Brothel (18 page)

In many ways, management reinforced the brothel’s cliquishness and competitive tension. I remembered distinctly Irene’s admonishment to new prostitutes: “This is a cutthroat place. You’re here to make money, not friends.” While Irene’s words of caution were well intentioned, they served to perpetuate the underlying distrust between the women. When I asked the
women why they hadn’t organized to form a union or joined together to purchase a brothel themselves, most of the prostitutes rolled their eyes and said they could never trust “another ho.”

Brothel staff also seemed to benefit from the women’s rivalries and discords. Women offered management and workers gifts and financial kickbacks in order to gain preferential treatment. Most offered money voluntarily, in the hope of earning special privileges and keeping brothel authorities out of their hair. As one woman put it, “I pay my ‘insurance’ at the beginning of the week because I don’t know what sort of shit is going to happen to me; I might need the indemnity.” But staff members were also notorious for pressuring prostitutes into making payoffs. Speculating that the Nair incident could have only occurred with the tacit approval of a floor maid, one of the bartenders encouraged Heather to start tipping all of Mustang’s floor maids extra to buy their loyalty.

Despite how antagonistic relations between brothel prostitutes could be, there was another side to the story. Along with jealousy and competition, I also found camaraderie and real solidarity. Although the women didn’t articulate their support for one another very often, they demonstrated it in a number of other ways.

One day I saw Tanya, who had been so outspoken about her hatred of training newcomers, pull aside a young turn-out to warn her that one of Mustang’s more infamous regulars had just come in. Tim the Barker was a wealthy local bachelor who was renowned throughout the Storey County brothels for his
special tic: he barked like a dog when he had an orgasm. New prostitutes who hadn’t been informed in advance were known to panic, mistaking Tim’s yaps for a seizure. Those alerted ahead of time usually managed to remain calm. “Even though Tanya warned me about him,” the turn-out later told me, “when he started barking like a schnauzer, I almost died—I thought he was going to bite me.”

Crisis also drew the women together. One day everyone in the parlor heard a panic buzzer go off, an eerie, shrill sound that resounded through the brothel like an air-raid siren. Within moments, a woman could be heard screaming in one of the rooms. Because the women at Mustang took pride in controlling their own parties and didn’t resort to using the buzzers hidden at the base of their beds very often, everyone in the house knew to take this signal seriously. (Allegedly, no woman has ever been seriously hurt at Mustang Ranch.
^*
) Immediately, the bartender and cook—both men—rushed from their stations down Hallway C in the direction of the screams. As was typically the case, a customer had become belligerent when he was too drunk to maintain an erection. To save face, he had decided to blame the prostitute, pinning her down on the bed with one arm and striking her with his one free fist. Luckily, the bartender and cook pulled him off the woman
before he seriously hurt her. Although brothel management sometimes called in the local sheriff in cases such as this one, they simply threw out this customer—literally—into the parking lot outside Mustang’s gates, and ordered him never to return. Back inside, women clustered around the woman who had been assaulted to comfort her. A few prostitutes even interrupted their parties, leaving customers alone back in their rooms, to console their colleague. All the women could identify with the distress of being victimized by a customer, and no one held back any empathy.

The women also came together in times of celebration. Tiffany’s baby shower was a case in point. When she got pregnant by her boyfriend, this Mustang prostitute of eight years decided to keep working to save cash until she began showing at about six months. When she finally “came off the floor,” management offered Tiffany a job as day cashier so she wouldn’t fall too behind in her bills. Before she quit this job, just before her delivery, the other prostitutes threw her a surprise baby shower.

The women decorated the ceiling and walls of Mustang #1’s kitchen with white balloons and blue, pink, yellow, and green streamers. Sarah, the day bartender, baked a flat chocolate cake and decorated it with vanilla frosting and a candied carousel. The women and staff had all chipped in to buy Tiffany a slew of gifts, from a bassinet and stroller to a playpen and hamper, each brimming over with still more presents, all gift-wrapped in paper decorated with pastel storks and teddy bears. They must have spent close to $1,000. When Tiffany was led into the room, it was apparent from her
stunned expression, trembling lips, and tearing eyes, that she was deeply moved by her colleagues’ generosity.

We nibbled on cake and watched as Tiffany opened her gifts while new customers were forced to wait in the bar. We oohed and ahhed as she unwrapped baby booties, bibs, blankets, and even a couple of handmade afghans crocheted by house elders like Linda and Tanya. When Tiffany came upon a pair of infant swim shorts in leopard-print Lycra, one of the women kidded, “For your hooker child.” The room broke into gales of laughter.

The event that gave off the greatest feeling of kinship among the women was Tanya and Linda’s joint birthday party, the year they turned forty-two and forty-one, respectively. The party had become a brothel tradition in the more than ten years that both women had worked at Mustang. Recently they had begun calling it the old-timers’ party. There were days of planning and prep work, with women sneaking in bottles of liquor past those floor maids and members of management who didn’t approve.

The party began on a Saturday night around eight o’clock, back in a free bedroom. Only Tanya and Linda’s small clique and a few other women were initially included, but the festivities opened up about an hour later, when the partiers came running into the parlor in the midst of a heated Silly String and water balloon fight. The rest of us looked on in astonishment to see the house elders acting so carefree and youthful, uncharacteristically indifferent to the customers and business at hand.

