WORKING IN A LEGAL BROTHEL

by The Working Girl

I have been a sex worker for many years, and several years ago I decided I wanted to experience working in the only place in the country where prostitution is legal - Nevada. Now this was before the World Wide Web became an everyday part of my life, so I had very little information to go on. I did manage to track down a few women who had worked there, though, and I got a copy of Exotic magazine, distributed here in Seattle, that had some ads in it for Nevada brothels. I started calling them asking about working.

At several of the places that I called, people were rude or brusque with me on the phone as I tried to get information - some of them said things like "Well, just come down here, and you'll see!" Finally, though, I found a place near Reno, called the SageBrush Red-light Ranch, where I got to talk with a woman who was very helpful and sweet.

She explained that when you come to work in a Nevada brothel, you live in the brothel the entire time you are working - each girl has her own room, and at the SageBrush, her own bathroom, and that is where you do your work and where you sleep, and keep your clothes and things. Most brothels have a minimum three week stay, during which time one does not leave the brothel at all - The SageBrush has only a one week minimum stay, which appealed to me. The brothel provided you with a place to stay, and the opportunity to get clients, and for that they take 50% of your money. The SageBrush also provided all meals, something not every brothel does - some charge extra for food. One must also get a medical exam and an HIV test to ensure that you have no sexually transmitted diseases, which is done in Reno and costs about 85 dollars. This medical test is done on all working girls every seven days, by law. Then you go to the Sheriffs office to get a license, which costs 50 dollars and is good for a year. They will run a background check on you to see if you have any outstanding warrants, and there are some previous criminal convictions that would bar you from getting a license, so if you have legal problems in your back ground, call the brothel and ask them specifically about it.

All this must be done before you begin work, so if you are coming from out of town, its important to schedule it as efficiently as possible. When I went down, I booked a flight arriving in Reno at noon, took a cab directly to the doctor's office, and from there took a cab to the brothel - they will put you up while you are getting your legal/medical stuff done. The medical test takes until the next morning to clear, so in the morning when I was woken up, my test had come back, so I was then driven by a brothel employee to the sheriff's office to get a license. That took about half an hour, so I was ready to start work the afternoon of my second day in Nevada.

The brothel itself is a spiderweb of long corridors of rooms converging on a few central points. The SageBrush has two sections, referred to as Side One and Side Two. The reason for the division is so that there is not one parlor (brothel term - the bar/social area where customers enter and are greeted) with twenty to thirty women in it. Rather, there are two smaller separate groups - its considered less overwhelming for the clients and easier for management and worker as well.

When you arrive you will be assigned your room. It is about the size of a small apartment bedroom, with a bed, obviously, and a combination vanity table and dresser/closet that you lock with a combination lock of your own. The whole area is decorated in a rather bland beige color scheme, but women who work there on a continual basis decorate their rooms to fit their own taste. All you absolutely need is your clothes and toiletries and of course, your safe sex supplies. Its also nice to have a boombox along to play music during your time with your clients.

Some brothel demand that you be available to clients 24 hours a day, for the entire time that you are there - something that sounded very unreasonable to me. The SageBrush women work on 12-hour shifts, say from 1:00 in the afternoon till 3:00 in the morning. When you are off duty, you can sleep, or relax in your room. The also have a big screen TV and an exercise room with weights and Nautilus machines.

While working, most women wear short tight spandex dresses, or hot pants and bra outfits. Its not illegal to wear a thong in the parlor, but I did not see it done very much. So think in terms of a strip club, just slightly more covered up.

The parlor at the SageBrush has a bar along one wall, and two groups of soft velvet couches in the main part of the room. When a customer arrives, a bell sounds, and a brothel employee calls out "Company, ladies!" That is your signal to stop whatever else you are doing, and come to the door area. You will line up in a semicircle, and as the man enters, the brothel employee will greet him and say "Meet our ladies." Everyone will take their turn, saying, "Hi, I'm ______" The employee will then say "Would you like to talk to one of the ladies?" She is inviting him to choose one of the women. Sometimes the man will pick from the lineup, saying "Well, how about you, Chantel?" If he chooses you, you will lead him back to your room, and negotiate with him. More on that in a minute.

More frequently he will shuffle his feet and mumble "Think I'll have a drink first." The women will disperse to whatever they were doing, and the man will go sit at the bar.

