how he met every challenge with a smile, or how he published and really lived The Bonobo Way.

In these times of escalating fascism, authoritarian censorship, unchecked violence, neo-Puritanical hypocrisy and billionaire-worshipping, war-glorifying, genocide-supporting, algorithm-driven, apocalyptic inhumanity, Max to the MAXIMUS will be a blast from the past to inspire a better future – from Eros to Thanatos and back to Eros again – a wild and joyful beacon of bonoboësque hope for humanity, a tribute to real free speech, sharing community, bonobo conservation, pro-bonobo values, peace on Earth – and a good time for all.

Several members of Max’s family will attend in person and some will speak at the Memorial, as will many friends of Max, from around the world. Others will participate via Zoom.  It’s all free. But if you’d like to make a donation, click here. We appreciate it!

Speaking of “free,” in memory of Capt’n Max and in honor of his freedom-fighting legacy, we declare November 8, 2025 to be a national holiday: Free Speech Day. Exercise your First Amendment Rights – or support somebody else’s!

Click the following links for stories of Max’s extraordinary life and heartbreaking death:

“RIP Max”
On Substack
X/Twitter Thread

“Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri Obituary”
On Substack
On Dignity Memorial
On Counterpunch

“Cremating Captain Max”
On Substack

“Bottomless Grief & Topless Cake”
On Substack
On Counterpunch

“My Beloved Max” Collage Collection
Max Collage 1: “Family History”
On Substack
Max Collage 2: “On DrSuzy.Tv”
On Substack
Max Collage 3: “Travels with Max in France”
On Substack
Max Collage 4: “Winter Holidays”
On Substack

“Max to the Maximus” Memorial
On Substack
On Facebook Events
On Meetup
PR in AVN, Xbiz & ASN.

Join us – in person or on the air – as we celebrate Freedom Speech Day and life lived to the MAXIMUS.

much bonobo love,
Dr. Suzy

Susan Marilyn Block, Ph.D.
Director, The Dr. Susan Block Institute
Bonoboville, Los Angeles

by Dr. Susan Block.

We cremated my beloved Capt’n Max’s beautiful body last week. I was not ready for that. I wasn’t (and still am not) ready for anything – certainly not for life without my darling husband of 33 years, a friend of 40, my witness, my partner, my great love, my Prince Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri. My Mickey. My better half.

But ready or not, something had to be done.  After all, the Huntington Hospital morgue couldn’t keep Max in the freezer forever, and even in my bottomless despair, I couldn’t bear the thought of him winding up in whatever passes for a pauper’s grave, potter’s field, remains remainder or human dumping ground these days of dystopian nightmares-come-true.

Therefore, after three weeks of self-imposed solitude, I forced my weeping, wailing self out of my cocoon of gloom and pillows, brushed my hair and charged my phones. Still weeping (but not wailing), I tried communicating – not just to continue compulsively texting my morbid fantasies of jumping out the window into my beloved Prince Max’s outstretched arms (good thing I’m on the ground floor) – but to take the next real-world steps that somebody had to take for Max.

“Capt’n Max on DrSuzy-Tv” Collage

Bonoboville Rallies for Max

I’ve heard that in some cultures or families, others handle these matters so the weeping widow can weep in peace – but that was not the case here.  No blame – that’s just how Max and I lived our lives – but it meant that somehow I had to rise above, crawl below or just push through this maelstrom of tears and despair, to organize my dearly departed husband’s physical, social and ritualistic transition from the bright world of Eros to the dark realm of Thanatos – life to death – with passion, dignity and community.

Once I let that be known, this loosely connected, much-besieged community of ours – from Bonoboville staff to friends to Chico our Spitz-Pomeranian to a global network of cherished supporters – sprang into action. Harry Sapien helmed the Institute and continued to help put me out the fires of extortion and censorship burning all around us. Luzer Twersky drove his RV from Brooklyn to Arcadia to lend a hand in steadying the Good Ship Bonoboville. Julio edited my grief-stricken first announcement, epic obituary and Counterpunch obit for Max. Mistress Tara Indiana and the Dominatrixes Against Donald Trump (D.A.D.) sent me gorgeous flowers (and so did many others, for which I am grateful, but D.A.D. was first), and let me know that she and LA’s core kink community was there for me. Mars FX and Gideon started finding and stitching together videos of Max in sickness and in health. Barry Fisher helped coordinate the Bonoboville legal team and sent me accordion music. Christina Caamano took a break from helping me to protect Bonoboville from the City of Arcadia’s unconstitutional attacks to research mortuaries.

Then, before it even occurred to my wretched self that someone would have to pay for all this, one of our all-time favorite DrSuzy-Tv guests and good friends, Rhiannon Aarons, set up a GoFundMe, and lo and behold, people we know and don’t know donated to help me honor Max properly (and improperly) and memorialize his antiwar, pro-bonobo, free speech legacy.

Keep Friends Close & Enemies Closer

Thus supported, I felt strong enough to contact more people I knew loved Max, people I trusted who gave me the strength to reach out to a few folks (who shall remain nameless, but you know who you are) that have proven themselves to be utterly untrustworthy – even dangerous, even harmful to Max’s (and my) well-being – but nonetheless have “relationships” with Max that cannot be denied, especially now that he’s gone.

As I write those last two words, I must confess I can’t believe them. Even as I suffer the consequences – vultures descending, legal issues pending – I’m still in denial, still waiting for my darling to pop up and give me a kiss or a wink! Joan Didion called this “magical thinking” – when her husband John Gregory Dunne died suddenly at dinner, she kept his shoes by the bed, in case he returned.

Maybe it’s because if I accept that Max is dead, I’ll have to accept that the “better half” of me died with him.

Certainly, the younger part. I’ve spent the greater part of my youth devoted to Eros – love, sex, life – and mostly avoided or escaped Thanatos – death. But now here we are, face-to-face, getting intimately acquainted. And I must say, this Angel of Death is proving to be a cold and cruel acquaintance indeed, having flatly denied me my only desire: to bring Max back to life.

“Visitation with Capt’n Max”
PHOTO GALLERY

Ashes to Ashes

Thus, I had to dispose of Max’s body, and there are only a few legal ways to do that in America. Max’s original choice was to be “stuffed” and then “mounted” on a pedestal in the front hallway so everyone would see him as they entered Bonoboville. Not one to stifle my hubby’s fantasies, I nevertheless seriously doubted his quirky concept of human taxidermy was legal – or sanitary.

Fortunately, Max tossed the stuffing idea when he battled (and defeated) cancer – over a decade before his stroke – and settled on cremation as the way to go. Rather than sinking down into the ground with the worms and maggots, he preferred to go up in heavenly smoke. Then later, he imagined, I might hold his ashes close to my heart in a locket next to his wedding ring around my neck. And with so much ash, we could scatter Max around, put a little of him in pendants and vials, release some of him into different seas around the world, even turn parts of him into art. It made me cry to even imagine, but everything was making me cry (and still is!), and it seemed a better path forward for me, Bonoboville and even Max… whatever “Max” was at this point – a beautiful memory, a frozen corpse, a great legacy, a ghost, a spirit of love?

At first, I considered Forest Lawn (don’t all bereaved Angelenos consider Forest Lawn?), where our friend John Clark is buried, but their promotions didn’t match their prices (who knew dying was so expensive?), and their representatives had the graveside manner of bots. Meadows Memorial and a couple other MacMortuaries were cheaper, but didn’t seem special enough for my beloved. After all, Capt’n Max was the consummate showman, and this was (allegedly) his final act on Earth.

“33 Years of Lawfully Wedded Love” collage

Marilyn Calling

I fell asleep wondering what to do (at least, I wasn’t wondering how to end it all anymore), then woke up, caught between a dream and vivid memories of taking a stroll with Max, his big strong hand holding my little one, through a small but vibrant cemetery hidden behind tall buildings. It was filled with more colorful flowers and Hollywood names than a holiday gathering in Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, and it was just down the street from the Century Wilshire Hotel where Max and I produced many great shows, including our groundbreaking HBO specials, “Radio Sex TV” and “Off the Dial.”  Max and I were not exactly grave enthusiasts, but we’d visited this hidden-away little cemetery several times. It was just so lovely, peaceful and many familiar names were there, including Marilyn Monroe.

Max loved Marilyn. She inspired him. Max had almost as many pictures of Marilyn as he had of me. And it just so happens that Marilyn is my middle name since my Dad also loved Marilyn and wanted to name me after her, but Mom insisted that my first name be “Susan,” so “Marilyn” was demoted to the middle. Still, she was always in me.

For Max, Marilyn embodied sexy, playful fun that makes you feel really alive – the Spirit of Eros. But Marilyn was also the epitome of tragedy, steeped in the shadows of Thanatos. At some point, the fun ends. Regardless of whether it fades slowly like with my Max or crashes suddenly, like with Marilyn, it always hurts. And the deeper the love, the sharper the pain. It’s strangely kinky in a way that is also darkly funny (though the joke’s on us) – and it would certainly make Max chuckle. Maybe even wink.

The biggest single item Max brought into our marriage was a giant oil painting of Marilyn topless, the work of a Westside artist named Mark Christian, an “alcoholic,” according to Max, who did nothing but drink and paint Marilyn all day. This Marilyn masterpiece blessed our lives for almost 35 years, and it continues to bless mine now.

But that Marilyn painting also cursed our lives. As tame as it is, it proved too provocative for a puritanical firewoman to handle, and became the City of Arcadia’s first excuse to harass us – relentlessly, over everything and nothing – for over 6 years, probably contributing to Max’s stroke, but that’s another story.

Back to that little cemetery which appeared in my dream – though I didn’t know its name. Max and I simply called it the “Marilyn Cemetery.” Apparently, a lot of people did, because when Christina looked that up, she immediately found Westwood Village Cemetery (WVC), owned by Pierce Brothers Mortuary, and sure enough, Marilyn’s crypt is there – always festooned with notes and flowers – just as I remember it from when I visited with Max.

There are some newcomers, like our old friend Hef, who bought the crypt right next to Marilyn’s (that eternal horndog), as well as Natalie Wood, Merv Griffin (who flirted with us about producing a “Couples Camp” show) and Frank Zappa, another great inspiration. Thanks to Rhiannon, we also found out that the one and only Bettie Page is buried a few graves away from Marilyn’s crypt.

At least as much as Marilyn, Max also loved “the Dark Marilyn,” the “Queen of Pin-Up,” as well as the Queen of Fetish, Bettie Page. In 1996, Max and I conducted the first live interview (and longest interview ever) with Bettie Page on The Dr. Susan Block Show, from our studio at the Century Wilshire Hotel right up the street from the WVC.

Thus, it all fell into place. Christina called and found the WVC was surprisingly affordable, more than Meadows but less than Forest Lawn, and our “funeral director,” Lexi Ferrari, was not a bot – or a luxury sports car. She was sweet, smart, accessible, suitably sympathetic and seemed to enjoy her work without being ghoulish about it.

I knew Max liked this small, colorful and powerful piece of Westwood real estate, final resting place to some of the most important figures in the history of LA, and after all, Max was a very important figure in the history of Underground LA. Losing Max hurts me to the core, but it brought a bit of comfort to send him off in good company, in a place I knew he liked enough to visit while alive.

“Hearse Procession for Capt’n Max”
PHOTO GALLERY

Valhalla 69

So, we signed on the dotted lines to have Pierce Brothers Mortuary cremate my beloved Max with a Visitation at WVC, a hearse procession past Marilyn’s crypt and Bettie’s grave, and then the cremation itself up Laurel Canyon at another Pierce Brothers place divinely named Valhalla. It all sounded very nice… and very horrible, but the truly “horrible” part was that Max was gone, so a “nice” send-off was the best we could hope for.

Max’s daughter and son were scheduled to fly into LA for the weekend of June 7, but WVC didn’t do the Visitation/Cremation combo on weekends, so it seemed fated by the Fates that we would do it on Monday, June 9, 2025.  I knew Max would like that date 6/9 – a “69 date” – yum! It also happened to be the last day I was 69.  The next day, 6/10, would be my birthday, and the only gift I wanted was Max.  As I realized that, I felt I finally understood why so many people believe so fervently in resurrection.

If I let myself go down Max’s ancestral rabbit hole, I can even convince myself he’s a descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, which I’ll explain again on some other show (if I ever do another show), feeding my fantasies of the Resurrection of Max.

