by Alexa Albert
The brothel had provided an income as well as friendship, compassion, trust, and hope for countless women and men. In many ways, Mustang Ranch picked up where society had dropped the ball. It had provided a safe, nonjudgmental, economically sound work environment and a fair way for a community of several dozen women and their families to meet their most basic needs.
Legal brothels are one alternative in dealing with prostitution. However disturbing the idea of commercial sex may be to some of us, it’s naïve to believe that prostitution can ever be eliminated. The demand will be met with supply one way or another, no matter what is legislated. Turning our backs on the women (and men) who do this work may be far more immoral—even criminal—than prostitution itself. Only when we recognize and validate the work of professional prostitutes can we expect them to practice their trade safely and responsibly.
My time at Mustang Ranch proved to me just how complicated human sexuality and everything about it can be, especially how it eludes total understanding. Consensual sex between adults—whether for pay or pro bono—is exactly that, consensual. As such, it’s a personal and private decision. What seems universally to be true about it is our need to supercharge it politically and load it down with the heavy freight of moral issues.
Baby once told me that she wanted to make it known that she and her colleagues were “okay people, too.” Perhaps her point was best made in a phone call we shared not long after Mustang’s closing. “I feel like I’ve made a difference in my clients’ lives. That they can breathe easier each night. I appreciate these guys and I feel they don’t see me as a hooker or prostitute, but see me as a person, as Baby. That makes me feel worthy—not only as a prostitute or working girl but as a human being.”
This was my experience also: seeing the women of Mustang Ranch as human beings. In a business built largely on desire and fantasy, it’s easy to be deceived by our assumptions and, in doing so, overlook the humanity that’s at the core of this complex and timeless profession.
*The ownership had undergone several name changes after Victor Perry acquired the brothel from the IRS in 1990.
†Conforte explained that his close involvement with Mustang Ranch was his legal right as a paid “consultant” to the shareholders of the operating company, A.G.E. This succeeded in keeping the federal government at bay until 1998, a period of almost ten years.
EPILOGUE
Nearly three years after its closure, Mustang Ranch sits vacant and silent. In July 2001, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor of upholding money-laundering and racketeering convictions against brothel parent companies A.G.E. Enterprises, Inc. and A.G.E. Corp., Inc., and former Mustang manager Shirley Colletti. Until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether or not to review the case, the federal government must maintain Mustang’s facilities so that the brothel can reopen for business should the Court overturn the guilty verdicts. In the meantime, Colletti began serving her forty-six-month term in a minimum-security federal prison in Dublin, California, in February 2002, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her petition to remain free on appeal until their decision.
Ironically, Joe Conforte, the focus of the investigation that brought Mustang Ranch to its knees, appears to have gotten off scot-free. Two months after Mustang’s closure, the Brazilian Supreme Court decided in an 8–0 ruling that Conforte couldn’t be extradited, given the narrow terms of the extradition treaty between the United States and Brazil, which doesn’t cover bankruptcy fraud. Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Damm, one of the case’s chief prosecutors, more or less admits defeat and concedes the federal government may never get their day in court with Conforte. Meanwhile, Conforte continues to grumble from abroad that if he can’t run a brothel in Storey County, no one else should either.
Despite Conforte’s grousing, Storey County commissioners recently decided to issue a new brothel license. With the loss of once-sizable revenue after Mustang’s closure, the county initially coped financially by imposing a wage and hiring freeze in order to stay within its annual budget. However, Storey County now hopes to generate $300,000 in annual tax revenues from the proposed new brothel, Wild Horse Canyon Ranch & Spa, to be built on a site almost four miles from the closed Mustang Ranch. This will be the first test of Storey County’s revised brothel ordinance that now requires a detailed investigation of all brothel owner applicants and the prohibition of convicted felons like Conforte from owning a brothel. The ordinance also demands any corporation that owns a brothel to reveal the names of its shareholders as well as the names of those in associated corporations.
