The Las Vegas Courtesan

 I was unsure about the status of the Stardust Ranch since it had been closed previously, but had reopened three years ago under a new owner (this sort of ownership change seems pretty common in the brothels across the state). From the front it looks like a regular simple bar to hang out in that is open until around midnight to 2am depending on the crowd, but has a 24hour side door with a doorbell for after hour patrons who are curious to see a girl. The manager at this brothel was very nice and really made me feel comfortable and welcome. I got a tour from the one girl who was there (apparently another girl was on her way from Vegas to work), and she explained to me how interested patrons can get a massage in the massage room while she can negotiate her prices for a party. Though there seems to be no actual negotiation room (like some brothels are required due to local regulations), this is just a method she chooses to relax the clients before carrying on in a different room with a bed. I was also showed a VIP room with a Jacuzzi that I frankly would be scared of stepping foot in. Eek!

The house is small and quaint even with the bar, but seems like it would be easy to stop in at both Ely brothels just to relax and have a drink before you decide if you want to partake in fun with a lady.

I was so curious about taking this trip and I am glad I got the time and opportunity to do it, finally. I learned a lot and it really made me see the differences in every city’s or county’s (sometimes ridiculous) laws, how the quality of the houses vary immensely, and how the one state in America where brothels are legal – Nevada – handles legalized prostitution overall. In some ways I was pleased by the businesses and the way they were run and in other ways I was disappointed by the quality of some brothels, their rules, and even their sometimes-remote locations. Information about the brothels on the web is spotty, as far as which ones are currently open versus closed down or switched owners, so I thought actually visiting each place would be the only way to verify which are currently open for business.

First of all, Nevada is a HUGE state. I have taken many a road trip before and have had many people tell me, “You know Nevada is a lot bigger than you think it is,” and I believed them, but the sparse population is what really blew me away. So few people live outside of Clark County (the county Las Vegas is in.) If my little calculations are correct, only 8% of the state’s 2.6 million-person population lives outside of Clark and Washoe counties (Washoe County is where Reno is located.) That’s crazy when you consider the tremendous amount of space in Nevada outside those two counties. It’s also sad that in both of these counties prostitution is disallowed due to the population size being over 400,000, which is written into the state law governing the control of the state’s brothels. The law leaves the other oftentimes-remote counties to decide whether they want or do not want to allow brothels. Surprisingly, Douglas County to the north of Clark County disallows brothels, and it isn’t until Ely (250 miles to the north in White Pine County and pronounced “Ee-lee”) that you find the first brothel in that direction. In fact, the route that I am going to travel is virtually counter clockwise, starting in Ely and ending in Pahrump.

The one thing that really became noticeable as I started visiting these houses is their location. Most all of the brothels are located in a tucked away corner, almost always on the other side of the railroad tracks (and I mean that literally) in these small towns. I got a real shunned vibe from their locations, as if they were banished to that part of town, hidden away for no one to see their sin and shame. Also, I rarely saw roadside advertising, except for along I-80 for the Mustang Ranch and one on the property of Wild West Ranch in Winnemucca (which had a view from the I-80 freeway.) Mind you, these towns are not thriving metropolises, but small towns that have an average population of 5,000 people. I understand the locals not wanting their property value going down due to a brothel in their neighborhood, but as one brothel madam told me, the only reason why you would be going to that side of town is to go to the brothels. So if someone saw you going to that side of town they knew where you were going, and of course, people in small towns notice these things. Most of the brothels had few, if any, signs pointing to its location. You had to be almost to the house for there to be a sign at all and usually you are on your own. Google Maps saved me many times and, if it weren’t for that, I might still be lost driving around the great State of Nevada trying to find my way. Some addresses I had were just plain wrong, and I found plenty of confusing directions, which I hope to clear up completely with each review and brothel profile. In fact, I used a GPS app to get the exact coordinates for the ones that are particularly confusing, and I will be updating that information into my Nevada brothels map.

In conclusion, after seeing every brothel that is in operation in Nevada, I’m glad that, on the one hand, in one corner of America there are legal brothels, but on the other – in a way – I’m sad to see so many of them so hidden away and so scrutinized and controlled by local government that they don’t seem so free and liberated after all. I had hoped to see more of America’s freedom in the Wild West poking through, but even in these very rural, remote towns, they were usually isolated and quarantined.

So over the next few weeks I will post a review and photos on each brothel as I virtually travel around the state to all 26 of the open houses. Yes… I said 26!

Even though the small survey that was posted in the Las Vegas Review Journal late last month said that 64% of 405 people didn’t want prostitution legalized in Las Vegas (or Clark county as a whole,) there have been recent moves in the closest legal county next door to revamp two of the brothels out in Crystal, Nevada, since Dennis Hof of the famous Moonlight Bunny Ranch near Carson City bought them. There’s another brothel being built (wow when was the last time they built a brand new building for a new brothel??) south of Beatty. The two are in different directions when leaving Las Vegas but both businesses are in Nye County. I’m definitely going to have to add these stops to my brothel tour I want to take once they open!