However, “the ideal is the enemy of the real.” That’s another one of Max’s mottos, and the reality was that this was farewell. And yes, there had already been other farewells and there would be more, but this was a big one because Max’s body would be with us – with me – for the last time. What would I do? What would I say? Did it matter? Not really. This wasn’t a wedding – though I felt like the Bride of Frankenstein.

“Max in France” collage

Collage Therapy

The mortuary needed an obituary, and everyone wanted to see photos. So, I started writing up the Story of Max and combing through old and new photos of us, a bittersweet process, making me cry and laugh and then cry some more. Indeed, it has been a kind of therapy, helping me to process this immense, immeasurable loss, like sailing a small boat through stormy seas.

All the photos are intriguing (at least, I think they are), and some of the show pics by professional art photographers are downright dazzling. But I found myself lingering on the photos I took with my phone for those last post-stroke 11 ¾ months of our “Year of Living Precariously,” my 69^th year, and Max’s last on Earth. I never had time to really look at these photos as I was so busy caregiving, working with the experts to try to ease my darling husband’s often excruciating pain and worrying that he could expire at any time… and then he did.

And yet, along with the agony, there was such ecstasy this past year – the joys of hand-dancing, laughing together, Tantrically gazing into each other’s eyes, the pleasures of feeding Max, brushing his teeth, watching him smile at Chico in the window or Frankie popping out of Mark’s bag.

“Our Year of Living Precariously: Max Post-Stroke 2024” collage

One of Max’s greatest pleasures, especially towards the end, was simply smelling the flowers. So, almost every day – except when he was in quarantine with no flowers allowed – I brought him fresh roses from our garden.  As I stare at the images of my sweetheart sticking his nose between their petals and inhaling their aroma as if it was medicine or a psychedelic drug… I sigh with love sublime. It’s just too bad AI hasn’t yet figured out how to make these photos scratch-and-sniff.

Nevertheless, creating these collages helps me process my loss as well as honor Max’s life in images. So did writing his obituary which is 20 pages long, but flows like the fairy-tale romance and swashbuckling, freedom-fighting, adventure story that Max actually lived. I feel grateful to have been a part of his life for almost half of it (40 years out of 81), not to mention his central focus for over a third (33 years of marriage). But what goes up must come down, and now I am way down in the dumps of desolation.

Well, back to collage therapy….

“Our Year of Living Precariously, Part II: Max Post-Stroke 2025” collage

Unrest for the Unrested

Desolate or desperate, once I’d planned Max’s cremation, I had to go through with it. We were only permitted to invite 10 people, so that kept the guest list small, but also meant each guest was vital to the proceedings. Wondering if everyone would make it, I lay sleepless in the bed where Max used to hold me and calm my fears until I drifted off to dreamland in his warm, strong arms. Now all I could hold was his pillow.

My tossing and turning was interrupted by a ding: “Is everything still on despite the raging civil unrest downtown?” texted Rhiannon. “They just lit a CHP car on fire on the 101.”

So much for sleeping.  “I can’t just cancel Max’s cremation,” I replied. “I thought it was only my world coming to an end, but apparently Thanatos is everywhere. Here I am, trying to get ready for this strange ritual, and so scared of so much now without Max, and I guess I have to add to my list ‘raging civil unrest’.”

I was certainly “unrest(ed).”

Rhiannon was only trying to help, and I knew Max would have supported the protesters, as I did. After all, Max was an immigrant – a royal refugee of WWII. Should our procession join the anti-ICE demonstration? Should the hearse carry a sign of solidarity?

Rosy-fingered Dawn pried opened my teary eyes, I threw on some basic black and a pair of shade, and off we drove to WVC for Max’s visitation and cremation. No “raging civil unrest” blocked the freeways, just standard Monday morning traffic. Nothing terrible happened. Of course, nothing wonderful happened either. Max was not resurrected.

Seeing Max again like this, I felt a mixture of gloom, horror and a tiny spark of excitement, though it was weird. I mean, he was dead. The difference is striking – literally, like a karate chop to the chest. No matter how sick he’d been – and he’d been hanging onto life by a thread, losing 100 pounds in that last debilitating year after the stroke – this was different. This was Thanatos. Eros had flown away, leaving Max’s body to his cruel and very cold brother, the Angel of Death.

My darling Max – usually so warm – felt ice-cold. Though he was still my Handsome Prince, in his trimmed beard, bonobo T-shirt, pink shirt (Max loved pink), Homer Simpson pants, tropical floral print socks and of course, his Captain’s hat. First he wore the black military-style cap for the service, then the white yachting hat for his voyage through the smoky clouds of Valhalla.

Farewell Max https://t.co/hcNXv9D2Yf

— Dr. Susan Block (@drsuzy) June 9, 2025

A Eulogy in Praise of Max’s Life & an Elegy of Grief for His Death

If “the goal is the journey,” as Max often said, then this was a very strange part of the trip. Lexi called it a “Visitation,” which sounded divine, like the Resurrection of Max was imminent.

Sadly, it was not. “Visitation” time was limited to half an hour, and the first five minutes were for set-up. Barry played soulfully on his accordion as we approached Max’s body lying “in state.” I leaned over and brushed my lips against my love’s, but his were too icy for a serious kiss or much touching at all. I guess I’m not a necrophiliac. However, my long black chiffon veil did give me that Bride of Frankenstein vibe. I’d worn hundreds of hats over the years, but I hadn’t worn a long veil like that since my wedding, and of course that one was white. This was black. It was also too dark to see my notes, so I flipped it over and fortunately, our brilliant stylist Mark Brown designed it to be easily flipped back and forth.

Somehow, I managed to deliver a eulogy in praise of Max’s life, mixed with an elegy of grief for Max’s death, only choking back tears a few times. Then we said some prayers. Max was not religious (and as the Lord and Lady are my witnesses, neither am I). However, he often said he believed in all the Gods and Goddesses… just in case.

So, since little baby Massimo was cared for by Franciscan nuns in those first two critical years of his life, I asked Christina to sing “Ave Maria.” An angel couldn’t have sounded lovelier.  Then, because Max liked Jewish girls (he married three of us), and since he converted to Judaism (guided by Rabbi Bill Kramer), I asked Luzer to say Kaddish. Luzer didn’t sing like an angel, but he did sound like an authentic Satmar Hasid which he was before he ran away and joined Bonoboville, and Max would have loved it. Especially when the “congregation” of non-believers chanted “Amen” and “Awomen.”

And since Max believed in all the Gods and Goddesses (because you never do know, do you?), I figured he’d like a pagan witch to cover those bases.  Rhiannon had given me a big brown candle in the shape of Satan to ward off the evil spirits that were – and still are – attacking Bonoboville, (though honestly I’m afraid to light it), so I asked her to perform a Pagan Prayer.

Then I invited people who wanted to come close to Max’s body for the Visitation; first, his daughter Daniele, and then his son Michael carrying a phone with his brother Charlie in Milan, Italy, followed by my sister-in-law Tiya and brother Steve. Then Ana and Miguel who loved “Mr. Max” went up to him, and my old friend and KIEV radio assistant, Janelle Hopkins and her son (with the aforementioned John Clark), Derek Wilder, whom I’d held in my arms as an infant many years ago. Derek adored Capt’n Max and the nights he spent at the Speakeasy in Bonoboville. It always impressed me that Max was such a “man’s man” for guys like Derek, a ladies’ man for the ladies, and my man for me. But now…

It was rather scary, this “visitation.” And very sad. Maybe what was scary was how sad it was… and still is.

So, it was an uncomfortable but vital chance to face that fear and connect life to unfathomable death – Eros to Thanatos – as they are irrevocably connected, an opportunity for a Visitation Revelation in a few seconds of silence, tears, awkwardness or slight vertigo, as we each performed this strangely moving, vaguely taboo ritual of the living communing with the mysteries of the dead.

Mourning Procession for Captain Max at Westwood Village Cemetery. Photo: Casey Kudrowski

Sitting Shiva with Shiva for Max

Post-Visitation, we exchanged the black for the white yachting cap, and tucked Max back into his container for the next, last leg of our journey. I must say Max’s black Captain’s hat on top of his coffin-like container gave the proceedings a formal, soldierly flourish that would have amused him.

We stopped at Marilyn’s crypt and Bettie’s grave to pay our loving respects.  Then I slipped into the hearse with Lexi at the wheel and Max in the back, and off we rolled to Valhalla for the cremation itself.

“Valhalla” is the Hall of Heaven for the greatest Norse warriors slain in battle, aka the Hall of Heroes. Max was a great Free Speech, Antiwar, Pro-Bonobo Hero, and he was certainly my hero, though I doubt he wanted to spend eternity with a bunch of drunken Vikings with horns on their hats. Nevertheless, I figured his “belief in all the gods and goddesses… because you never know!” applied. Besides, the place seemed more Burbank than Viking.

The 12 of us squeezed into a small room where we could all peer at Max in the crematorium through a glass partition.  As we waited for them to “fire up” cremation chamber – a specialized furnace that heats up to temperatures above 1800 degrees (Fahrenheit) – Luzer spoke about how Max gave us misfits a place we could fit in, more or less. That’s partly because Max was a bit of a royal misfit himself.

Continuing our quest for prayerful diversity, Tiya and Steve said a Thai Buddhist prayer, and I recited the Muslim “Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un” and Tibetan Buddhist “Om Mane Padme Hum.”  The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls death “liberation,” and though I hope Max is somehow “liberated,” at least from the terrible pain he was in towards the end, I can’t say I’m enlightened enough to be comforted by that notion.  On the other hand, I can always appreciate the Hindu Lord Shiva’s blessings, especially in my inconsolable grief.

“Boom Shiva Shambalai Boom!” seemed especially apropos for cremation, Shiva being the Smoke God. If I’ve been “devout” in any way during these days into weeks and months of mourning, it’s in the sense that I’ve been “Sitting Shiva” with Shiva…

“Capt’n Max Cremation”
PHOTO GALLERY

Inside, the crematorium felt and sounded like a boiler room. A cremator named Mike sat in the back patiently watching several of us say our farewells to Max, and I must admit, I took more than one turn. Finally, I pulled back my black veil and gave my beloved Capt’n Max one last kiss.

It wasn’t our best kiss, but it was our last kiss, so it was important – a moment of soaring romance, bottomless grief, enduring and life-shaking passion that I will never forget.

When the time came, Lexi and Mike covered Max back up, and the three of us gently pushed him into a high-heat cremation furnace that reduces the body to gases, ashes, bone and mineral fragments, aka “cremains.”

Mike smiled kindly at me and asked if I wanted to press the button. I hesitated, but who was I to say no?  Max was already dead – it wasn’t like I was killing him. Steve said it was, in a way, the opposite of how the Nazis killed living people in ovens or how bombs burn their victims alive, mass murder by fire. This was something else entirely in that 1) Max was already dead and 2) Cremation was Max’s choice, and I was carrying out his final wishes.

Still, it was unnerving, and really, what was I doing? To be honest, I felt like I was putting a giant pizza in the oven. Max loved pizza. Would he love this? My ongoing fantasy of throwing myself on Max’s funeral pyre – like widows of certain cultures used to do before it was criminalized – also flashed through my overwrought brain, but no, I did not try to crawl into the pizza oven with Max, and somehow I got through the whole process without collapsing on the crematorium floor.

After the cremation, Ana prepared a delicious picnic for everyone. We ate. We talked. We walked around the crypts and graves of Valhalla. It was a small and strange, somewhat estranged group – some family, a few in-laws and several friends, a couple with cameras.

I also made certain to give everybody a hug, even a couple of people who had hurt me and Max deeply – because in the end, they’re just people, and they showed up to pay their respects. Besides, forgiveness is a healing art.  I may never forget, but I do forgive – at least enough to be kind.

All in all, as the Person-in-Charge, as well as the Weeping Widow, I kept things moving along. I was the Admiral, steering my fallen Captain’s ship of state. But on the inside, I felt like the living dead. Not a zombie. Just half-alive, like Max was half-paralyzed. My better half was burned and gone.

But what was the alternative? For Max’s sake, “my heart will go on”  (though Max and I both loathed that song).  Actually, I was (and still am) engaged in what the experts call “disassociation,” which more and more of us find ourselves doing just to get through life after losing a cherished partner, a dream job or many other moorings we used to depend on. As Hollywood psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo put it, “If you’re not dispirited right now, you’re dissociative.”