Now this man is fair game and any one can approach him. If you want to make money in a brothel, you have to be aggressive! Walk up, smile and say "Hi, how are you? Are you having a nice evening? Where are you from?" Most men are a little uncomfortable and are very happy to have someone come up to them. (Never approach a man while another worker is sitting with him, or talking to him.) They want to have someone explain the ropes to them, and if you are the one who does, they are more likely to "party" (brothel term for have sex with) with you. There is no set amount of time to spend talking with a man before he either parties or passes - its something you just have to intuit. So don't be too impatient, but be aware of your time as a resource.

As you chat with him, he will probably ask you something like "How much for a blowjob and sex?" You cannot negotiate a date in the parlor, so if he wants to know prices, you must take him back to your room to discuss it.

Once in the room, you should describe the various things you might do for what price, mixing in a lot of dirty talk and suggestive postures. Don't make it too clinical - it will turn him off. Think of it like menu descriptions - use lots of adjectives and really pitch it. I will not go into a lot of detail about what I charged for what - if you go to work in a brothel, they will tell you what their suggested prices are. The house minimum at the SageBrush is $100.00 dollars, which means nothing happens for less than that. Most of the parties I had ranged from $100, the bare minimum blowjob, to $500, for about an hour and a half of everything. Sometimes big-ticket parties took place in one of the special rooms, like the hot tub room or the mirror room. I had more expensive dates, but they were the exeption, not the rule. I heard that the brothels near Las Vegas had a lot more big spenders, but that the conditions in those brothels were not worker-friendly. I am an experienced, aggressive sex worker in my late twenties, and I am considered conventionally attractive - i.e. I am slender, with C-cup breasts, and long hair - and I made between 3 and 4 thousand dollars each week I went to the SageBrush. Your mileage may vary. I have only been there in the summer, so I have no idea what its like other times of the year.

If he decides not to party with you, walk him back out to the parlor. Don't take it personally - there are some lookee-loos around, so just go on to the next man. And remember you don't have to do anything or anyone you don't want to do. If someone you think is an asshole wants a date with you, quote him a thousand dollars for half an hour. That will get rid of him. The SageBrush does not make you party with anyone if you don't want to - I have heard that other brothels sometimes insist that a woman see a customer she does not want to see, but that's only hearsay to me.

If he decides he does want to party, get the money from him. At this point, you are supposed to do what is called a dick-check on him. He has to drop his drawers and let you examine his penis for signs of STDs. Now this is hard to do gracefully, but it serves a purpose, because even though you use condoms, things like genital warts and herpes can be transmitted even though a condom is used. The brothel will show you how to do this, and in some cases will send in a more experienced girl to give you a demonstration for your first few times. I never saw anything funny, and I have never had a STD, either. There is a very low incidence of STDs in Nevada brothels.

Once you have done the "DC" on him, he waits in the room while you walk down the hall and book your date with the cashier. You give her the money and it is written down how much money you are making and when you are beginning the date. It is expected that you will only spend a certain amount of time for each amount of money - 15 to 20 minutes for a $100 dollar date, 30 minutes for a $150, and so on. If you are not out of your room in the expected amount of time, the cashier will come and knock on your door. If you have done your best and he cannot climax, you can give him a two minute warning, and after that - well, he has to either give you more money or get dressed and leave. Do not be pressured into doing something you said you wouldn't just to get him off. After all, you already have his money.

If he had fun he may tip you. Now you are supposed to split all money with the house, but I always kept my tips - I figured I earned that on my own merits.

Now, something to bear in mind about brothels - All the worker's rooms, the parlor, everywhere you will be - all these rooms are equipped with listening devices, so that management can keep tabs on what is being said. You will be told that the cashier is listening to your negotiations, so that you don't sell him a $500 dollar date and tell the house it was a $300 dollar date, pocketing the difference. It is also for safety. They say they do not listen to you while you are having sex, and as I rule I think that is true, unless you were suspected of cheating the house, or drug use. But it is safer to assume that someone will hear EVERYTHING you say in a brothel. Say nothing you would not want management to hear.

Working in Nevada has its good points and its bad. You can generate a chunk of money in a fairly short time. If you are not experienced in sex for money, it can seem overwhelming. My advice would be to look at your first trip as an experiment, and if it doesn't feel ok to you, give yourself permission to just leave. If you have any further questions, you can write to me care of Blackstockings, and I will be happy to answer you.