Brothel

by Alexa Albert

  Brittany had an entirely different reaction. When she learned that I had watched one of Baby’s parties, she seemed crestfallen. I saw in her face hurt and disappointment. “I would’ve let you watch one of my parties,” she said. Over the last several weeks, I had been aware of a strange competitive tension developing between her and Baby for my attention.

  Brittany tried to hide her competitive feelings behind criticism: “Baby and Farrah should have paid you something. You should have made some money, because the customer liked you being there. They could have negotiated for more.” Jack had paid $500, the women splitting their cut 50–50. I told her that I wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting money and that Baby had done me a favor. She had shown me what happened in the bedroom during paid sex so I could better understand the work of a prostitute.

  But Brittany wouldn’t hear it. If Baby had really wanted me to appreciate her work, Brittany argued, then she wouldn’t have had me watch a dominance party. Dominance was easy for prostitutes, she said. It was a release to get to beat a customer and be verbally cruel, all for pay. Far harder, she said, was faking intimacy, acting lustful and passionate with every customer.

  Brittany didn’t drop the subject. The next weekend, when Norman, one of her regular customers, came in, she made a point of introducing him to me. After a brief exchange, I stood up to leave them in privacy; Norman said he hadn’t seen Brittany for several weeks. But Brittany asked me to stay, saying that Norman didn’t mind. Her eyes fixed on mine with steely insistence. The next thing I knew, she was ordering drinks for us both, compliments of Norman.

  Norman was a heavyset man in his mid-fifties with Coke-bottle glasses. Whenever he spoke, his eyelids fluttered closed. He spoke very slowly and haltingly, as if constantly struggling for the right words. He looked like a big sheepdog, with a sheep’s obedient, passive nature. Brittany later told me that she had been seeing Norman for over a year, since soon after her move to Mustang Ranch from neighboring Old Bridge Ranch, where she had worked for several years. Devastated by the retirement of the prostitute he previously frequented, Norman had quickly become one of Brittany’s regulars, visiting her nearly every month. Never married and still living at home with his mother, he had seen a succession of brothel prostitutes since his first visit to Nevada’s brothels many years earlier with his father, since deceased.

  After we had chatted at the bar for about thirty minutes, Norman became noticeably restless and obviously ready to go to Brittany’s room. She led him away. In about five minutes, she returned in a silk bathrobe, alone, to book Norman’s money with the cashier. On the way back to her room, she called me over to the hallway leading down to her bedroom. She had asked Norman if I could watch them “make love,” she told me, and, ever accommodating, he had agreed.

  I was taken aback. This awkward, bumbling man was willing to let me watch him have sex? I was flabbergasted, and quite ambivalent. My experience with Baby and the architect had been so intense, I wasn’t at all sure I was up to watching again. But if I really wanted to understand this place, how could I turn down the opportunity? Blanche was working as floor maid that night instead of Shelley, and I had little fear of getting caught. I gave Brittany a smile of assent and followed her down the hallway.

  Before we arrived at her room, Brittany told me that Norman knew to tip me and that I should accept. When I tried to explain that I didn’t want his money, she pooh-poohed me.

  As she opened the door, I saw Norman lying naked on the bed like a beached whale. With his glasses off, he looked disoriented and confused. I couldn’t fathom how Brittany could ever pretend to be attracted to this man. She was right: this had to be the hardest job of all. Brittany instructed me to make myself comfortable on a nearby chair, where Norman’s royal blue golf shirt and matching polyester pants lay neatly folded. After dimming the overhead lights to a warm glow, she removed her robe while Norman gazed spellbound at her fleshy body. Brittany slinked over to where Norman lay supine, the top of his head grazing the headboard. She had already checked and washed his genitals, and she only had to put on the condom.