So, more dissociative embraces and farewells ensued. And then, a small miracle: I had my biggest, unforced laugh of the day when my brother Steve leaned into the car to hug me good-bye, and Chico suddenly popped up from behind me and gave him a little doggie kiss – with his tongue! It was a *Max moment,* for sure.  I even felt a sense of what all the spiritual folks talk about, that the Spirit of Max had entered Chico and given poor, shocked Steve a little “spirited” brotherly lick.

Well, just as Max’s and my last year of agony had many moments of ecstasy, my current condition of constant grief has its laughs and good times.

That afternoon, Max’s urn arrived. I opened it to find an elegant Grecian-style vase of rich royal blue (Max’s other favorite color), and I was glad to see they got the inscription right. Nevertheless, the thought of my beloved being ground down to fit into what looked like a glossy flowerpot made me cry (again).

Of course, Max did love flowers…

Opening Max’s Urn https://t.co/qjEnB4SlV4

— Dr. Susan Block (@drsuzy) June 11, 2025

Birthday LOVE

The next day, June 10^th, was my birthday. I didn’t expect or even want a “Happy Birthday,” but it seemed like a good time to hold another “Visitation” – though this one was a visitation (or just a visit) with me in mourning surrounded by images of Max. So, I spent the rest of 6/9 text-inviting all the friends I’d been putting off to come see me on 6/10.

Unlike the visitation and cremation the day before, I didn’t invite anyone to Bonoboville that I was even a little bit afraid of. Of course, most couldn’t make it to Arcadia on a Tuesday afternoon. Many who usually come to my birthdays, shows and other events didn’t even know Max was gone – and I didn’t particularly want to tell them and get into all the sticky threads that would entail. So, it was a small, subdued, but very warm and gratifying gathering.

“Birth/Death Commemoration”
PHOTO GALLERY

Handsome Hollywood Jake, our bartender in Inglewood, was the first to arrive, making sure all of Bonoboville’s straight gals and bi or gay guys were happy. Then in came sweet sex therapist and filmmaker Moushumi Ghose with flowers and pleasure poetry. Sara Sioux and Alex Saglimbeni managed to sneak in incognito, but everyone else arrived on the appointed day – or night. D.A.D. leader Mistress Tara Indiana came in right from DomCon, gave me flowers and a hug and, upon my introduction, dove into deep conversation with Luzer, both having Rabbi Dads.

Christina and Luzer reprised their Ave Maria and Kaddish respectively, and Moushumi offered up this beautiful pagan-ish pleasure prayer:

Today, we gather not just to mourn, but to celebrate — to honor the wild, unapologetic, radiant spirit of someone who knew that pleasure is not a luxury, but a birthright.

 Max didn’t just live — he embodied desire. Max walked through this world with hips that swayed like rebellion, a laugh that cracked shame open at its core, and a heart that held space for the full spectrum of human longing. Max’s life was a seduction — not of bodies alone, but of minds and souls, coaxing us all to shed our shame and step into our power.

Max fought for our right to feel. To touch. To moan, to ache, to yearn, to claim. Max knew that sexuality was not something to be hidden — it was holy, it was healing, it was ours.

Max kissed convention goodbye. Max made love to freedom. Max told the truth, even when he trembled. And in doing so, Max gave us permission — to be bolder, queerer, kinkier, more tender, more us.

Max may have left this earthly plane, but their legacy lingers — in every liberated body, in every whispered yes, in every act of radical, consensual pleasure. We carry Max now — in the way we touch with intention, speak with passion, and fuck with freedom.

So tonight, let us light candles, pour wine, and tell stories — the kind that would’ve made them blush… or beam. Let us wear lace and leather. Let us dance until the sun comes up. Let us celebrate the beautiful truth they gave their life to defend:

That pleasure is political. That freedom is erotic. That love — in all its messy, sacred, sensual forms — will always be worth fighting for.

Rest in power, beloved. You turned us on. You turned us loose. And we will never be the same.

Amen and Awomen and A-MAX to Moushumi.

Just when I thought I’d shed enough tears of joy, Jux Lii came in with gorgeous photo prints from a couple of those pleasurable times. Fawnia brought me festive earrings, though right now, I don’t feel like ever wearing anything festive again without Max (unless you call black miniskirts “festive”). Ikkor the Wolf and Janelle brought even more flowers of all kinds. Lisa brought wine – cheers for my tears. Mark made ribs – meat for the mourners! Ana made chicken salad croissants and picked up Max’s favorite fruit cake.

I didn’t want the cake to say, “Happy Birthday,” because it wasn’t for me, it was for Max, but “Happy Death Day” seemed a step too far. So, I asked Ana to just put “LOVE” on the cake. In the end, love is all there is, all that’s really worth celebrating.

Speaking of celebrating, some sadistic joker in our midst put a bunch of candles on my “LOVE” cake that wouldn’t blow out. I almost hyperventilated trying. I guess the joke was on me. Maybe they wanted to see me give a blowjob? More likely, they didn’t read the packaging.

At least, no one was twisted enough to say Max’s cremation was my birthday candle – though I guess I’m just twisted enough write it.  At least, I didn’t even think about it at the time, which just goes to show that writing is a path to perversion.

Other signs of doom loomed in my “mourner’s brain.” As I cut the cake, “LOVE” broke in half, another random metaphor for my heart that keeps breaking every minute I go on without Max.

Our old friend James Wohl, esq., who used to join us almost every Saturday night for shows at the Century Wilshire Hotel (around the corner from WVC), made an entrance with the vivacious Billie Feldman. James has a bit of dementia, so he speaks more slowly than he used to, and sometimes loses his train of thought. Though honestly, after a year of trying to understand Max’s aphasia, dementia sounds like post-graduate level discourse to me.

Looking into James’ big blue eyes like crystal balls, I can’t say I could see the future, but I could clearly see the past – all the good times and wild adventures we’d shared – that we were still sharing in some other dimension in time.

All my sweet guests pored over my therapeutic collages, and I appreciated their questions that led to stories. Stories kept Max alive, at least as we told them. Then we opened Capt’n Max’s Urn (again). We talked about his amazing life, as well as our own lives – and how fast they were disappearing.

That’s another thing I’m learning every day. The older you get, the more time flies, whether you’re having fun or not, so you might as well have some fun, if you can, even in the midst of grief.

It was no bacchanalian birthday ball – or even a “celebration.” But it did last two days, as half the guests slept over (I’m not sure if they slept with each other), lingering among the collages of Max and the flowers of Bonoboville.

Max’s Ashes

Ashes to Ashes,
Dust to Dust,
Stroke to Smoke.
Lust with Trust…
Now Just Dust.

The “civil unrest” as well as the fascistic militaristic responses to it, continued all around us, especially on the news. But it didn’t block traffic, so the next day, Christina and I went back to WVC with our new blue urn to pick up Max’s ashes.

Lexi brought Max to me in a big plastic bag. It was surreal. What is stranger, I wonder: touching your beloved’s icy cold dead body, pressing the button to cremate him or holding a bag of his ashes? Hard to say.  All of it is strange, but none of it is nearly as bad as losing him. Missing him.  Mourning him.

At least, we got the gorgeous, giant bouquet of pink flowers that the lovely and talented Onyx Muse sent for Max, but somehow had arrived too late for the Visitation. I plucked one perfect pink rose (Max loved pink!), inhaled its fragrance and placed it above his urn inside the WVC box. Lexi gave me the paperwork to sign and a few locks of my Beloved’s hair (ooh la la!) in a plastic bag. Then we brought Max’s urn to Christina’s car and drove past a huge gravestone that said “Mickey” (Mouse?) and then over to Marilyn’s crypt and Bettie’s grave for one last visit before returning home to Bonoboville.  Finally, Capt’n Max was back home.

“Max’s Ashes”
PHOTO GALLERY

Hammer of Love

It sounds so romantic, so filled with promise: “Finally, Capt’n Max was back home.” But it wasn’t Max that was home, at least not the Max I knew. It was a bag of ashes in an urn.

Still, they were Max’s ashes. And I wanted to honor his wishes to put his ashes in little receptacles, vials and a pendant inscribed with “Forever in My Heart” – for me and others who want to keep Max’s “remains” physically close. It’s another strange mourning ritual that challenges me to abandon my despair for the sake of positive action – and fashion.

It was a bit of a challenge to syphon the ashes – which are more ground up bone, like seashells, than the fine dark powder most of us think of as “ashes” – into the receptacles, but with Christina’s help, we got a little bit of Max in each.

My favorite ash receptacle is a silver pendant in the shape of a hammer. No relation to “Operation Midnight Hammer,” but it reminds me of one of Max’s funniest names: “Vivienne Hammer” (in accounting). Also, Max was cremated at Valhalla, the Norse Heaven ruled by Odin, whose son Thor is known for wielding a large, rather phallic hammer.

Beyond Viking fantasies and funny names, Max just loved hammers, nails and all kinds of tools. He was a natural carpenter. Max could just eyeball a space and then, without taking any measurements, cobble together a desk or bookshelf that fit perfectly within it. When I say, “Max built Bonoboville,” sometimes I mean that literally.

Not that he was able to build much without help in the past few years. Miguel called himself “Pinocchio” to Max’s “Geppetto.”

Still, whenever anything needs building or fixing – from a broken light to my broken heart – I miss Max!

Coming: Max to the MAX

Death is a little like sex. Eros and Thanatos are brothers, after all. Like sex, death is a fact of life.  Both affect us all – profoundly – but both are difficult and sometimes taboo to discuss openly.

That doesn’t mean we can’t have sex (we can, and we certainly do!) or lose loved ones (sadly, that happens to pretty much all of us too). But just like no one really teaches you how to have great sex, no one teaches you how to mourn your Great Love. I’ve always said we need more and better sex education. But now I see we are at least as ignorant – in a different way – about death as we are about sex.

And maybe that’s the way it has to be. The goal is the journey, and certainly, there is no achievable goal to this journey of grief. The “experts” say it is unpredictable, different for everyone. Most say it will get easier with time, but it could get worse.

There can be no set rule for grieving, as there can be no set rule for love. You just have to go where your journey takes you.

So, I’ll cry a few more tears, maybe a river. It’s cathartic. Or not. It isn’t like I have any desire to “get over” Max or “move on.” I do want to honor his legacy and take care of Bonoboville, best I can. I’ll do more “collage therapy.”  And smell the flowers and think of him… Oh no, I’m making myself cry again… Well, I’m also smiling. One of Max’s favorite words, especially towards the end of our Year of Living Precariously, was “smile.”

“Max Family Photo Collage” (still working on this)

Next, we will have our “Max to the MAX Memorial,” probably in a month or so. Let us know if you want to participate – in person, on Zoom or social media. Hopefully, that will give us enough time to get our technical act together – because it is a mess right now! – as well as our legal act, as well as for me to meander through this naturally tearful “grieving process,” so that Max’s Memorial will be less about grieving and more about celebrating MAX to the max…

Because Max’s living legacy deserves the best, and YOU deserve the inspiration of discovering the world of Captain Max.

© June 30,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. Email her at drsusanblock@gmail.com.

by Dr. Susan Block.

Bonoboville is a unique intentional community that practices and promotes peaceful, therapeutic, pleasure-based, free speech-oriented, care-centered alternatives to war, violence, alienation, injustice and loneliness. Like many other intentional communities, we value social cohesion, environmental consciousness, spiritual growth, teamwork, transparency and cooperation.

The Bonobo Connection

Inspired by humanity’s closest genetic cousins, the bonobos (pan paniscus), aka the “Make Love Not War” great apes who have never been seen killing each other in the wild or captivity, Bonoboville supports nonviolent conflict resolution, female empowerment, male well-being, sharing and caretaking. In association with the Dr. Susan Block Institute and DrSuzy-Tv, Bonoboville has been providing consenting-adult sex education, therapy and counseling via multimedia communication for over 30 years. We call our philosophy of life, love, art, therapy, politics and relationships “The Bonobo Way.”

Founded in 1991 by internationally renowned sexologist, therapist, best-selling author, HBO personality, Yale grad and bonobo conservationist, Susan Marilyn Block, aka “Dr. Suzy,” and her late husband, veteran publisher, producer and free speech activist, Maximilian Lobkowicz di Filangieri, Bonoboville is crewed by an ever-evolving group of like-minded artists, technologists, therapists and archivists. All share some beliefs in the values and principles of “The Bonobo Way” that is the foundation of the Institute’s work.

