Brothel

by Alexa Albert

  The two began making wedding plans. Meanwhile, Alice continued to prostitute, hoping to pull herself out of her financial crisis. Bruce came out every night after work. Now friendly with Mustang’s staff, he sat at the bar while Alice saw johns. As long as she stayed in the brothel and took up space, the house expected Alice to continue earning money, and Bruce continued having to pay to go back to her room if he wanted time alone with her. Bruce compared the situation to conjugal visits in prison. He admitted feeling uncomfortable watching other men take his future bride back to the bedroom. But it was only a matter of weeks before Alice finally gave up her job, telling me she could no longer have sex with other men knowing Bruce was outside waiting.

  I stayed in touch with Alice. For several years, she and Bruce remained together. But then, as Linda and others had predicted, in the middle of a heated argument the past resurfaced: despite Bruce’s original good intentions, he reminded Alice where he had found her. Several weeks later, the couple broke up. Alice managed to defy Linda’s stereotype and never returned to her brothel career. She quickly married another man who knew nothing about her past. “Our hobbies include tennis, golf, and cocktail hours,” she wrote to me of her new life in one holiday letter. It sounded as if her new husband would have had an aneurysm had he known about her brief career.

  Few women working at Mustang were willing to admit falling for customers. Over time, as they got to know me, more did begin to confess—but in strict confidence. One night, Brittany revealed that Jon, her husband, was a former trick. Like Linda, Brittany had been trained by her pimp not to trust her tricks. “I learned early on not to cross that professional boundary,” she said. “It’s like violating the doctor-patient line.” But when she met Jon, she fell in love in spite of herself and everything she had learned.

  Three and a half years earlier, Jon had paid his first visit to the Reno brothels. He was with a group of friends. “I fell in love when I turned around and saw her the first time,” he said. “I didn’t want her sexually or anything. I just felt a warm attraction to her.” Brittany admitted she had felt something similar and found herself surprisingly excited when Jon and his friends decided to take her and a few other working girls on an outdate ($1,000 per woman). Jon said he and his friends proposed this just so Jon and Brittany could be together outside the brothel.

  In town, they went dancing and gambling in the casinos before heading to the hotel bedrooms. Although Brittany and Jon fooled around, Jon couldn’t have intercourse. “I didn’t want vaginal sex because I knew I felt something for her. I didn’t know what at the time. I just wanted to talk to her.” At the end of the night, Brittany shocked herself when she gave him a peck on the lips, something she had never before done with a customer. “It just seemed so natural,” she recalled. “Like we already knew each other.”

  After silencing the voices of doubt in her head, Brittany decided to take the initiative and call Jon in his Reno hotel before he drove back home to Santa Rosa. “I knew if he ever called me at the Ranch, he would become fixed as a trick in my mind. I had to call him to establish a connection outside the brothel.” Because of Jon’s fear that Brittany was simply out to develop business on the side, she had to tell him directly that she had no interest in a professional relationship.

  Slowly, the couple began dating long distance, with frequent telephone calls and trips back and forth between Reno and Santa Rosa. Although both had their doubts about pursuing the relationship, Brittany was the one to become insecure, to lose all the sexual confidence she had gained as a prostitute. “I didn’t know how to handle the sex part. All of a sudden I’m totally naïve, like a teenager who doesn’t know how to have sex.” It was Jon who took the lead and gently guided the couple’s physical relationship.

  Six months later, Brittany and Jon moved in. They lived together for a year and a half before deciding to marry. Even after three years of marriage, Brittany remained cautious, anticipating the day Jon might become like all the other horror-story tricks and tell her she was nothing but a whore. Meanwhile, Jon feared that Brittany might fall in love with another customer.

  I understood why Brittany kept this secret from her peers, especially after seeing how judgmental Linda and the others could be. But I would realize later that the women’s harshness about dating tricks only hinted at how catty and vicious the women could really be.