  I watched as Brittany put a condom in her mouth before kneeling down on the bed to place it on the head of Norman’s semi-erect penis. She began sucking slowly, concentrating on rolling down the rubber with her mouth, careful not to tear it with her teeth. Brittany could take Norman’s entire penis in her mouth, and this enabled her to push the rim of the condom down to the base with her lips. Simultaneously, her left hand stroked and gently manipulated his engorged testes to further arouse him. “Oh, Norman, you are so big, so beautiful,” she murmured intermittently.

  In one awkward moment, Brittany stopped sucking and slipped out of her role to offer me a pointer on condoms. “One of the fallacies is that you shouldn’t put a condom on when the penis isn’t hard. But we do that all the time without a problem. You just have to remember to hold on to it until the penis gets more erect,” she instructed with the conscientiousness of my junior high English teacher. I felt self-conscious and terribly out of place, afraid my presence was distracting her from her work, ruining the experience for Norman, and putting her job in jeopardy. But when I glanced over at Norman, who lay silent and immobile, defenseless and delirious under her touch, I realized he hadn’t even noticed the pause.

  Brittany continued to give Norman oral sex for several more minutes before lifting her head. Then, moving together synchronously like longtime dance partners, the twosome changed positions in silence, with Brittany ending up on her back and Norman prepared to enter her. At this point, Brittany caught my eye and told me to move closer. Obediently I pulled my chair alongside the bed, although I had the distinct sensation of being too close, as if in the first row of a movie theater. I watched as Brittany wrapped her legs around Norman’s broad body to draw him deeper as he thrust his pelvis against her. His grunts encouraged her to whisper provocatively, “Oh, Norman. You make me so wet. You’re such a man.” She knew exactly what he needed to feel virile. She glanced over at me once or twice to make sure I was watching.

  Brittany turned her attention back to Norman and urged him on with sweet talk in between nibbles on his ear. He thrust for about five minutes, then rolled off her with a sigh, a look of defeat darkening his face. Brittany patted him consolingly on his chest. “Gee, you haven’t been in to see me for some time. Don’t worry, you’ll come.” Norman frequently had trouble. I said I hoped it wasn’t my intrusive presence that had made orgasm difficult for him, to which Brittany responded emphatically, “It wasn’t you. He just has trouble sometimes. He gets too excited—don’t you, Norman?” The backup plan for Norman was to take him to the Jacuzzi to relax him a bit before returning to try again. The second attempt usually resulted in success.

  Brittany used this break to go to the bathroom, leaving me alone, face-to-face, with her naked customer. I asked if he was sure he didn’t mind my being there. I suspected that he would never admit it in front of Brittany. “Whatever Brittany wants,” said Norman. “It seemed really important to her to let you watch, so I said it was okay. I only want to make her happy. My only reason for coming here is to give Brittany pleasure.” To give Brittany pleasure? I kept a straight face, but I did wonder how a brothel customer could ever allow himself to think that that was what this was all about.

  At this point, Norman stood up and reached for his pants. “I’d like to tip you,” he said. Brittany had put him up to this. For the briefest of seconds, I thought to myself how easy it would be to take this gullible man’s money. Like the women said, A trick is to be tricked. But I just couldn’t bring myself to accept. It felt too exploitative, especially in light of the fact this man was smitten with Brittany and willing to do almost anything she asked. What would it have said about me to take advantage of his vulnerability? I thanked him for the offer but told him not to worry about it. Seeming relieved, he quickly slid his wallet back into his pants pocket.

  As soon as Brittany emerged from the toilet, I thanked them both and quickl
y excused myself. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I walked back to the parlor. I’d felt more uncomfortable watching Brittany than I had watching Baby. Brittany’s time with Norman felt profoundly more intimate than Baby’s party with the architect, in which I had felt like an onlooker at a circus sideshow. With Norman and Brittany I was an intruder.

  As soon as Norman left, Brittany tracked me down to make sure he had paid me. At first I lied, so as not to upset her. Then she asked me how much—he had told her $40—and I realized I was just going to get caught. She didn’t really think I had accepted Norman’s money. I admitted that while he had offered a tip, I hadn’t accepted it. I asked her not to be angry with Norman; he was only trying to make her happy.