Dr. Block is the author of several books and hundreds of published articles, audio and videos on sexuality, health and culture, some of which are on her websites, while others are featured in a variety of publications from Counterpunch to The Ecologist.  Block is also the author of five entries for the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, used in academic institutions and libraries all over the world.

Since 1985, The Dr. Susan Block Show has featured many interviews with prominent psychologists and primatologists about bonobo and human behavior, including distinguished Harvard Anthropology professor Dr. Richard Wrangham, author of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Duke University zoologist Dr. Brian Hare and bonobo researcher Vanessa Woods, co-authors of Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity, as eminent couples expert Esther Perel, trauma therapist Melinda Vyvyan and artist Anthony Lee Winn. Block co-founded Sex Week at Yale at her alma mater, Yale University in 2002, led a Yale Roundtable on “Peace, Love, Bonobos” in 2022, and has given similar talks at other academic institutions, including UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley, Cal Tech, the University of Puerto Rico’s Ecosexuality Symposium (at which she delivered the keynote), and at AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists).  The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, by esteemed Emory University primatology professor Dr. Frans de Waal, includes a passage on page 67 that explains and supports the cogency of the “The Bonobo Way” philosophy.

Historic Precedents & Current Parallels

Block and Lobkowicz were inspired to create and develop Bonoboville, in part, by studying other intentional communities throughout history, including the 5^th century BC couples’ gatherings of Socrates’ disciple Aristippus of Cyrene; the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Institute in 1920s Weimar Berlin; and Thomas Morton’s early 17^th century “Merry Mount Colony.”

Block first learned about Morton, who sailed with the Puritans to Massachusetts in 1622, in her American Colonial History class at Yale, but only appreciated Morton’s vision for a free, fair and loving American Community when she and Lobkowicz started Bonoboville.

While his Puritan colleagues only wanted to conquer the land and annihilate its natives, Morton honored the organic nature of the New World and the indigenous tribes that were already there. Morton’s book, The New English Canaan, described by Michael P. Branch as “an important work of early American environmental writing,” also was the first book banned in America. Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlett Letter, wrote a short story in 1836, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” about Morton’s very special community and the Puritans’ violent, fetishistic (punishment by whipping) and often hypocritical suppression of freedom, individuality, sexuality and the natural environment in America.

More current intentional American communities, albeit different in style and focus, are “Yogaville” and the “Twin Oaks” Ecovillage in Virginia, “Dancing Rabbit” in Missouri, “The Farm” in Tennessee, “Burning Man” in Nevada, “Sadhana” in New York, 12 Tribes in various states around the U.S., the Zorthian Ranch (founded by Block’s fellow Yalie and good friend, the late Jirayr H. Zorthian) and the Amish and Mennonite Communities in Pennsylvania, with whom Block lived and worked for a summer.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Inspired and informed by such examples, as well as fellow members of the Foundation for Intentional Community, Bonoboville, the Dr. Susan Block Institute and DrSuzy-Tv together comprise a hybrid socialist/capitalist group in which all revenue supports the community’s “Bonobo Way” philosophy and practice, as well as the community itself.

The community generates revenue through selling books, magazines, art and Dr. Susan Block Show memorabilia online, as well as through providing private therapy, counseling and intentional conversation over the phone (80%) and via webcam (20%). None of our therapists meet with any therapy clients in person at the Institute, Bonoboville or anywhere else (though we have in the past, and we may again in the future). At present, this is a purely virtual service.

Clients call into the Institute call center – open for dispatch 24/7 – from over 20 different time zones around the world. After they tell the receptionist/dispatcher what they wish to talk about, they are put through to a therapist. Most therapists are located outside of Bonoboville, in over 15 different time zones around the world. Inspired by “Doctors Without Borders, we are “Therapists Without Borders.”

In keeping with The Bonobo Way and our eclectic approach to life and therapy, our therapists specialize in a wide variety of topics and issues. From sexologists with Ph.D.’s to nurses, artists, actors, tantra experts, teachers, veterans, kink-aware specialists and hypnotherapists, along with mentors and interns.

Clients speak with therapists about very personal matters, including intimacy, sexuality, relationships, religion, life-and-death, kinks, illnesses, loneliness, alienation, communication, war, career choices, politics, philosophy, lust, trust, culture, media, dating, dreams, desires, addictions, lifestyles, the bonobos, and many other matters. Many of our clients say that the intentional conversations they have with us were the most important they’ve ever had in their life. For many, therapy with the Block Institute is a life saver, and for even more, it is a marriage saver. Whether it’s fantasy, reality, sex, love, work, health, religion, spirituality, powerful memories, repressed feelings, enduring trauma or life-and-death issues, our clients talk to us things they can’t talk about with anyone else.

When Dr. Block’s show is live on Saturday nights, calls are free; these calls may be therapeutic for the caller and/or listeners but they are public, and not considered “therapy calls.” Private therapy calls are paid for by the client, and prices vary, depending on the therapist. 100% of all revenue pays for offices – both individual studios and communal spaces – food, utilities and operating expenses of the community. We also donate small amounts to Friends of Bonobos, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative and Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There is no profit per se, and Block and Lobkowicz have sometimes donated their Social Security checks to make sure bills are paid.

We pay our therapists for the time they talk to our clients ($35/hour for phone and $60/hour for webcam). Therapists submit invoices for their time and are paid 1-2 times per month, or as needed. We keep meticulous call ledgers and compare them with therapists’ invoices to make sure we are always on the same page.

Most administrative Bonoboville crew tasks are volunteer/barter. Everyone within the Bonoboville community volunteers to do part-time shifts answering our round the clock phone system, doing light office work and archiving (we are currently digitizing 35 years’ worth of weekly shows on tapes), in exchange for use of a private studio/office, utilities, food, use of the facility for personal projects, use of company equipment and vehicles and/or benefiting from advice, guidance and referrals given by mentors at Bonoboville. No one lives at the facility, and it is not open to the public. However, since we do operate all day every day, crew members often work on their personal or “freelance” projects, study and take naps in their offices.

There is no written contract (at least there hasn’t been for over 30 years) Work schedules, naptimes and meal breaks are flexible. As an open and trusting community, we use the tried and true “honor system.” Anyone can quit or leave Bonoboville at any time. The crew is made up of supporters, consultants, mentors, interns, volunteers and freelancers, some of whom have been with us for over 20 years and others less than six months. We stay in touch and continue working with many Bonoboville “alumni” around the world. Through our websites and other systems, we also work with artists, technologists, therapists, environmentalists, teachers, peace advocates, nonviolent conflict resolution instructors, community activists and bonobo lovers all over the world.

Ultimately, Bonoboville offers a rare and vital intentional community – a sanctuary, a service and a philosophy wherein the people on our crew have the resources, time, Support and collaborative opportunities to explore their own creative, personal and professional goals, while also helping us to cultivate and share the Bonobo Way in the hopes of inspiring a better world for all.

For more information, call us at 626.461.5950 or contact DrSusanBlock @ gmail.com.

Capt’n Max. Photo: Jux Lii

by Dr. Susan Block.

It is with deep love, sadness, reverence – and a dash of irreverence – that I announce the passing of Pr. Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri, aka Captain Max, aka Mickey, aka David Rossi, aka Vivienne Hammer, aka MaxArtCore, aka Xam Paris, aka Max. Max was a truly great man, though never one to be impressed with greatness – his own or anyone else’s. So, irreverence is as vital as reverence for memorializing my darling Capt’n Max.

The Goal is the Journey

Max’s motto – drawn from Gurdjieff, Confucius and the vivid landscapes of his own travels – was “the goal is the journey.”

And what a journey it has been. Max led a remarkable life – over 81 years of romance, revolution, art, theater, publishing, radio, TV and internet broadcasting, erotica, pro-bonobo conservation, antiwar activism, international intrigue, fearless freedom-fighting, never-ending storytelling, loads of fun and endless love. Max wore many hats – in addition to having all those names – with panache, flexibility and a quirky originality that defied expectation.

As a producer, Max created thousands of fantastic, iconoclastic shows, salons, “speakeasies,” happenings and other events. As a publisher, Max pioneered the concept and practice of “reader-written magazines” long before blogs, or Tweets or TikToks. This was no easy task and led to many legal battles. But Max was a freedom fighter, as proud of his free speech arrests and prosecutions – most of which he won in court – as he was of his more conventional accolades.

Max and I were married for over 33 years. Our partnership spanned more than four decades as friends, lovers, and creative collaborators, as well as husband and wife. Together, we produced legendary shows, best-selling books, bacchanalian gatherings, antiwar activism, sex-education, and peace initiatives rooted in our Bonobo Way philosophy. Our art galleries, bonobo conservation, sex therapy system and resilient romance spearheaded a pro-bonobo movement of peace through pleasure, mutual respect, enthusiastic consent, alternative lifestyles, communal ecstasy, equality, compassion, and free expression, helping to shape Underground Hollywood, the Downtown LA Art Scene, and the international conversation about peace and sexuality from the early 1990s through the 2020s.

Now he’s gone, and all I want to do is jump out the window and into his arms (good thing I’m on the ground floor). But I also need to tell his story.

Born in the “Pope’s Hospital”

Max was born on November 8, 1943 in Rome at Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù, aka ‘Child Jesus Pediatric Hospital,’ aka “The Vatican Hospital” or “The Pope’s Hospital,” right next to the Vatican and under the jurisdiction of the Holy See, during World War II as Allied bombs were dropping, even hitting the Vatican itself (despite its neutral status). So, Max entered the world in the shadow of destruction – and spent the next eight decades in the light of creation, liberation, connection, peaceful revolution, beauty and love.

Shortly after he was born, the infant Maximillian, aka Massimiliano, nicknamed Massimo, was whisked away from the war zone to Brescia in the Italian Alpine countryside, where he was raised by a princess, and painted by a nun. Yes, Max’s life began like a fairy tale – and in some ways, it remained one. I must confess, with Max, I often felt like I lived in a fairy tale.

The princess was his mother, Pr. Giovanella Filangieri, whose aristocratic forebears dated back to the 11^th century. The nun was a member of the Franciscan Order of the Monastery of Santa Giulia (also known as San Salvatore) who captured little Massimo’s angelic features in an oil painting that now hangs on my wall of Max art. After the War, mother and child moved to Naples where they lived with Grandmother Pia Rossi Filangieri and other relatives who doted on little Massimo, pinched his cherubic cheeks and encouraged his artistic talents.

Like many fairy tale heroes, Max didn’t know his biological father, though he seems to have been a German officer, probably a Nazi. As a boy, he adored his Great Uncle Rodolpho, a Polish Jewish painter married to his grandmother’s sister (their father was Carlo Rossi Filangieri), his Great Aunt Anna Filangieri who was a ceramicist, and the two of them lived in a beach house filled with art.

Uncle Rodolpho had escaped from a Nazi concentration camp. He never made a fuss about it, but by example, he taught little Massimo that to survive and thrive, he would need more than his so-called “nobility”; he would have to use his wits, strength, character and artistic talent. Many members of the Filangieri family were involved in the arts, painting, sculpting, staging plays and other cultural events at the Filangieri castle in Naples.

At about age six, little Massimo’s life changed dramatically when his mother took him to a Neopolitan café to meet his stepfather, Prince Peter Francis Lobkowicz of Prague, Czechoslovakia. According to his recollection, this first meeting of father and son was punctuated with a hail of gunfire, at which point the little family of three, steeped in a long-gone aristocratic past, ran out of the café and into a brave new future.

Max’s ancestors on both his stepfather’s and mother’s sides can be traced to the Middle Ages. The House of Lobkowicz is a Bohemian noble family dating back to the 14^th century, including his stepfather’s title, Prince of Prague, Duke of Melnick. Sponsors of great art, architecture and music, Lobkowicz nobility built several huge palaces that were confiscated by the Nazis and then the U.S.S.R., forcing most of the family into exile. Nowadays you can visit Lobkowicz Palace, the only privately owned building in the Prague Castle Complex, and immerse yourself in Bohemian history while sipping a Lobkowicz Beer, produced by Pivovary Lobkowicz brewery, dating back to 1466.

On his mother’s Filangieri side, Max’s Italo-Norman ancestors date back to the Crusades, held many high military posts and built several fairytale castles and palaces. Antiwar Max often disparaged his war-fighting forebears. He was most proud of being directly descended from the prolific, progressive philosopher Gaetano Filangieri (22 August 1753 – 21 July 1788), 5^th Prince of Satriano, whose writings influenced the American Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and who counted among his admirers the American statesman, Benjamin Franklin.