  6 .. SISTERHOOD

  Around noon one day a new woman named Heather approached me while I was eating lunch in the kitchen at Mustang #1. At first, she pretended to be making casual conversation, but she was clearly unnerved. She asked how my day was going, and before I could answer, she said, “I’ve sure had one hell of a morning.”

  She sniffed and winced. “I was taking a shower. I reached for my shampoo. It had a strange odor, it smelled like perfume mixed with rotten eggs. Fumes filled up my nose and the back of my throat. The shower steamed up, and I felt almost claustrophobic. Then my scalp began to tingle, then burn. That’s when I knew. Someone had put Nair in my shampoo.”

  Heather had been a victim of terrorism brothel-style, an attempt by colleagues to intimidate her, perhaps even chase her out, as they did frequently to new girls who threatened their business.

  As she spoke, her body language—stooped shoulders, nervous hands, pain-lined face—spoke of her need for reassurance. Like other new arrivals at Mustang Ranch, she had no allies in place to protect or defend her. I wondered if she realized how little influence I, an outsider, had.

  Heather and I had gotten acquainted a week earlier, as we found ourselves headed through the brothel gate together for a jog one morning. We were almost the only women who left the compound to exercise—the brothel strongly discouraged it and ordered us to stay on Mustang property—and we agreed to become running mates. During our runs, we talked, and I came to know her well.

  This was Heather’s first trip to one of Nevada’s legal brothels. For more than four years, she had worked full-time in illegal brothels in Houston’s business district, until a recent crackdown by the city’s vice squad forced her to temporarily relocate out of state. Previous professional success had made her quite confident. “I’m big-time in Houston. I make easy money,” she told me on one run. “I didn’t think it would be like that here too, but it is.” She snickered.

  Still, the move to Reno had been daunting. “I was really scared when I came to Mustang,” she said. “I knew what it would be like when I got here. I knew what the prostitute life was about—competing. You know nobody’s going to like you. You know it’ll be really cold and unfriendly.”

  As Heather had anticipated, her reception at Mustang had been chilly. Her arrival, in May, coincided with an unusual lull in business; sometimes three or four hours passed before a customer rang the doorbell. Meanwhile, Mustang #1 was nearly filled with women, with almost fifty ready to work each day of the typically busy season. With wigs and makeup in place, dressed in tight-fitting bodysuits and dresses, women sprawled on parlor couches, fretted about their financial obligations, and bickered relentlessly. Tension mounted, resentment boiled, hostility permeated the brothel. This was no time for the likes of Heather.

  A chestnut-haired Bridget Fonda look-alike, Heather was a muscularly built woman with a provocative smile that revealed a small gap between her two front teeth. Her work attire alternated between two identical blue and pink skintight polka-dot dresses with teardrop-shaped cutouts to expose her firm midriff. Her looks didn’t go unnoticed; it wasn’t unusual for her to be chosen from lineup five out of six times.

  From the beginning, she had experienced animosity from her colleagues. “The first day I came out to the parlor wearing a little white dress, high heels, and makeup, they said in snotty tones, ‘Oh, you look different.’ I knew what they meant. I’d heard it before. They were thinking, ‘Uh-oh, she’s pretty. She’s going to get picked over us.’ They don’t like me very much. In a way, I guess it’s a compliment. Then, in another way, it kind of gets on my nerves. I’m friendl
y, and I like other people to be friendly to me.” Behind Heather’s almost bratty defensiveness, I sensed true hurt feelings.

  The other women constantly exchanged catty remarks about Heather, usually when she was within earshot. “She just thinks she’s so beautiful.” “Aren’t you ready to go to bed yet?” “Why don’t you take that dress off?” “Aren’t you tired of fucking yet?” One woman told customers that Heather was a lesbian and hated men.