The rest of us were then invited down for “purple hooters,” concocted of vodka, sweet-and-sour (or lime), and
Chambord raspberry liqueur. Tanya made a toast to all the women over forty years old still working in the business. Then, in an effort to inspire, she added that the younger girls could also work to that age if they so desired. Others followed with more toasts, many acknowledging each other as “real hos”—prostitutes who knew trade secrets for satisfying any man—and for being good businesswomen who maintained their senses of humor and had the guts to wear big wigs.

As the women got tipsier, they grew more sentimental and began reminiscing. “Remember the time when there was that explosion across the highway and they evacuated the whole valley? Joe and David [Burgess, owner of the Old Bridge Ranch] put us all up in the Hilton.” Others jumped in. “News of our coming spread like wildfire. People playing the slot machines and blackjack just gawked when over fifty of us girls walked through that casino. Like, Oh my God, look at all the Mustang prostitutes!” And, “Boy did we have a party that night. Our attitude was, We got a day off!”

At one point, someone noticed that Dinah hadn’t come down to join the festivities. I wasn’t surprised, because she didn’t feel very comfortable with Tanya’s clique and also didn’t drink alcohol. “Somebody go get Dinah,” Tanya yelled, chugging down another purple hooter. Dinah was as much a part of Mustang’s sisterhood as anyone else, Tanya went on to explain, and she needed to join the rest of them in celebration. When Dinah finally entered the room and the other working girls broke into applause, an embarrassed but pleased expression crept over her face. To be a good sport, she even offered up a toast and drank a purple hooter.

Suddenly, Mercedes, who had been busy with a customer and missed much of the party, barged into the room, dragging behind her a scrawny-looking man half her height wearing lopsided glasses and wrapped in a sheet, toga-style. “It’s his birthday today too,” Mercedes proclaimed. She began singing “Happy Birthday” in her high-pitched Michael Jackson voice, then all of a sudden she yanked off the man’s toga to reveal his naked body, erect penis, and sweat-beaded chest. The room roared with laughter. Amid the hoots and catcalls, someone yelled out an offer of $50 for a fuck. The poor man blushed at all the attention and the women cheered him on for his good sportsmanship. The party went on (without Mercedes’s customer) into the early hours of the next day. Although not much business got done, the women viewed the evening as a total success.

Theirs was a strange circumstance—to be competing fiercely with one another while also sharing a deep sense of solidarity. Brittany put it succinctly: “I love these women here, even my enemies. Even if we don’t like each other, we’re still on the same team. We’ll protect each other, because we’re all working girls.”

In truth, few outsiders—family members or otherwise—could truly identify with the prostitutes or offer them support. Despite their legal status in Nevada, many women returned to homes in different states where prostitution was still criminalized. Given the social stigma of prostitution, these women kept their work secret from neighbors and square friends, making it difficult to establish honest relationships in their home communities. Most of the prostitutes I spoke with told me they
had decided long ago not to establish outside friendships, so they wouldn’t have to lie about what they did for a living. In fact, I was learning that even in Nevada, where brothels were historic, legal institutions, licensed prostitutes still faced considerable condemnation.

7 .. LEGALIZED, NOT LEGITIMIZED

O
ne summer night, George Flint and his wife, Bette, invited me to their home to celebrate their granddaughter Lisa’s fifteenth birthday. I had come to feel close to the Flints, who seemed to appreciate my sincere, nonjudgmental curiosity. George was thrilled to have someone as interested in the brothels as he, and Bette was glad that her husband had someone willing to listen. I had been flattered to be included in this family event, at which I would finally get to meet Bette’s daughter, Marlene. I had already become acquainted with Lisa, Marlene’s daughter, and I was eager to meet as many of the family as I could.

The night started off badly. Marlene was clearly in a foul mood, and George told me later that she was furious at him
for bringing Lisa along when he picked me up at Mustang Ranch. Lisa had seen Mustang Ranch only once before, as a small child, when George had pointed it out from the highway. Marlene had always tried to shield her child from the brothels and downplayed the fact that Lisa’s grandfather ran the state’s brothel association. Now that Lisa was a teenager, and inevitably beginning to pull away from home, I imagined Marlene’s anxiety mounting. If anything, Marlene’s overzealousness could have the opposite effect, I feared; many a rebellious teenager finds a parent’s worst fears tempting if not irresistible.

Conversation during dinner was light, dominated by George’s gossip about the “business” at Mustang Ranch. Throughout the evening, I sensed Marlene’s eyes creeping over my face. There was something accusatory about her gaze that made me increasingly uneasy. I knew that Marlene had never in her life consented to visit a brothel with her stepfather, and I imagined that she thought I had been tainted by my involvement. By her standards, maybe I had.

I was interested to know more about her attitude, so after dinner I asked her and her brother, Dean, to share some of their thoughts about the brothels, as family members of an industry bigwig and as local citizens. Dean and Marlene had very different opinions, and as we got into it, Marlene grew visibly more uncomfortable. She rolled her eyes almost continuously as Dean, now forty years old, described the thrill and excitement he had felt as a young man growing up in the only state in the Union with the “guts” to legalize prostitution.