Coming to America

At the age of seven, Max, his mother, stepfather and his six-month-old infant brother, Charles Leblovic Lobkowicz, aka Charlie, set sail for America – in part to escape the gunfire, but also to continue the American/Filangieri connection – on The Italia. Crouched under its gigantic hull, sprayed by the briny sea, young Massimiliano fantasized about being the captain of a big ship like this one holding his family and other deposed royal “refugees,” leaving the Old World for the New. He never got that job (or even tried), but he did get the hat.

“Capt’n Max” was not an official “captain” in the military (he’d been vehemently antiwar since throwing down his own rifle during bootcamp when he realized he “could kill somebody”), nor was he even licensed to steer a canoe. He did like the captain’s hat – with “scrambled eggs” on the brim – as well as the big ships, bikinis and the endless ocean. Beyond all that, Max simply exuded the air of an authentic, strong but compassionate Man in Charge, a true Captain, so people called him that. He may not have piloted yachts, but he was the Captain of the Good Ship Bonoboville, aka the Ship of Fools for Love, and it’s inscribed inside my wedding ring, “Captain of My Heart.”

But it all started on October 4, 1951, as the Italia set sail from Naples to the Statue of Liberty, when Max discovered his love for the sea. Upon arrival, Massimo became Mickey, moving deep into the suburbs of Montclair, New Jersey, where his noble parents soon hired a housekeeper and butler to care for their two sons so they could go out to dinner almost every night. To make sure he grew up with the proper posture, the butler and housekeeper made Mickey eat his meals while holding books under his armpits, and if he dropped a book, he didn’t get dessert. Sounds draconian, but Mickey had the straightest back of anyone outside the guards at Buckingham Palace.

During these years, as befitting a fledging Prince of New Jersey, Mickey took horseback riding lessons. A natural equestrian, he won several prizes. But everything changed for him when his girlfriend at the time was killed falling off her horse during a jump. He continued riding, but stopped competing and never felt quite the same joy in the saddle again.

On June 10, 1955, 11-year-old Mickey had a mystical experience that would ripple through the rest of his life. As he sat under a large pine tree, toying with a pinecone, he found himself wondering who the love of his life might be. He felt he received a “sign” in the pines: The name of his future Great Love would be hidden within his own. Later, when he connected with me (born June 10, 1955), we both realized that the letters of my name, “Block,” appeared within his own, “Lobkowicz.” You might call that random, but for Mickey, it meant that the Pine Tree Prophecy had been fulfilled.

Later, when young Mickey was just beginning to explore his sexuality, amid the typical 1950’s lack of sex education, the housekeeper confronted him with a bunch of sticky, crumpled up papers she’d found in the bushes under his window. Mortified, he braced for a lecture. But instead, she just smiled and said, “Next time, use tissues – and throw them in the trash.”

Peyton Place, New Jersey

The Lobkowicz family of four all became naturalized American citizens in 1956, when Mickey was 12. Adjusting to American culture wasn’t easy, especially with limited English skills, but that wasn’t Mickey’s only problem. His deposed Czech Prince stepdad was an arms dealer, sometimes supplying both sides of a conflict and inevitably trouble followed. One day, when Prince Peter was out of town, a gang of gunmen came looking for him, then stormed the house. Later, Mickey surmised they were pro-Batista Cuban mobsters angry that Peter had sold better arms to Castro.  They held the butler, housekeeper, Mickey and baby Charlie at gunpoint until wily Mickey could get a message to his school friends who rushed to the rescue, surrounding the house and pelting the intruders with rocks until they fled… at least, according to the tale that Mickey – then Max – liked to tell.

Fascinated by the secret lives of spouse-swapping Montclair adults – it all felt like something out of “Peyton Place” (the #1 bestseller at the time) – young Mickey found inspiration for his first publishing venture.  He snuck into the Montclair Junior High School office after hours to mimeograph copies of his friend Bonnie Kelner’s localized “Peyton Place” parody, “Montclair Place.” It turned into the talk of the school – and got Mickey suspended. At least, he wasn’t deported. More importantly, it was then that he realized that publishing was his calling, and renegade publishing was his forte.

He also realized he liked Jewish girls, and he eventually married three (I was wife #3). He also converted to Judaism, guided by renowned “Renaissance Rabbi” Bill Kramer (Reform-Rabbinical guide to Elizabeth Taylor and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others), before marrying wife #1, Susan Spilka, whom he met in 1963, and with whom he had three children (Michael in 1968, Daniele in 1972 and Keri in 1982) before they divorced.

Speaking of divorce, Mickey learned that from his parents whose divorce upended his own young life. The split led Prince Peter to break the news to Mickey that he was his stepson, not his biological son, leading to a period of estrangement between the two. At the age of 15, Mickey moved with his mother to Genoa, Italy, where he acted in the State Theater Eleonora Duce of Italy and Teatro Arlecchino of Genoa. He was a natural performer on and off the stage. He also worked as road manager for English rock star Colin Hicks and performed rousing tributes to Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley during his time in Europe.

At 17 or so, he reconciled with his stepfather and moved to New York to live with him and his new wife Bibi, a stunning Brigitte Bardot lookalike with whom Mickey engaged in pillow fights. Sometime earlier (it’s not clear when), Mickey told the story of Peter sending him to a prostitute to “lose” his virginity. Poor over-excited Mickey climaxed before he even reached the lady’s door, and she was so kind and understanding, he became a lifelong, unashamed advocate for sex workers rights.

In the early 1960s, Mickey joined the U.S. Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey, but quit in bootcamp when he realized his new job involved killing people. For such insubordination, he was put in a military mental ward, but managed to avoid both electroshock therapy and a dishonorable discharge by threatening to blow the whistle on the Peyton Place-like, spouse-swapping society of his fellow patients and their doctors.

L.A. Star Publisher

After leaving the army, Mickey hitchhiked through the U.S.A. – waiting tables, digging ditches and taking other odd jobs along the way – until he eventually settled in Los Angeles. With his James Dean looks, Mickey was offered acting jobs, but the “casting couch” requirements made him uneasy; when one prominent casting agent’s hand went from the contract to Mickey’s thigh, he excused himself, crawled out the restroom window and decided not to pursue a Hollywood career.

So, he found work as a bill collector, the most thankless job in the world, but Mickey was good at it, good enough to start a family with his first wife. During this time, he also pursued his education at UCLA and Santa Monica City College and became increasingly active in politics. He supported Robert F. Kennedy, because he believed he would end America’s War on Vietnam and that he stood for equality and freedom. One pivotal moment for Mickey was attending a victory party at the Ambassador Hotel – a night marked by shock and horror, as RFK was assassinated there, a tragedy he never forgot and a huge blow to his political optimism.

Then the old publishing bug bit him again. Mickey met LA Star Publisher and Editor Paul Eberle and together they wrote the popular book, “Playing to Win: How to Deal with Bill Collectors.” Then in 1973, Mickey quit bill-collecting and started publishing The LA Star.

That brings up one of Max/Mickey’s other mottos, “It’s either Monarchy or Anarchy. What do you choose?” In quitting bill-collecting and taking up publishing, my Prince chose anarchy.

Power to the people!

One of Mickey’s first acts as publisher was to put a black and white photo of a topless hippie woman on the cover of The LA Star. She was a member of the Elysium nudist community in Topanga Canyon, written up in the paper’s lead interview with Elysium founder and director Ed Lange. Nevertheless, this was unprecedented, and copies of The LA Star – which also featured the early works of Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski and many esteemed renegade writers – flew off the racks, easily beating the competition (mainly The LA Free Press).

A series of arrests and lawsuits ensued, and Mickey, Paul and his wife and partner Shirley Eberle, won or settled all of them, usually represented by famed Free Speech attorney Stanley Fleischmann and eventually his office colleague, Barry Fisher. They changed the “rack laws,” paving the way for cable TV. Among their other legal wins was the landmark “Angie Dickenson Case” that overturned American Criminal Libel statutes in favor of Freedom of Speech. So, you might still be sued for putting Angie’s face on a naked body, as Mickey did on The LA Star, but you can’t go to jail for it.

“Reader-Written” Media Pioneer

During this time, Mickey entered into a lifelong friendship and artistic collaboration with Dutch multi-media artist Willem de Ridder, chairman of the FLUXUS art movement in Northern Europe and founder/publisher of SUCK, the first European erotic magazine, featuring Germaine Greer, baring all in sex-positive, feminist prose and very explicit pictures.

Together, Mickey and Willem published some of the most innovative sex magazines and journals ever seen before – or since – including Love, Hate, Finger, God (called “G” on the cover because the religious printer refused to print it as “GOD”), Annie Sprinkle’s Hot Shit, The Sprinkle Report, Charles Gatewood’s “Forbidden Photographs,” The Ladies Room and Sound Finger (the first talking magazine), featuring the works of Marco Vassi, Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, Alien creator Dan O’Bannon and many more, representing the most extensive documentation of human sexuality and erotic art in the 1970s. Certain issues cannot legally be possessed in the United States, and many are now sold as collector’s items for thousands of dollars each.

Mickey and Willem also “plundered” the European airwaves, producing “pirate” radio shows in San Felice, Italy, early audio experiments whose echoes can still be heard in contemporary productions, including our own FDR radio shows. Together, accompanied by their families, lovers, hippie *groupies* and Mickey’s big black poodle Robear, they trailblazed free speech as they traveled through Europe and America, making art, getting busted and publishing “reader-written” magazines that changed the world.

Yes, changed the world. Now, with social media, 90% of what most of us read is “reader-written,” but back in the Swinging ‘70s, it was unusual (if not blasphemous) to publish the prose, photos and art of readers – not professionals – with virtually no editing or censorship. This was a significant, if unheralded accomplishment for Mickey, Willem, Paul, Shirle, Susan, Annie, the Star Family and surrounding hippie groupies, as they were hounded on all sides – from Manson Family death threats (immortalized in the movie “Beverly Hills Cop”) to a string of LAPD busts and an Elmira, N.Y. home invasion during a formal dinner in which everyone – including the men – was dressed in lingerie.

Mickey’s work delved into some of the most mysterious yet widespread subjects in human sexuality behavior and fantasy. For this, he was prosecuted 22 times (or was it 23?), possibly making him the most prosecuted publisher in U.S. history. He usually won, but he served 18 months in Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institute where he ran for attorney general, and where his second daughter, Kari, was born while her mother, Mickey’s first wife Susan Leblovic, was shackled to her prison hospital bed. In 1982, so that Susan could be released to care for Kari and their other children, Mickey made a “deal” to plead guilty for the first time.

Paroled in 1984, Mickey returned to LA and soon began publishing again. He also started calling himself “Michael.”  His new publishing ventures were much tamer, but also ground-breaking as “reader-written” media. Along with Ellen Dreksler (his second wife, with whom he had his fourth child, Jonathan Dreksler, in 1989), Brad Bucklin, Rudy Marinacci, Robert “The Bear” Wachtel, Kelly Bushinski, Tim Timmermans and others, Michael published “Meetings with Remarkable People” in 1986, “Beverly Hills, the Magazine” and, most famously, “The Brentwood Bla Bla” in 1987. In 1989, Michael sold both magazines to Eli Broad of Kaufman and Broad, but remained publisher. Then in 1990, they were sold to Robert Page of the Chicago Sun-Times who ruined the “reader-written media” concept – and soon completely destroyed both entire magazines – by inviting the advertisers to write the articles about their own businesses.

As soon as he saw his beloved magazines changed from reader-written to advertiser-driven, Michael quit.

Captain of My Heart

Circle back to late 1984: “Michael” (formerly Mickey, soon to become Max), was working for a short time as a dating service consultant when he met me, Susan Marilyn Block – soon to be “Dr. Suzy.” I drove to his office – “Captain of Her Heart” playing in my car – on a mission to close a sale for a commercial spot on my weekly KIEV radio show. “Michael” advised the service to buy the spot, and we began corresponding. I also started calling him “Max”—when I found out his real first name was “Maximillian,” and the name stuck. After all, it was his original princely name.

We fell in love – very slowly – seven years of friendship and creative collaboration that metamorphosed into a 33-year marriage – like a long jazz riff that flows into a symphony of lust with trust, and occasional long phone calls in which we agreed that greed was not the answer and war was not the way. I played his “Soap Salons” on my radio shows, and he published my opinion pieces in his magazines. Then, in 1990, Max’s second marriage ended, and he moved his personal effects into The Brentwood Bla Bla’s executive suite on the 11th floor of the Brentwood Plaza; that’s when we began to notice each other romantically.