  Strain between Heather and her colleagues culminated in the Nair incident. “I was pissed, I mean pissed. I went straight to Keri, my bathmate. I was like, ‘Keri, I don’t know if I’m crazy or not.’ I let her smell it. She said, ‘No, girl. That’s something nasty. That’s Nair, bleach, or something.’ I stormed into the parlor with my shampoo bottle in hand. I looked pissed, and some of the girls were like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said, ‘Somebody put fucking Nair in my shampoo.’ ”

  There was no doubt that the attack was aimed at Heather. “My hair products were in my room. We don’t keep our stuff in the bathroom. At first, everybody wanted to accuse Keri, but she’s like me. When she first came here years ago, somebody poked holes in her condoms. She warned me to lock up my condoms. But I didn’t think about my shampoo. I just left it out.”

  Keri urged Heather to complain to the management. Despite their usual hands-off policy regarding feuding women, the managers were furious that the other women would threaten a worker who was making considerable money for the house when business was in such a slump. The visiting beautician, who happened to be at the brothel for her weekly house call, was paid to wash and condition Heather’s hair using salon products and special pH treatments. Because all of Heather’s shampoos and conditioners had been tampered with, she was given cash compensation. House rules required women to keep the doors to their rooms unlocked, but Heather was given a key and told to lock hers.

  News of the attack spread quickly, the story being embellished as it was told and retold. Some women claimed the shampoo had been replaced with acid. Several believed that an older prostitute must have committed the act, because Nair was an ancient trick to run a prostitute out of a brothel. But Heather suspected a younger woman, someone directly losing business to her: “I’m not stealing the older girls’ money. It’s the other young brunettes whose business I’m hurting.”

  Long before Heather’s Nair fiasco, I had wondered how the women really felt about one another. Competition was the name of the game at Mustang Ranch. During their twelve-hour shifts, women competed directly with each other. Unlike street prostitutes, they couldn’t roam to solicit business on their own. Confined to the brothel, they had to wait for the doorbell to ring. By the time a client stepped into the parlor, women were lined up shoulder to shoulder to be scrutinized. If the client opted to go to the bar, the race was on to see who could hustle him into a room.

  Not being picked could result in hurt feelings. Women frequently internalized rejection, blaming themselves for gaining weight, growing old, needing a boob job, or losing their ambition. And sometimes, other women like Heather were made to blame.

  So it was no surprise that feuds and catfights were common. I had already seen numerous scuffles break out over borrowed clothing that was returned damaged, and loaned money that was never repaid. Until the Nair incident, though, I hadn’t realized how deep the undercurrent of competition ran and how vindictive the women could be.

  Irene, Mustang #2’s manager, told me she warned all new women about the house pecking order. “It’s hard when a girl first comes into a brothel. The girls who are already there are all of a sudden senior and the new girl becomes their target. If she does well, the ones who’ve been here awhile who aren’t making any money, and are instead sitting back on the couches smoking cigarettes, get pissed at her. It’s totally misdirected anger; their anger should be at themselves, at their own lack of interest and blasé attitude about the job. But the new girls who are enthusiastic and come in with a fresh attitude are always going to make more money simply because they’re going to work harder.”

  Irene believed that management needed to intervene more frequently and more effectively. “It’s about who’s in control of the house. If you let all this stuff happen, you’re going to keep your five or six clique-y girls, and they’re going to chase everybody else out. You can’t let that happen. You have to be aware that it’s going on and nip it in the bud. You also have to talk to the new girls and tell them there’s a possibility they’re going to piss some people off, but that they’re here to make money and need to keep their goals and objectives in mind.”

  Intimidation was nothing new to the brothels. Stories abounded about the old days, when women poured bleach on other women’s clothing or threw blanket parties, in which a sleeping woman was covered in a blanket so she couldn’t see who was beating her. More frequently, cattiness manifested itself in verbal attacks, name-calling (e.g., “slut”), bad-mouthing, physical fights, snitching, and ostracism. It wasn’t unusual for brothel newcomers to quit under the pressure. Those who persevered earned their colleagues’ grudging respect.