Although the new owner’s license application passed the close scrutiny of county officials, other legal problems may doom prospects for Wild Horse Canyon Ranch & Spa. A public relations debacle ensued early on over original plans to name the new brothel after the legendary American Indian chieftain Crazy Horse. More recently, two national companies, Kal Kan Foods Inc. and Roybridge Investments, each with facilities approximately one mile away from the proposed site for the new brothel in the 102,000-acre Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park—considered the largest industrial park in North America—filed a federal lawsuit asking that the brothel license be voided. Their contention: that the brothel will hurt business, threaten the safety of employees of the park, and lower property values.
Most troublesome to George Flint isn’t the fate of Storey County’s newest brothel, but rather the liability it now poses to Nevada’s entire brothel industry. George fears that all the media attention spawned by this incident coupled with the high-power lobbyists retained by Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park interests may be enough to pressure legislators in 2003 to consider bills that further restrict, or even outlaw, brothel prostitution. Of not much help is the recent proliferation of negative brothel press brought on in part by several of Nevada’s twenty-seven currently operating brothels themselves. For example, the Sagebrush, Nevada’s second-largest brothel, outside Carson City, first hit local headlines when it nearly burned to the ground after an untended candle set the complex ablaze. More recently, heavy radio and newspaper advertising for Squeeze Play, the new topless bar/dance club adjoining the brothel, has local area residents irate.
Brothel problems sprawl well beyond the north into southern Nevada as well. After Sheri’s Ranch, a brothel neighboring the Chicken Ranch in Pahrump, was sold to a thirty-year Las Vegas Metro police veteran and one-time sheriff’s candidate and former car dealer, the green new owner challenged industry tradition unwittingly when he announced plans to turn the brothel into a full-scale resort with an 18-hole golf course, casino, and steakhouse. Following flaming editorials in state papers, George gave the apologetic owner a crash course in brothel survival tactics while attempting to do damage control with the press; Sheri’s owner now redirects all media inquiries to George.
Despite Mack and Angel Moore’s supposed righteous intentions, a sting operation busted them for selling outdates at Angel’s Ladies in Nye County, where doing so is illegal. The licensing board ultimately voted to close the brothel for two weeks and fined the owners $35,000. (Angel’s Ladies appeared in the press again after an appeals judge reversed the convictions of the three employees who were found guilty of prostitution-related charges off brothel premises, declaring the police sting operation entrapment.)
And then there’s always Dennis Hof, of course. Hof finally shut down his XXX-movie enterprise when county officials threatened to revoke his brothel license on grounds that his license allowed only the sale of prostitution, not the filming of pornography. Still, his publicity stunts haven’t stopped. His newest scheme is to get brothel prostitutes to appear on the Howard Stern Show, including most recently a mother-daughter team; Stern staged an on-the-air contest for a listener to win sex with both women.
Aggravated by the glare of unwanted publicity, George organized two brothel-owner meetings in the last six months to discuss “ways to preserve and improve our industry.” Even though the 2001 state legislative session proved less contentiou
s than George anticipated, with no significant antibrothel legislation proposed, the meetings’ agendas addressed George’s apprehensions and emphasized the need for political savvy in order to restore the industry’s public image, with formal presentations entitled “Friends, enemies and trends in the legislature” and “How to deal with the media: Low vs. high profile.”
Ironically, Nevada’s brothel opponents have also suffered variously since Mustang’s closure. After his botched attempt to stage his own disappearance, Reese filed for bankruptcy and stopped making restitution payments to the county for the cost of his search party. One day George received a letter from Reese sent from Marathon, Florida, where he’d relocated: “It is the farthest place from Reno … I’m tired of getting laughed at by my friends, the press, and ostracized from every church I try to attend … My enemy was not the brothel association … It was the people I most cherished … The church people in Reno. When they rejected me it was like losing my closest friends on earth.” Reese informed George he was working as a pizza deliveryman and sleeping in his car to save money for flying lessons.