But first, we collaborated on more audio art. In late 1990, we produced Desert Susan, crystallizing our mutual opposition to war in general and “Gulf War I” in particular, which was disturbingly popular at the time. A lyrical, hypnotic program featuring Sinéad O’Connor’s rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares to U,” antiwar poetry, “ethical hedonism,” and excerpts from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, cassettes of Desert Susan were sent free to thousands of troops and officers in Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-1991. Over the years, Max and I heard back from many troops who had received these cassettes, turning them from war to peace. We also created the best-selling audio series, Bedtime Stories for Adults, including The Great Erotic Train Ride, Office Fantasies, and Passions of the Plaza, reflecting our own escalating passions for each other.

In 1991, Max moved out of The Brentwood Bla Bla executive apartment and into my West Hollywood condo, occasionally appearing on my show, then on KFOX radio, and getting me out of jams. When one of my guests, Doors’ drummer John Densmore, called me an hour before showtime to complain that the car I sent to pick him up was too small, Max asked a friend with a limo to pick up his Rock Royal Highness, and we had such a good show, “Hello, I Love You” became our theme song.

In 1992, Max started producing my broadcasts, now “The Dr. Susan Block Show” (having obtained my first Ph.D. in philosophy with a major in psychology), on radio and public access TV. He also assumed the position of “Max the Butler” to my “Mistress of the Airwaves,” fondly remembered by early fans of The Dr. Susan Block Show for his distinctive garb of white Captain’s hat, dress shirt and ultra-short cutoffs, plus his deeply soothing yet commanding baritone radio voice that announced the show and delivered his provocative commentary. Both Max and I used our Commedia dell’Arte experience to create memorable characters based on our real personalities, albeit theatricalized and eroticized. We called it Commedia Erotica.

Also, that year, Max the Butler served as campaign manager for my antiwar, antifascist, pro-free speech U.S. Presidential run. I didn’t win, but I did marry my Prince (Max) that same year.

On April 12, 1992, Max and I were wed at Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Gerald Wolpe and Rabbi Ivan Caine. Guests flew in from around the world, including Max’s brother Charlie and Charlie’s daughter Giovanella from Milan, to witness the friendship that had blossomed into a passionate relationship and was now a lifelong commitment. Inside his wedding ring was inscribed “Master of My Soul,” and you already know what was inside mine.

Not everyone was happy to see Max and Suzy get married, of course; and though our attackers did not yet reveal themselves, they were sharpening their knives…

MaxCam on DrSuzy.Tv and HBO

Our lawfully-wedded, long-term love affair sparked our ongoing artistic partnership, producing The Dr. Susan Block Show, Dr. Block’s Journal (in print and online), BlockFilms Video Encyclopedia of Sex & Fetishes, The 10 Commandments of Pleasure, The Bonobo Way, Bonoboville, Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy, four Real Sex segments, and two Radio Sex TV specials on HBO. Our HBO shows were directed by Emmy-award-winner Shari Cookson and executive-produced by Sheila Nevins who, in introducing us at an awards banquet, declared that despite her many Emmys and Oscars, she was most proud of her “pussy films.”

Max was the creator of the unique, critically acclaimed, slow-moving, closeup style of filming The Dr. Susan Block Show known as “MaxCam,” also featured on HBO’s Radio Sex TV. Sheila was so impressed with it, she ordered HBO’s camera quality to be “degraded” to look as close to MaxCam as possible when shooting Radio Sex TV. Thanks to MaxCam, a shrimp like me could look 10 feet tall.

After KFOX radio switched formats, Max and I expanded The Dr. Susan Block Show to over 150 stations nationwide through the Independent Broadcasters Network (IBN) – while also airing the video version of the show on public access TV stations in California and New York – broadcasting live from our bed (inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Honeymoon for Peace) in my West Hollywood condo.

When our engineers, assistants and guests started sleeping over – some of them never leaving – we realized we weren’t just a couple, but we weren’t a family either. We were a community. We expanded into a big Westwood penthouse overlooking the Playboy Mansion, where we first interviewed Gloria Allred, Nina Hartley, Lasse Braun, and filmed HBO’s Real Sex 11.

Then we moved into several suites at the old Century Wilshire Hotel, right down the street from Westwood Village Cemetery, where we visited Marilyn Monroe’s crypt for inspiration, as we continued to broadcast live on IBN nationwide, plus KMAX radio in LA. We also shot our two half-hour, #1 Nielsen-rated Radio Sex TV specials on HBO, Radio Sex TV with Dr. Susan Block and Radio Sex TV 2: Off the Dial, both in the inimitable MaxCam style.

A Police Raid, a Stabbing, More Great Shows & the Bonobo Way

Max and I experienced many great adventures during these groundbreaking shows and Felliniesque after-parties, almost all of which were peaceful. However, one night in 1994 at the Century Wilshire Hotel, an intruder armed with a military knife and packing ties – a jealous “cuckold” whose “hot wife” (with his expressed consent) had danced on our show with renowned director Lasse Braun – broke into our bedroom and hog-tied me while Max was across the hall in the edit bay. When Max walked in, I yelled, “He’s got a knife!” just as the guy lunged and managed to stab Max in the ribs, blood everywhere. But before the blade could cut deep, and only using his bare hands, Max pushed it – and the attacker – away from his body, then picked him up and threw him against the wall, where he fell with a thud and scurried out, soon apprehended by police. Later Max joked that he was aiming to throw the guy out the window, but missed. Though Max’s stab wound was superficial, the incision that the UCLA ER surgeon made to inspect the wound through his groin led to a hiatal hernia that bothered him the rest of his life.

Our philosophy of love, nonviolence (except for self-defense such as the aforementioned) and community was, in part, inspired by the bonobos, the “Make Love Not War” chimpanzees who are humanity’s closest genetic cousins and have never been seen killing each other in the wild or captivity. We first saw these amazing Great Apes in 1993 on the last episode of The Nature of Sex on PBS, and it soon became clear to us that bonobos practice the kind of sex-positivity, “peace through pleasure,” female empowerment, male nurturing, sharing, caring, and ecosexuality that we believed essential to keeping our own love alive – and even a key to world peace. The Bonobo Way became an integral part of our love and work together for the rest of Max’s life. “Bonobo Liberation Therapy” was also integrated into our sex therapy system, in private practice at The Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences since 1991.

In 1995, Capt’n Max and I posted our first internet website on AOL, and it was promptly censored and deactivated for the use of the clinical sexological terms “masturbation” and “orgasm,” plus a photo of “copulating bonobos.” So, we started our own sites, DrSusanBlock.com and BlockBonoboFoundation.org. In 1996, Max produced my live in-depth radio and public access TV interview with Harvard Anthropologist and Demonic Males author Dr. Richard Wrangham about bonobo culture, the first in a series of interviews with more than a dozen bonobo ape experts over the next three decades.

That same year, Max and I interviewed Pin-Up Queen Bettie Page, “the dark Marilyn,” one of Max’s youthful crushes. It was the first live interview with the legendary, reclusive Bettie Page – and her longest live interview ever. When Max asked her to tell us what she told her fellow Tennessean, Senator Estes Kefauver (an old friend of his stepfather’s), in Senate sub-committee hearings when he asked what she thought of her bondage photos, she purred, “Why, Senator honey, I think they’re cute.”

Our interview with Bettie Page included a dazzling Bettie Page lookalike, an 18-year-old protégé of Max’s old friend Mistress Antoinette named Dita Von Teese. Dita would make several more appearances on the show – before, during and after her relationship with Marilyn Manson – on her way to becoming an international fetish and burlesque sensation.

Also in 1996, St. Martin’s Press published the first edition of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure: Erotic Keys to a Healthy Sexual Life, based on the philosophy of love, pleasure and The Bonobo Way that Max and I were developing – not to mention living. Published in over seven languages in more than a dozen countries, the book was a springboard to more Travels with Max, including our first trip to the San Diego Zoo to see the real bonobos, then New York, Philly, England, France, Italy, Germany, and Holland. While in Amsterdam, we met with Max’s old partner Willem de Ridder, artist Cora Emmons, singer Shai Shahar, The Happy Hooker author Xaviera Hollander and other members of the European erotic arts and sex-therapeutic wellness communities.

The Villa, Yale, a Real Speakeasy & another Police Raid

In 1997, we transported our merry band into the Villa Piacere, a four-story house in the Hollywood Hills surrounded by verdant foliage and noisy freeways. Continuing to film HBO specials and other sex educational documentaries, as well as broadcast our live weekly call-in shows, Max mentored emerging filmmakers in his distinctive MaxCam style while cultivating a vibrant space for me and the artists, technologists and therapists in our community to thrive.

Together, we crafted Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy – a singular blend of talk show, revival, history lesson, antiwar rally, fetish forum, bacchanal, and bar – where guests could “speak easy” about topics that mainstream shows dared not broach. But no, we didn’t sell bootleg moonshine or any alcohol at all. The vibe was almost always peaceful—except for the one night when the LAPD raided the place. Ironically, it was during a big show featuring the artist Frank Moore, Heilman-C, KLOS personality Frank Naste and Free Speech Coalition lawyer Jeffrey Douglas, among others. There was even a UPN-TV news crew – thrilled to stumble into a dramatic police raid when all they’d come for was to film a live broadcast of the show. In the end, nothing illegal was happening, and no neighbors were bothered, so no charges were filed.

In 1998, Max and I presented Independent Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr (using a Ken Starr lookalike that had everybody asking, “How’d you get Ken Starr to accept your award?”) the “Pornographer of the Year” award for his inquisition into U.S. President Bill Clinton’s pants. Not that we were fans of Bill Clinton‘s neoliberal policies or his draconian sanctioning of Iraq; we just felt that Starr’s “investigation” was a nakedly partisan power-grab dressed up in the pious trappings of a Moral Crusade. Moreover, Capt’n Max and I didn’t think anyone should lose their day job just for getting a consensual blowjob. HBO’s Sheila Nevins must have agreed with us because that was our one and only blatant political statement she didn’t make the editors cut.

In 1999, we learned that our cherished Villa Piacere was not actually owned by the guy to whom we were paying rent. So, off we went from the Hollywood Hills to Downtown LA, where we moved into a real Speakeasy – at least it had been one in the 1920s, still boasting the original bar – right across from the old Morrison Hotel (that predated the Doors). The high ceilings beautifully showcased our growing collection of great erotic artworks by Doug Johns, Karin Swildens, Dennis Dutzi, Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Yossi Vardan, John Evans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Scott Siedman and many more, including our own anti-Starr Report protest art, “The Hungry Republicans.” For Max and me, sharing erotic art was a political act.  Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy Gallery’s “Erotic Art of the Apocalypse” opening was enthusiastically reviewed by Stephen Lemons in LA New Times and filmed for Real Sex 25 on HBO.

Also in 1999, while attending Stage Blue, a Yale Dramat event, Max and I (Yale Class of 1977) met iconic Altadena artist Colonel Jirayr H. Zorthian (Yale Class of 1936) and his wife Dabney Zorthian. This sparked a great collaborative four-way friendship, and together, we produced several exhibitions of Jirayr’s master erotic artworks and made a film about his life, Zorthian: Art & Times, which we premiered at the Zorthian art memorial in 2005.

On January 22, 2000, we launched Eros Day – a holiday concept introduced to us by award-winning filmmaker Lasse Braun – to honor the Greek god of love, sex and life itself, coinciding with the planetoid Eros‘ closest approach to Earth. The celebration came together with divine erotic artistry, featuring Murrill Maglio as Eros and his wife Teri Weigel as Venus – the two making love on artist Mario Saucedo‘s giant wooden bondage cross – in the first of over a dozen classical and astronomical Eros Day celebrations, covered by rocket scientist Stan Kent, the LA Weekly and Citizen LA.

Also in 2000, the LAPD raided The Dr. Susan Block Show for a second time – when actress Ginger Lynn was our main guest. Again, no charges were filed. This time, Max and I sued the LAPD and eventually won a fairly large settlement on appeal, allowing us to rebuild Bonoboville and Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy in the Soul of Downtown LA.

We moved to Flower Street near the new Staples Center, just in time for the Democratic Convention, for which we mounted an erotic art show called Democratic Sex, surreptitiously attended by many convention delegates who borrowed our whips and toys to act out their political frustrations on each other.