  In fact, she was furious with me. It was weak and foolish of me to want to protect Norman. Didn’t I understand that I was working against her, not with her, when I refused his money? Taking his money wasn’t exploitative but rather fair trade, she said, a service in kind, an arrangement established long ago between the first prostitute and her customer. To turn down Norman’s money was paramount to telling him that payment wasn’t always necessary. Prostitution worked solely on the assumption that men paid for a woman’s services—her time, personal attention, or sexual prowess—all of which were valuable. A customer’s payment acknowledged the pains the prostitute took to meet his needs. Taking money from Norman was important, Brittany explained, softening some now, so he wouldn’t forget he was just a customer.

  I started to understand her point. While a good prostitute was able to get a man to forget he was a paying customer during sex, afterward he needed to remember it was merely a business exchange and not mistake it for a real relationship. But sometimes the women were too good at what they did, and the men came to believe in the fantasies they were paying for—like Norman, who started to believe in Brittany’s illusion of intimacy and to feel that he was special. Whenever this happened—whenever a man forgot he was a customer—the prostitute’s relationship with him grew complicated.

  *Before the mandatory-condom law, a number of customers requested a variation on kitty licking. “Load-eaters” were men who liked to perform cunnilingus on a prostitute immediately after another client had ejaculated into her vagina. Today, men who get off on drinking other men’s semen must settle for buying used condoms, $50–$100 apiece, dug out of wastebaskets.

  5 .. ENTANGLEMENTS

  One day Baby showed me a letter written on four pages of standard 8½-×-11-inch paper carefully torn along the perforated edge of a notebook. It was from one of her regulars, who, upon reflection at the time of his forty-first birthday, wanted to thank Baby for all she had done. In it, he said: “With you for my sweet and special friend, I don’t feel like I’m alone in this world, it makes me feel wonderful and alive that you are the beautiful lady in my life.” He closed the letter pledging to serve her every wish.

  It was a Sunday morning postshift, and Baby had invited me down into her room. The letter was the latest in a string she had received from Philip, a local man who had been coming to Mustang Ranch to see her for seven years.

  Baby was used to having admirers, customers who showered her with cards and gifts ranging from flowers and perfume to jewelry and lingerie. These love tokens either arrived by mail or were brought in person whenever her regulars came to town. But Philip was probably Baby’s most devoted customer. True to his word, he catered to her every whim; it wasn’t unusual for him to run several errands a week for her, such as taking her compact disc player in for repair, or buying a card for her to send to her mom on Mother’s Day.

  One weekend morning, Philip, a slight man with a dark, thick mustache, showed up at Mustang #1 at nine A.M. to help Roberto, the Mustang handyman, sand and stain pieces of redwood to use as bedposts for Baby’s room. Philip had bought the wood at a lumber store. Because of her seniority, Baby didn’t have to pack up her room when she left the brothel on vacation but was allowed to keep it intact, with the understanding that another woman would probably be assigned there temporarily in her absence. This privilege brought with it the freedom to personalize her room any way she wanted. When Baby expressed a desire to redecorate, Philip offered to foot the bill.

  According to Baby, Philip epitomized the man who came out to the brothels looking for someone to fall in love with. He had met Baby at a particularly vulnerable time in his life. An alcoholic, he had hit rock bottom after his second drunk-driving charge, and he had shown up at Mustang Ranch in despair, desperate for a friend. For a fee of $300, Baby became the person he could, in his words, “reach out and grasp onto.” That first night, he promised her he would quit drinking. Indeed, he had maintained his sobriety since, and he credited Baby with his transformation. “She brings out the best in me,” Philip would later tell me. “If it hadn’t been for Baby, I would have eventually been in prison or died. That’s why I like doing things for her, like bringing her gifts and doing her favors.”

