“At once a deeply moving memoir and vivid instruction manual, Daddy Lover God reveals in startlingly honest and lucid prose what it means to answer the call to become a sexual healer. Whether his practice is called massage or sex work or sacred intimacy, for Don Shewey his vocation is never less than holy; his keen storytelling never less than gripping. He is a man on a mission to foster erotic abundance and pleasure in a world sorely in need of this tender medicine.”

–Martin Moran (The Tricky Part, All the Rage) 

“This is a memoir about one man’s journey from fear and ignorance to a full flowering of gay sexuality. After a successful career as an editor and journalist, Don Shewey was trained as a masseur who understands the link between the erotic and the divine. Citing many case histories, he explores the wounded psyches of his clients and his own spiritual and physical hesitations.”

–Edmund White (A Boy’s Own Story, States of Desire)

“Daddy Lover God is an intimate portrait of intimacy (physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual) that examines sex work through the lens of healing and sacred calling. Like sex itself, it is revealing, funny, sensual, sad, challenging, and beautiful, all at different times.”

–Hugh Ryan (When Brooklyn Was Queer)

“Daddy Lover God takes Don Shewey through a labyrinth of self-discovery. Donning and shedding the avatars of altar boy, erotic masseur, sex worker, psychotherapist, ‘good’ Roman Catholic, and pagan healer, Shewey imparts the explicit details of this circuitous true-life pilgrimage with clear-eyed honesty, wit, and devotion.

–Ishmael Houston-Jones (Fat and Other Stories: some writing about sex)

With Joseph Kramer

Social Media