David Rossi & Xam Paris

Our life together was quirky but in many ways ideal. The problem was, as Max often said, “The ideal is the enemy of the real.” In early 2001, the morning after an all-night-long Eros Day Passion Play, Max was arrested by the LAPD on false charges, taken to Twin Towers jail and held there for two months before I could gather the $100,000 bail for his release. After several court appearances in June and July, 2001 that seriously threatened his life, Max disappeared, only to resurface in August, making the first of a series of calls to his befuddled prosecutor from various locations in France.

He also called me every day, including on 9/11 when, among other things, easy travel became history. Nevertheless, in October 2001, I reunited with Max – now going by the name David Rossi. I’ll never forget running from the taxi straight into my prince’s arms on a whistling, cheering, horn-honking street corner in Nice, France – like we were in a movie – and from there, we headed to Cannes, where we showed a movie, Weimar Love: Hot Sex in Pre-Nazi Berlin. Eerily prescient, Weimar Love forecast a “Reichstag-like incident” triggering a crackdown on civil liberties – echoing the aftermath of 9/11. This was the first of several trips I took to France to see David, combining our work (including my new Counterpunch columns which Max always read before I submitted) with great pleasure, deepening love, more antiwar activism and a dash of danger – now with a French accent. On April 12, 2002, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in Paris.

We also celebrated our victory over the Rigas Family Censors of Adelphia Cable TV. Those were the days when you could face your censors directly, and possibly win. Helping our case was the fact that while the Rigases were censoring us for talking publicly about masturbation, they were privately masturbating their figures on their tax returns. They went to prison, and our show went back on the air uncensored (for a while), and my darling “David Rossi” took great joy in orchestrating that little victory lap from France.

In March 2003, in response to George W. Bush‘s bombing of Baghdad, David and I produced “Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace“ at Il Teatro Café, featuring photographs, paintings, drawings and digital artworks by American artists that counteracted and commented on “Smart Bombs“ and the eroticization of explosive, corporate-sponsored violence. We also founded the Cannes Press Club, hosting press gatherings and a screening party for the 2002 premiere of Tom Wontner’s My Yacht, an independent film made at Cannes 2001. We parasailed, swam on nude beaches and cruised around Cannes harbor on the Adria sailing ship, doing our antiwar best to let whomever we encountered know that not all Americans were as bad as Dubya.

While I was in LA, David continued to perform his “Max the Butler” role on my weekly shows, his baritone booming to us remotely from France, sometimes with new friends like Imanne Sterning who adored her “Daddu,” with whom he broadcast shows on NSEO radio, an “American in Paris” speaking out against America’s wars. Imanne helped promote the French edition of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure, Les Dix Commandements du Plaisir (Presse Grancher).

In 2004, on a whim and a prayer, Max flew to Tijuana Airport, where my art curator Kim, handyman Tulsa and I picked him up and took him home to LA. Off the LAPD radar, he lived, loved and worked happily for several years under the names David Rossi and Xam Paris, producing bigger and more bacchanalian shows and railing against the NeoCons in our largest Speakeasy ever – a sprawling, 17,000-square-foot universe of art and exploration on Pico near the DTLA Fashion District. We invited guests from every corner of culture – professors, porn stars, politicians, poets – to discuss and celebrate eroticism as an art, the life force, a path to peace and a calling – our calling.

We also conducted seminars and events at Sex Week at Yale (my alma mater) in 2004, 2006 and 2008, and at Sex Week at Yale 2010, David spoke to a packed auditorium at the Yale Law School on the importance of Free Speech.

In 2005, award-winning filmmaker Canaan Brumley started making Speakeasy, a film about David, me and all the wild and colorful characters in attendance, as well as fictional characters played by actors Wallace Stevens and Sara Sioux Robertson. Many hope that one day, Speakeasy: The Movie will be released. In the meantime, “the goal is the journey,” and the journey of making Speakeasy was and always is extraordinary.

David and I also expanded our celebrations of conventional holidays in our own quirky “passion play” way – with parody, history, spectacle, sensuality, art, music and a lot of fun. We reenacted the story of Lupercalia (the original Valentine’s Day), put on wild Purimshpiels, Hot-Wax Hanukkah, Saturnalian Xmas, Dionysian Spring, Kinky Krampus, Easter Resurrections of Persephone, and Masked Balls for Halloween. We turned Labor Day into Labia Day and hosted great birthdays and wedding anniversaries that celebrated married romantic love and longevity with antiwar activism and communal ecstasy.

Also in 2005, David executive-produced “Dr. Suzy’s Squirt Salon: The Art & Science of Female Ejaculation,” which premiered at the Cinekink Film Festival, went viral and won a few awards. In 2008, our erotic antiwar music video “Blonde Island: An Island of Pleasure in a Sea of War” premiered at the Barcelona film festival and at Cinekink, which David and I attended in New York on our way to New Haven for another Sex Week at Yale.

In Sickness & In Health

In May 2006, the night after Yale’s Whim ‘n’ Rhythm sang for a packed Speakeasy, I collapsed from septic shock. One minute I was writing my blog, the next I was in an ambulance. David had called the paramedics who saved my life, but my organs failed, I was in a coma for almost two weeks, and I came perilously close to death. David – Max – Mickey (despite his precarious “fugitive” status) was by my side in USC hospital every day. As I gradually woke up, struggling to breathe, there he was in his khaki vest and straw fedora, solicitously helping the nurses and doctors bring me back to life. Two months later, when he took me home in a wheelchair, he was my primary caregiver day and night.

As I recovered, we returned to hosting shows, and since everyone missed us, they were bigger and more bacchanalian than ever. Canaan continued filming Speakeasy through my recovery and beyond. Director Scott Webb also produced a series of Dr. Susan Block Shows, and various documentaries were made.

We also attended my 30^th Yale reunion (Class of 1977), David proudly exchanging his captain’s hat for a “Yale Husband” cap – at least for the weekend. He loved his role as a Yale Husband, joining me at my 2017 and 2022 reunions and many other Eli events. Between reunions, several Yale students spent summers interning on The Dr. Susan Block Show – what a unique education they received!

Meanwhile, we expanded my telephone sex therapy practice to include therapists worldwide, all under David’s management. As calls for therapy, counseling and guidance came from near and far, and our little Institute grew into an international venture, occasionally, we’d get unwanted calls and scams. For those, David would often assume yet another identity, that of Vivienne Hammer, answering the phone in his typical deep baritone, but with a feminine lilt, “This is Vivienne Hammer, how may I help you?” confounding whatever scammer or bill collector was on the other end.

Then one day in May 2008, David opened the door, and a gang of police piled on top of him, taking him back to Twin Towers – this time with no bail. Though the original accusations had long been recanted, dropped and debunked, Max was now on the hook for “failure to appear,” a common charge for those who don’t bow to the system, even if they are innocent of the original charge.  At least he was back to being Max again, his original name.

But now that they had Max, they didn’t want to let him out until they absolutely had to. So, from May 2008 through February 2009, I spoke on overpriced jailhouse phone lines every day and visited Max twice a week in Twin Towers, sometimes accompanied by Sara Sioux. During that time, Max continued to produce my shows by phone and through long visits, like when he reviewed our “Eros Day X Orgy for Obama” banners through the Twin Towers visitor glass, sparking lively conversations among guards and prisoners, many of whom protected Max because they were fans of his magazines, my shows or they just fell under the spell of Capt’n Max (even without the hat).

Capt’n Max Back at the Helm

In late February 2009, Canaan and Sara Sioux took me up to Delaney Prison to “spring” Max in an emotional reunion. With Capt’n Max back in my arms and at the helm of the Good Ship Bonoboville once again, The Dr. Susan Block Show took off – with great guests like Dave Bautista, Too $hort, Striperella artist Anthony Winn, Expedition Wild‘s Casey Anderson, bestselling author Robert Greene, artist Soma Snakeoil, lead singer Fat Mike of NoFX, actor John Barrymore, musician Elvis Schoenberg, bestselling Sex at Dawn author Dr. Christopher Ryan, Bonobo Handshake author Vanessa Woods, squirting star Annie Body, Hollywood socialite Amor Hilton, comedian Chris Gore and so many more for Eros Days, wedding anniversaries, bondage balls, musical concerts, stripper pole performances, erotic art exhibits and holiday bacchanals and intimate interviews.

One silver lining of Max’s time behind bars was that, after smoking since age 15, he quit cold turkey – and never touched a cigarette again. Still, he faced a variety of health setbacks. But it was nothing Capt’n Max couldn’t overcome – at least for a while – with me by his side. He was the Captain, I was the Admiral, and together, we kept the Good Ship Bonoboville sailing along. In 2009, Max underwent a quadruple bypass (which turned into a triple when one vein didn’t take). In 2011, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and in 2012, he underwent chemotherapy and neo-bladder surgery. Though the results weren’t perfect, he remained cancer-free for the rest of his life.

In August 2012, Max produced Big Win in Vegas, a film centered around a motorhome trip to see me receive my second Ph.D. – an honorary Doctorate of the Arts in Sexology from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHA) in a ceremony at the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, officiated by Dr. Ted McIlvenna and attended by our friends and fans worldwide, followed by a wild party in the RV. Max was also the driver of that RV – our Bonoboville-On-Wheels.

We broadcast live from various locations, including the Hollywood Show, Zephyr Theater, Cupcake Theater, Adultcon and several years at Mistress Cyan‘s DomCon, giving talks on Bonobo BDSM and “The FemDoms of the Wild.” But our most sensational and intimate shows were at Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy in the Soul of Downtown LA, all set in breathtaking bohemian environments designed by Max as Xam Paris. These were the glittering jewels in our crowns as king and queen of the DTLA underground erotic art scene.

From DTLA to Inglewood

Nothing lasts forever, certainly not glittering crowns. In 2013, as DTLA prices soared and the quality of life for artists declined, Capt’n Max and I relocated Bonoboville back to West LA, but this time in vibrant Inglewood, California. There, we flourished for five years of great shows, seminars, bacchanals, media and love – with only one cordial visit (not a raid) from the Inglewood police, which ended with us giving the officer-in-charge (who confided he and his wife were interested in swinging) an autographed copy of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure.

In 2014, Max published The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure by me, for him. Everything we did was “by” and “for” the two of us anyway; we just hoped others might enjoy it too. The publication date was November 8, 2014 – Max’s birthday – and we held a big book launch with fire jugglers, dancers, Bonobo Way book-spankings, readings and other festivities. Our Bonobo Way book tour took us to UC Berkeley, UC Puerto Rico, UCLA, USC, Cal Tech, Yale, DomCon and AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists) and beyond.

In 2015, Max “discovered” powerful progressive newscaster/activist Abby Martin on Russian TV (RT), and invited her to Bonoboville as the only guest on a special edition of The Dr. Susan Block Show. Thus began a loving friendship and occasional media collaboration between Max, me, Abby, her husband Mike Prysner (also part of our 2022 Bonoboville Reunion), and Abby’s brother Robbie Martin that, among other things, encouraged us to open up and speak more freely about our growing support for Palestine.

In Inglewood, our mix of politics, sex, art and culture featured more colorful Commedia Erotica characters, including award-winning actor Luzer Twersky, Dominatrix and 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidate Tara Indiana, Aristrocrats comedian Paul Provenza, Ecosexuality author Dr. Serena Anderlini, actress Daniele Watts, gourmet vegan Chef Belive, rapper Ikkor the Wolf, Taboo actress Kay Parker, author Moushumi Ghose, comedienne Sally Mullins, artist Jeffrey Vallance and on and on. The sex made the politics more fun, and the politics made the sex more meaningful. Altogether, it made life good.

In 2019, when our Inglewood building was sold to members of the powerful Padilla family who expressed a profound interest in swinging, but doubled the rent, Capt’n Max moved us out to Arcadia, California.  We set up our studios in a former Home for the Deaf that seemed perfect for us.  We liked the bars on the walls because Capt’n Max was getting sea legs more often, and needed something to grab onto, we adored the big garden, our neighbors liked us, and our love and work flourished once again.

However, from the beginning, we were harassed by the City of Arcadia’s invasive inspectors and puritanical officials – despite our landlady’s continual support. This harassment seemed to coincide with rising social media censorship, including the deactivation of our YouTube and Meta accounts, and a broader decline in free speech, as the 2010s devolved into the 2020s, with waves of stifling and frightening repression coming at us from both the Right and the Left.