  Baby wasn’t surprised at Philip’s infatuation. “We prostitutes are paid to be the perfect partners. We’re agreeable to whatever the customer says or feels about life. Because we’re so understanding and supportive, sometimes the clients fall in love with us.” What Baby described didn’t sound that different from a patient finding unconditional acceptance from a therapist (also for a handsome fee) and mistaking their feelings of appreciation for feelings of love. Real relationships weren’t nearly as easy and demanded more compromises. It was no wonder that everyone else in Philip’s life disappointed him. In no time, Philip became one of Baby’s regulars.

  Most Mustang prostitutes had a collection of regulars who visited them habitually and exclusively. Regular customers were the bread and butter of the business, enabling the women to get through the slow seasons when tourism tapered off. Baby was particularly talented at fostering regulars. Even the selection of her working name had been intentional. “I picked it so I would always be in their heads,” she said. “When they’re at home making love to their wives or girlfriends and say, ‘Ooh, Baby!’ they have to think of me at the same time.” Her results spoke for themselves. Baby serviced between seventy and eighty customers per week and she generated $300,000 worth of revenue for the brothel for seven months of work; her take of it was close to $150,000.

  But regulars were as varied in their fantasies as the rest of the brothel clientele. Baby knew that in order to sustain regular customers like Philip—men who wanted intimacy and the feeling of being special—she had to give them the illusion of mutuality. To that end, she gave Philip her pager number and her supposed real name and details about her outside life, to make it seem as if she had begun letting down her guard. According to Baby, the effect on Philip had been striking. Very quickly, he began visiting every week rather than just a few times a month. Believing Baby’s increased openness meant he was more than simply a customer, Philip started acting bolder in the bedroom and more confident in the parlor. Baby had taken pride in his development.

  More recently, however, things had become difficult. Philip was coming out to Mustang ever more often, several times a week. He showed up promptly at nine P.M. on Friday and Saturday nights in the hopes of being Baby’s first customer of the evening. At first, Baby had found this level of devotion endearing, a flattering acknowledgment of the quality of her work. Over time, however, she found herself growing annoyed. “I don’t want him to be my first party every weekend,” she said. “I get excited dressing up and thinking about hitting the floor, and then there he is. It’s a drag to start a shift with Philip.”

  Philip had no idea of the annoyance he was causing Baby. He thought he was her salvation each night. Baby sent over other women to hustle Philip in the hope that he might lose his intense interest in her, but he refused them, announcing loudly that he wouldn’t dream of hurting Baby’s feelings by being with anyone else.

  I first laid eyes on Philip one night as Baby walked him back to the parlor after his usual thirty minutes of cuddling and a half and half. I noticed th
at he loitered around the bar for several hours, trying to catch glimpses of Baby between customers. He followed her every move intently, once scowling when Baby flirtatiously raked her long, manicured fingernails across another man’s chest. When Baby spotted him staring, she didn’t even bother to act polite. No, she didn’t want a drink, she said coldly, and yes, she was still busy working. Despite raising her voice and sharpening her tone a number of times, Baby couldn’t shake him. Philip didn’t leave the brothel until almost four A.M.

  Recently, Philip had decided that he wanted to be Baby’s white knight and take her away from the brothel life. He promised he would take care of her financially. Baby rejected his offers brusquely. He had become irritating, and she put too high a premium on her freedom. “I feel like I’m choking,” she told me later. Besides, she figured she earned more money working at Mustang than she could ever get out of Philip. But he was nothing if not persistent; I saw him waiting on Baby whenever I visited Mustang.

  Sugar daddies—smitten men who offered women financial help if they would quit the business—were usually highly sought-after commodities. Women spent countless hours recounting tales of the various spoils they had obtained from their sugar daddies. One brothel worker told a wealthy Arizona rancher she would need $14,000 for her son to get a much needed ear operation and $100,000 to open her own business. In exchange, it was understood—either explicitly or implicitly—that the prostitute would become the man’s girlfriend. For the woman, such an arrangement was merely business, not significantly different from prostituting in a brothel except that she had only one customer to deal with. The woman would keep secret her true feelings, as she would the existence of a boyfriend or husband.