  One day not long after the Nair shampoo incident, I wandered into the bar at Mustang #1 and caught several of the older women perched on bar stools, engrossed in a discussion about Heather, who had finally headed back to Houston for a weeklong vacation. “Not only was she cocky,” said one of the women, “but did you see the way she tried to seduce the men in lineup?” According to these women, Heather had been targeted not because of jealousy over her popularity with customers but because she had been “dirty” hustling, drawing attention to herself at the expense of the other women. The other prostitutes considered dirty hustling the lowest of lows, a brothel crime. It merited serious retaliation, especially if committed during lineup, when women were expected to stand and speak their names demurely in accordance with long-established house rules. Heather was accused of batting her long lashes and mouthing her name seductively.

  Over the course of my stay at Mustang, I often saw women overpromoting themselves or spoiling their co-workers’ prospects with customers. How many times had I seen women call undue attention to themselves by rushing dramatically into lineup late or “accidentally” flashing their breasts and buttocks in the bar? A few women even rubbed men’s crotches through their pants or whispered lewdly to them on the couches. Some women monopolized clients who showed no interest in them, simply to prevent their colleagues from snagging them. Still others intruded upon their peers while they were in the middle of a hustle.

  It wasn’t just that dirty hustling was an unethical, aggressive tactic, said many of the women. Dirty hustling could hurt everyone’s business by offending and repelling customers. Equally reprehensible were those women who engaged in prohibited sex acts (e.g., kissing, anal sex, not using a condom) in order to snare a customer. When women broke these rules—which had been established primarily out of deference to the women’s wishes—men stopped believing that they were ever in effect, and that undermined other prostitutes’ ability to uphold them.

  In an attempt to prevent dirty hustling, brothel management paired up all new working girls with more experienced prostitutes who were expected to teach newcomers the house’s rules of etiquette, along with how to negotiate, what prices to charge, and how to examine a customer’s genitals for disease. Almost half of Mustang’s working girls were considered experienced, having worked as brothel prostitutes for at least three years, and 14 percent of the women were decade-long veterans. Unfortunately, not all of them liked training new prostitutes, claiming their time and effort were wasted on un-appreciative amateurs. “Nine times out of ten, you’re not going to find anyone who’ll use or care about your advice,” said Tanya, a thirteen-year Mustang vet. “I don’t mind helping a girl with a good head on her shoulders, who doesn’t have a problem going in and making sure the man’s happy. But I resent being asked to leave the floor to go back to a new girl’s room to supervise her and potentially miss a lineup if the girl’s only
going to ignore me.”

  Tanya was a forty-one-year-old brunette with a fashionable shag haircut whose petite but sturdy frame commanded attention. And so did her abrupt remarks. She’d been the one on my first visit to brusquely tell me she didn’t break condoms. Tanya was tough and at times could sound like a sailor with her crude expletives. A house elder, with a wealth of experience and knowledge about Mustang Ranch, she kept close company with another Mustang veteran, Linda, the prostitute who had expressed considerable disdain for any colleague who enjoyed sex with customers. They hung together in a small clique with two other women of about the same age and seniority. Whether crocheting afghans in the parlor during shift or dining together in the kitchen promptly at six-thirty every night, these women stuck together. They shared a strong sense of common history, and could spend hours chain-smoking and reminiscing about the old days working for Joe and Sally Conforte.

  Their eyes sparkled with nostalgia as they described the dress code Sally enforced through the 1980s, which required women to wear long evening gowns covered with rhinestones and sequins and matching gold or silver heels. “And Sally hated black,” recalled Linda. “It reminded her of a funeral. Only one girl per shift could wear black.” Tanya and Linda laughed as they retold the story of the time Sally came home unexpectedly early from vacation and found a lineup full of black dresses. After chastising the floor maid and women in the middle of the parlor for a good ten minutes, she ordered all the women to strip down and do their lineups for the rest of the night in the nude. Always terrified of Sally, the women complied. “Let this be a lesson to you hos,” Sally snapped. “You don’t come out here in black.”