During the 2020 Covid pandemic, Max and I held a series of “Bedside Chats,” inspired by FDR’s “Fireside Chats” – except ours was from bed, zooming in guests like Hypatia Lee, Goddess Phoenix, author David Steinberg and fellow Counterpunch writer JoAnn Wypijewski.

Toward the end of 2020, we began co-hosting FDR (Fuck da Rich!) Radio, broadcasting live on several internet platforms. As usual, sex, politics and culture was on the menu, now served in the dining car of a train traveling through time into the great unknown, picking up guests and callers along the way. Max loved trains almost as much as ships. And then there were the limos and motorhomes. The goal was and still is the journey, after all.

In July, 2021, just as we were preparing for a podcast interview with Counterpunch founder Ken Silverstein about the City of Arcadia’s unconstitutional harassment, Bonoboville was raided by the Arcadia Police.

The cops, inspectors and a shifty-eyed City Attorney forced everyone out of the building, frisked us and made us wait outside while they searched Bonoboville. They found many interesting items – a giant painting of Marilyn Monroe topless and other erotic art, various computers, assorted sex toys, a lot of tapes, a few beds, lots of couches, many desks, multiple chairs, a couple guitars – but nothing the least-bit illegal. During our time waiting in the parking lot, Max – who explained to the police that he had a neo-bladder he couldn’t control – was denied access to the restroom.

Their warrant was unconstitutional, based on false information, and no charges were filed, but the City’s harassment continued. Max railed against this unconstitutional persecution, along with other signs of the then creeping (now galloping) fascism in American politics, in an interview with The LA Daily News and on all our FDR Radio shows. Was there a light at the end of the tunnel, or was our Love Train headed further into darkness?

In 2022, Vice TV produced a special in-person revival of The Dr. Susan Block Show and a “day in the life” of Capt’n Max and me. One of the funniest, most authentic moments ended with Max in front of the Bonoboville washing machine, explaining how we wash the dildos before shows, as he gleefully displays each soapy rubber schlong to the camera as if to say, “Relax, let’s have some fun.”

That April, 2022, we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary; in May, we brought our “Make Kink Not War” movement to DomCom LA, and in June, we moderated a “Peace, Love and Bonobos“ roundtable at Yale. In 2023, on our 31^st, Max took the wheel of the Bonoboville RV up the coast for a final spin, then spoke at Deep Throat’s 50^th anniversary, enjoyed Abby Martin’s art show and saw our friends, the bonobos, also one last time. Then we celebrated Max’s 80th birthday with his son Jonathan, and our last big event was our 32nd Wedding Anniversary for a Free Palestine in April, 2024. Though by then, my great and vigorous Captain was confined to a wheelchair, battling an array of debilitating health issues, and a hint of wistful nostalgia was in the air, a feeling that this could be “the last time.”

A Life-Shattering Stroke

Then, it happened. On the morning of May 19, 2024, shortly after broadcasting his last live FDR show, Max suffered a major ischemic stroke. I woke up to his screams, called 911 and we  rushed him to USC Hospital, where he was intubated and put on life support. The prognosis was dire, especially when the neurologists couldn’t remove a blood clot in his brain, his kidneys were failing precipitously, his heartbeat veering unpredictably, and he was unable to breathe on his own.

But Max fought for his life (I like to think he fought for our life), and within about a week, he was cautiously taken off the respirator. I rejoiced to see him look at me with what seemed like recognition. I squeezed his left hand, and he squeezed back. Still, the stroke had rendered my big strong darling almost immobile, virtually paralyzing the entire right side of his body, and splintering his mind. He couldn’t lift his head, eat or drink and had to be fed through a tube, first in his nose, then a G-tube and eventually a GJ-tube in his stomach.

Most frustrating, the stroke stole Max’s words. Afflicted with “aphasia,” he was trapped inside his own shattered thoughts and feelings, and when he tried to speak, what came out was jumbled, twisted, often nonsense. This would be devastating for anyone, but was especially painful for a publisher, public speaker and radio host like Max, with such a powerful, creative mind – now broken like a jigsaw puzzle spilled all over a wet floor.

It was heart-wrenching to see Max wrestle with simple phrases that used to flow so easily from his silver tongue. Though sometimes the struggle exploded into an aria of laughter, wild sound poems, funny faces or both, enchanting the nurses, therapists and even the most robotic of doctors. I tried to complement Max’s natural charm by supporting these often overworked, underpaid health professionals upon whom my darling husband’s life now depended, and I showed the really interested ones some of the many magazines he published and a few of our shows (the PG ones). Despite the inherent and sometimes deadly failings of the American Medical System (which I could complain about and have), most medical personnel treated Max like the VIP he was. And yes, we had good times – even some great times – in his horrible final year.

Aphasia was always in the way, breaking Max’s thoughts into gibberish, but every so often, he blurted out something special or delivered carefully pronounced but utterly scrambled instructions with the gravity of a Mafia don.  I called it “Maxolalia” in the spirit of “Glossolalia,” speaking in tongues – like when, in a rush of babble, Max suddenly and very clearly declared, “We Are An Art,” or “I feel my brain,” “It’s not ending,” “There’s the insurance issue” and “We’re in the skin.”

I was not even sure he always knew who I was – he’d certainly forgotten our immense history together – though I know he knew I was *his* and he was mine. One late night in the ER, after we’d been separated for a few hours of tests, they wheeled him back in and he grinned at me through a morass of mucous and oxygen tubes, exclaiming, “My Girl is here!”

And I was. I was always there. Because Max taught me that real partnership means loving someone at their weakest, not just their strongest – even when others attack you for it, even when your President says “maybe you should just let him die.”  It means doing what it takes to be a good Admiral when your Captain is wounded. It means finding beauty even in brokenness that can’t be fixed.  It means giving your all to love, even when you get nothing back – besides more love… which is a lot.

And it means saying goodbye when you’re not ready (I’m still SO not ready).

Pleasure Therapy Painkillers

Though not a medical doctor or nurse, I was Max’s primary caregiver, so I wound up guiding him through life on the edge of death across three hospitals, four rehabs, over 10 ambulance rides and a nursing home – all in a little less than a year.

Though the aphasia made even the simplest communications confusing, the one language Max and I still understood was the language of love. A lifelong advocate for pleasure as vital to well-being, Max and I found ways to integrate pleasure therapy into his pain management.

Sure, we couldn’t have *sex* (aka intercourse), but our hands could dance together – “Hand-Dancing with the Stars” – and our lips could brush against each other, and we could make each other smile. I could massage and stretch his flaccid right arm while his strong left hand touched and twirled my hair as if it had mystical healing powers, and maybe it did.

Pleasure was Max’s most effective painkiller, and even some of the doctors agreed that the oxytocin of love worked better than Oxycontin the drug. And it wasn’t only romantic love. The joy, laughter and wonder he shared with friends, family, colleagues, the Bonoboville crew and Chico the Bonoboville dog – those who braved hospital, rehab and nursing home visits – as well as the doctors, nurses and therapists who cared for him within the punishing limits of insurance constraints, all helped to kill Max’s constant excruciating pain.

Another way around aphasia was through music. Having brought Max continuous joy throughout his life, in his final months, music was now a life raft through the post-stroke sea of pain and confusion in which Max found himself swimming. He especially loved singing his own little tunes – to communicate, to entertain, to remind us that he was human, to ease his own agony and to give himself courage. He even sang sometimes during his most agonizingly painful procedures and treatments like “wound care.”

“No other patients ever sang during wound care besides Max,” confirmed his treatment nurses when I inquired. For that alone, Max will never be forgotten in these halls of great sickness and healing.

Throughout this “Year of Living Precariously,” Max’s health went up and down like a damn yo-yo, but each time it went down, it dropped a little lower. After the stroke, he never really got “better.” Sometimes, he’d rally – such as for his old friend Barry Fisher’s “Bella Ciao” accordion concert that got the nurses and other patients dancing around Max’s bed, or for special physicians that really went the extra mile for him like Kaiser’s Armen Aghabegian, and for our luminous amethyst 33^rd wedding anniversary on April 12, 2025. Some couples ride to their anniversary celebration in a limo; we took an ambulance, laughing, singing and loving all the way to Max’s room at the South Pasadena Care Center (SPCC), where we were soon surrounded by friends – both human and canine – balloons and flowers.

Max loved flowers, especially roses – right up until the end. Their fragrance seemed to revive him, if only for a moment of what seemed – from the look in his big hazel eyes – like the purest pleasure in the world.

Farewell Capt’n Max

Max was an astoundingly strong, vibrant, creative, passionate, Zorba-like, Commedia-style character, as well as the most loving and romantic husband I could dream of, and a very peaceful, kind, caring, sharing bonobo sapien. But he was also a force of nature, always creating, publishing, producing, performing, pioneering and steering the ship, supporting and mentoring others, making you think or laugh or maybe making you mad – a larger-than-life lover of life.

But no matter how lively you are, a major ischemic stroke takes you – body, shattered brain and soul – to as deathly a place as you can go in life – short of death itself. In Max’s case, death came for him in May of 2025, a few days shy of the first anniversary of his stroke, and he was rushed from SPCC to the ER and then ICU of Huntington Hospital (the Pasadena branch of Cedars Sinai) with dropping blood pressure, kidney failure and low oxygenation, a kind of sepsis like I had had, but worse. He rallied in the ICU, but then the yo-yo dropped down, way down, hitting bottom, and his heart failed. In the last moments of his life, just before noon on May 13, 2025, my darling Max squeezed my hand hard – maybe to say “good-bye” – and then he was gone. The whole ICU crew came in to try to revive him, but despite heroic attempts, he would not return. Capt’n Max had set sail.

I’m no necrophiliac, but I kissed, hugged, wept and wailed over his still beautiful, but oh-so-ravaged body until it grew cold and hard as an ice sculpture, and the morgue technicians took him away. Naively, I asked if I could go with him, and gently as they could, they refused.

On Monday 6/9/2025 (Max would love that date – 6/9 – a “69 Date”), Max was cremated, as was his wish, by Pierce Brothers Mortuary, starting with a private “visitation” at the Westwood Village Cemetery – the one we used to visit when we were lived at the Century Wilshire Hotel – followed by a procession around the grounds. Many Old Hollywood stars are entombed on those grounds, and Max was a star of Old Underground Hollywood. Of course, Marilyn Monroe’s crypt is there (now with our old friend Hef next-door), and for Max, Marilyn was the personification of fun, as well as the epitome of tragedy.  Max also loved “The Dark Marilyn” – our friend, show guest and “Queen of Pin-Up” Bettie Page – now buried just a few graves away from Marilyn. It hurts so deeply to say farewell to Capt’n Max, but it helps to feel he’s in good company.

Then it was time for the cremation itself at Valhalla Crematorium. Max was no Viking and Im hardly a Valkyrie, but for a moment, I wished I lived in one of those cultures where the weeping widow throws herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre and goes up in smoke along with him. But I don’t, so I just cried and hugged my fellow mourners, even people I know tried to hurt Max and me… because they are people too.

As we grieved the great loss of Capt’n Max, some mentioned the anti-ICE protests raging outside, and everyone agreed that Max would support the protesters. Despite or maybe because of his own princely lineage, Max always backed the anarchists over the monarchists, just one of many things I loved so much about him.

In a few weeks, we will hold a Capt’n Max Memorial Celebration in Bonoboville and online. If you’d like to participate in person or remotely, please email or call us at 626.461.5950.

Maximillian Rudolf Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri is survived by his brother Charles Lobkowicz; son Michael Leblovic; daughter Daniele Macdonald; daughter Kari Schiaman; son Jonathan Dreksler; grandchildren Anna Baer, Talia Amato, Paige Belmont, Madix Leblovic, Jacob Schiaman, Juliet Schiaman; great grandchildren Taylor Amato, Levon Baer; niece Giovanella Lobkowicz; cousins Giovanni Rossi Filangieri and Anna Aliena Ciriello; and many beloved friends. And by me. I remain his Admiral, his Girl, his Suzy, his beloved, as he was and will always be mine.

Good sailing, my Captain. Your Admiral will be in your arms again very soon. Meantime, I’ll try to take care of Bonoboville with the help of a lot of people who love you.

The goal is the journey, and (ready or not) the journey continues.

Read Max’s Epic Obit on COUNTERPUNCH

© June 9,  2025  Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950.