“Read me a story, Daddy.”
Oh, I think I can manage that … just take your pick. In between these covers you will be able to find just about any kind of daddy your heart desires. There’s a biological father whose gay son shows him that there’s more to sex than procreation; a leather daddy who gets flipped by a cross-dressing femme; a slightly older gay man who lets the personals lead him into hard-dicked daddyhood; a submissive daddy who gives it up for his beautiful drag-queen daughter; dyke daddies who are both nurturing and mean; a daddy who has to get some help to convince his head-tripped boy to give it up for real; a vicious real-life daddy whose memory fuels a dominatrix’s authority; a clerically collared father; a bondage-and-sensory deprivation daddy; a daddy whose libido is big enough for him to take on a brother for his boy; a straight stepfather who diapers his wife; a pimp daddy who makes sure his stripper-boy puts his tips to good use as college tuition; and more.
This is a good book to lend to somebody you think might be a freak. I got my 1994 first edition copy from Half Price Books, before I stopped buying via Amazon a year or four ago. It arrived in the mail with a sticker on the back that said “Packaged with care by” and then a friendly and sensual hand signed ‘Randy’. This I loved. Thank you, Randy, I hope you’re getting what’s yours in the world.
Some years prior when I was reading my cyborg smut more publicly around West Philly some admirers were like, you should check out Pat Califia. I ordered Califia’s smut story collection MACHO SLUTS via Amazon, and while reading it was sort of bored and then eventually a bit turned off, and then bored some more. My review on goodreads (an Amazon-owned company) was low rating and said while I understand the historical importance of this book I’ve read so much freaky kinky fanfiction that this did not impress me. Whoops. Nowadays I have a deeper understanding and hence more reverence of whose steps I walk in, and so by the time I got and read DOING IT FOR DADDY I was tongue out drooling face through the whooole thing.
The cover of this edition shows two sort of classically picturesque leather daddy looking people who I’m assuming are men, and a person I’m assuming is femme adorned with spiked jewelry, cuffs, and a tight shiny bodice jawn. One of the daddies has their arms around the other two and they stand intimately together as a family.
if daddies are your thing (or you’re curious), this is quite a nice book to have around, what with all the options. I will say that the contributors read to me as predominately white and maybe also centered around the famous Bay area network of homo sex deviants–I’m not sure. I imagine that a 2020 rendition of this book’s subject matter would center trans Black and Indigenous desires from a deeper network of locales.
DOING IT FOR DADDY is sincere. It’s not cheap, quick, fast, shit produced for a market––it’s real freaky shit! Califia’s introduction gives me that nice feeling like when a friend starts competently telling you what to expect and how you’re gonna get into something you’ll be doing together, and you feel all nervous-excited and taken care of.
A book to lend out. A book to ask for back. A book to display for special company.
Related reading: Patrick Califia’s essay in Sexiness: Rituals, Revisions & Reconstructions from Discipline Press.
Related viewing: Michelle Handelman’s mesmerizing documentary BloodSisters: Leather Dykes and Sadomasochism.