Not long afterwards, Reese became international news when he stole a Cessna 172 from a Florida Keys flight school and crash-landed more than one hundred miles away on a beach in Cuba. The note left behind in his car stated his intention to kidnap Fidel Castro. After U.S. diplomats negotiated for days with Cuban officials for Reese’s repatriation, a U.S. District Court judge ordered him to serve six months in prison with three years probation and to pay $45,000 in damages. It later came out for the first time that Reese had a history of manic depression and periodic disappearances from home when he stopped taking his medication.
Meanwhile, back in Nevada, Senator William O’Donnell still lurks in the wings, although he’s announced his intention to leave the legislature when his term ends in 2002, allegedly frustrated by his colleagues in the GOP and their ties with lobbyists.
Still, new voices of opposition continue to emerge. A grassroots movement called Citizens Against Prostitution has been formed in Nye County. Led by a youthful Pahrump pastor and several parishioners who were outraged by one owner’s thinly veiled promotion of his brothel on two billboards on the outskirts of town, the group is preparing for the 2002 elections, when they plan to introduce a petition to outlaw prostitution in Nye County. They estimate that the eight thousand new transplants expected by then, with the rapid population expansion going on in and around Las Vegas, will not look kindly upon local brothels.
For the individuals associated with Mustang Ranch, it’s been a mixed bag. Some have managed to quit the business. Others have found new ways to stay in the trade.
Eva is currently studying to become a hospital-based physical therapist. She told me, “I am broke most of the time, but it’s cool. I don’t plan on going back to the floor soon, but if I ever need to, I know it is there and I can go back.”
Old-timers Tanya and Linda moved close by, to the Old Bridge Ranch, Storey County’s only operating brothel, next door to Mustang. Brittany and Mercedes initially joined the Kit Kat, where they knew the acting manager, a former manager from Mustang, but both have since quit the business.
Baby relocated to another brothel outside Carson City. She quickly became one of its top bookers. Her devoted regular, Philip, continues to visit her several times a week, despite the one-hour roundtrip drive he has to make to see her.
Not all of Mustang’s prostitutes are accounted for; Donna, Dinah, and Heather have simply slipped away. Because most of the women kept their real names and hometowns secret, there’s no easy way to locate them.
Bashful and the other CyberWhoreMongers initially tried to keep track of Mustang prostitutes on their website, the Georgia Powers Bordello Connection. Bashful reports that the men miss the Mustang Ranch deeply. The Fifth Annual CyberWhoreMonger Convention in the summer of 2001 had its largest turnout to date: sixty attendees at the banquet, of whom slightly over 50% were women. Perhaps most interesting was that two of the female attendees were wives of customers.
Very unexpectedly seven months later, the man with the handle, Georgia Powers, shut down the community’s website. “It’s with great regret that this website has seen its final day,” Georgia Powers wrote in his one page farewell, posted at the same URL (www.gppays.com) where the Georgia Powers Bordello Connection used to be. “I’ve considered several options, but in the end the only viable option was to just shut the site down.… As with most things in life there comes a time to move on, and for me and for this site that time has come.”
No one knows what will happen to the CyberWhore Monger community. Several posters believe other new websites may hold the community together, such as www.nvbrothels.com and www.sex-in-nevada.com. Others are skeptical. But Bashful says he’s “still interested in Nevada’s brothels and will continue working to contribute to the community.” His latest endeavor is a new pricing survey of legal Nevada prostitutes’ services. Whether Bashful ever decides to work on developing his social life outside the brothel world remains to be seen; he has yet to date a square and, in his own estimation, “still needs to lose weight.”
Gone but not forgotten, Mustang Ranch still generates and perpetuates its mystique with the public. A Mustang Ranch liquor decanter that once cost $25 at the brothel’s pink souvenir booth situated in the parking lot sold on eBay to a bidder in California for $96.59. And George receives weekly telephone calls from community activists nationwide who are interested in legalizing prostitution in their towns—cities such as San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, and West Hollywood. However, calls like these have come in for decades and nothing’s changed—Nevada still remains the only state in America with legalized brothels.