I find it interesting that it took this long for Dennis Hof to do something in southern Nevada. His name and reputation are famous from the Cathouse series on HBO over the years and many local vistors get his brothels nearly 450 miles away from Las Vegas confused with the brothels located about 70 miles away. In fact I almost giggle when guys almost threaten me with a, “Well I’ll just go to the Bunny Ranch!” when they can’t agree on entertainment and a lower price. I say, “Ok you can definitely drive 450 miles one way if you want to!” That usually warrants the response of, “What? 450 miles?!” Nye County is also happy about the Dennis Hof movement since the previous owner of the brothels out in Crystal, Nevada, was convicted of bribery of a local commissioner (bribing a commissioner in Nevada? Never heard of such a thing!) These brothels in the county (if they have a certain number of girls) bring in an average of $126,000 annually to the county in fees! I also was digging around and found out each girl must pay a fee every quarter to the county as well. These fee figures vary by county, but in the end they bring a lot of money in to help out with county services (apparently the Veterans Association even gets a good chunk.) I’m curious though how the out-of-the-way brothels in Crystal and Beatty will do. The Denis Hof purchase is 17 miles past the turn off for Sheri’s and the Chicken Ranch while Beatty is a whopping 120 miles from downtown Las Vegas to the new location. The lucky thing about Mound House, where the famous northern Nevada brothels are located, is that they are one split hair away from the Carson City limits and 35 miles from Reno. The little community of brothels gets the advantage of being so conveniently located. That sort of convenience can’t really happen for Las Vegas to Nye County, so will these brothels ever be really busy out there? And why isn’t there another mini-community set up right on the Nye county border on the way out to Pahrump?

Though from my previous post on legalizing prostitution in Las Vegas, I wasn’t much of a fan of actual houses in a certain part of town, but really, if we had some sort of standardization then we wouldn’t be so criticized in the news like prostitution in Las Vegas was just running rampant and some random figure of 3,000 sex workers roaming the streets working here like this is the wild west. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much money the business brings in for the rural counties. In the end I think it could bring a better opinion to the sinfulness of Sin City and keep the shady operations, like the ones just shut down, from scamming our visitors.

I got a little hate mail from a woman a few weeks ago which is really my first email of the sort. It brought up some things that I have issues with — how oftentimes police and governmental agencies, special interest groups of all sorts, and even society as a whole place blame on all sex workers for some of the dark sides of humanity. They all want to believe that any sort of prostitution is a bad thing and all prostitutes are to blame for horrible child prostitution and sex trafficking that goes on in the world. The act of prostitution is even compared to a parasite by the author of the email. Furthermore, she says that we (read: sex workers) are selling ALL of women’s sexuality. Really? I don’t remember forcing or imposing myself, my personal choices, and my occupation on any other women in this world or anyone else, for that matter. My existence in the sex industry does not mean that I am hurting or damaging fellow females, to say nothing of the other horrible criminal acts she mentions. In fact, I see it as quite the opposite. I am doing something that they do not want to do and I am not imposing myself on anyone and their sexual lives. Just because some husbands or partners decide to see a sex worker does not make me guilty of forcing them to call an escort agency or meet a working girl in a bar. They act in their own freewill and do as they please as a rational human searching for something they feel like they lack in their own private lives.

As far as the “parasite of human trafficking and forced prostitution” goes, you can only blame those who try to abuse the system and the girls and boys that they affect. To say someone like myself is somehow guilty by association of trade is not only terribly offensive, it is just illogical and plain wrong. This same sort of blame could be placed on a lot of other industries, but it’s usually forgotten or not done.  Let’s take, for example, the sneaker or shoe making market. There are people who consider themselves masters of this trade, true craftsmen, and sell their product to the general public. Just because this cobbler makes shoes ethically while there are children forced to work in factories in many countries for pennies a day to make similar shoes (for large U.S. corporations at times, no less,) you can not place blame on the cobbler for his trade having a dark side by greedy people who want to make money at the hands of those children or even underpaid workers. It would be completely ludicrous to blame the local shoe repair guy for indirectly “encouraging” the inhumanity going on in some countries. It’s the same with prostitution. You can’t blame a local sex worker for the greedy and inhumane practices that these criminals are known for, but this is all you see in the news or in the papers. Our society is heavily biased against prostitutes to the point of dehumanizing us, and the people writing the “news” articles or “reporting” on television are themselves very often biased just like most of the rest of our culture.  It’s so commonplace and accepted as “okay,” it seems sometimes that sex workers are the last “special interest group” in the United States that is still – daily – dehumanized in the media and not treated with the same care as every other group that gets coddled to.  Just think about it for a minute before you make up your mind if I am right or wrong – when was the last positive news article you read or television “exposé” you watched that was not heavily slanted? The government convinces everyone that the sex industry is only filled with bad people and abusers of fellow humans to make a buck and if it isn’t the government it’s people like this allegedly “pro-women” person who is attacking another woman.  They never point out the good people or the educated women making a decision for themselves to make a business out of pleasure. It all gets twisted into us selling our bodies like we sold ourselves to the devil unintentionally or someone forced us to do it because we are powerless – helpless, even. We can and have made up our own minds, and of our own accord, to be in this industry. We are not selling the sexuality of other women because that is their own decision to make. Our job doesn’t influence them just like their desk job at a corporation doesn’t influence me.  I think we need to stop pointing the finger at the profession and point them at the true criminals.

I have never seen anything of the sort since becoming a sex worker, but in case you ever doubted, let me make this point very clear: if I EVER come across criminal activity involving children in any shape or form, and in particular prostitution, I will be the first person to report it to the authorities.  That makes me sick.

Here’s this woman’s original email:

Beyond your cute “ha ha prostitution is such a crazy gig!!” blog entries, I have no doubt that underneath it you know that what you do is hideous. Making a buck for yourself off of how lucrative women’s bodies are in this world?   Besides the obvious issue of the parasite human trafficking/forced prostitution industries that will always follow that lucrativeness, there are lots of intelligent women who understand that what you are really selling is all women’s sexuality. And we don’t appreciate it one bit. While all of us have to put up with the consequences of our bodies being commodities (a concept you wholly endorse and encourage by being a hooker) we kind of really disdain women who, as I said, use that damaging image to make few bucks for themselves, selling what is not theirs to sell.  It’s very selfish and frankly, very ignorant of you.