In memory of my friend Alfred
In appreciation of my husband, Andy, and my father, Marvin
In celebration of my mother, Judy, and my daughter, Coco
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the people who enabled me to write this book:
Robert Hatcher, my mentor, who encouraged me to conduct and offered to sponsor a public health study among Nevada’s licensed prostitutes. Without his unwavering support, I believe my determination to get inside Nevada’s brothel industry would have been shaken long before I gained admittance.
James Trussell, who first brought his expertise to my brothel condom research and then loaned me a laptop to aid me in the writing of this book.
David Lee Warner and Charles Bennett, whose contributions to my brothel condom research were both appreciated and essential.
Malcolm Freeman and Ronald Chez, who urged me from the sidelines to take a break from medical school and write a nonacademic, nonfiction book about my experiences inside Nevada’s brothels.
Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, which each supported me in my nonmedical endeavors. I am deeply grateful to a few individuals in particular: Audrey Bernfield, Dan Goodenough, Daniel Federman, Nancy Oriol, Paul Farmer, Susan Marshall, Richard Shugerman, and Bruder Stapleton.
Cindy Klein Roche and John Taylor Williams, my literary agents, the former who found me, and the latter who watched over me like a nurturing father, teaching me the ropes of publication and never holding back on encouragement and praise.
Scott Moyers, my patient and astute editor, who rigorously challenged me to find my voice—through draft after draft—until my story finally emerged.
Beth Pearson, Sunshine Lucas, Sally Marvin, and Carol Schneider of Random House, who all helped to tidy up loose ends and spiff up this book on the home stretch before sharing it with the world.
My two research assistants: Glynis Hull-Rochelle, who transcribed and e-mailed from Prague hundreds of hours of taped interviews at a whirlwind pace; and Jennifer Nash, who immersed herself in the material and became almost as obsessed as me.
Amy Bach, Laurie Mittenthal, Aimee Crow, Hilary Levine, Rebecca Fletcher, Tanya Krasikov, Kara Dukakis, Hallie St
o-sur, and Roxanne Brame, friends who listened to my excitement and insecurities about this book incessantly for years. I would also like to thank other supportive friends: Cecile Delafield, Susie Hobbins, Amanda Peppercorn, Andrew Shapiro, Jon Rubin, Jody Dushay, Ellen Reid, Heather Hardy, and Etsu Taniguchi.
Ed Reading, Ben Wallace, Steven Sack, Diana Graham, Larry Rand, and Laika Gelman, who read drafts in various stages and offered invaluable criticism and enthusiasm.
Senator and Mrs. Len Nevin, Senator and Mrs. Raymond Shaffer, Assemblyman Bob Price, Ellen Pillard, George Williams III, Alberta Nelson, Bette Flint, Guy Louis Rocha and Jeff Kintop of the Nevada State Library and Archives, Randall Todd and Bob Nellis of the Bureau of Disease Control and Intervention Services for the Nevada State Health Division, Bob Cowan and Kim Raines of the Washoe County Library–Reno Periodicals Department, and Tisha Johnson of the State of Nevada Uniform Crime Reporting Program, who kindly shared their knowledge and perspectives with me.
Kassie Evashevski, Jonny King, Olivier Sultan, Noah Tratt, Susannah Lang-Hollister, Deborah Yokoe, Hope Denekamp, Milan Ganik, and Amelia Zalcman, who all performed small favors that made a big difference.
Mary Ruby and Rosemary DeCroce, who helped keep me sane and reminded me of what I was capable of both becoming and creating.
Monica Rose-Ziglar, who allowed me to finish this book by caring for my baby daughter with tenderness and affection.
Mike Sack and John Saul, who generously shared their experience and wisdom as professional writers.
Lynn and Burt Sack, my in-laws, who looked out for my husband when I was living in Nevada and continued to love me despite my unconventional pursuits.
Vera Brown, my great-aunt, who has been my guardian angel.
Marvin Albert, my father, who taught me the value of dreaming big and the art of working passionately.