The Art of the Pimp: One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money (15 page)

Is it a cakewalk? Hell, no. You get a dozen girls together under one roof you have to be prepared for everything. No girl becomes a prostitute because her life is perfect, and it’s no different at the BunnyRanch. Some of the girls who show up at the door looked terrific online, but in the flesh it is often a different story. Turns out they have a drug problem, or they’re running from an abusive pimp, or they’ve been kicked out by an angry husband or father.

If they have potential, I do my best to help them. I tell them to start by making a list of all the things they’re going to miss from their previous life, to have a good cry over that list, and to get ready for the next chapter. I also teach them what I used to teach my other sales teams — specifically, to put all their shit in a box when they’re at work and to leave it there until they get home. “If you’re thinking about your problems all day long, you’re never going to be productive, you’re never going to succeed,” I explain. “But if you leave that shit at home and deal with it at the end of the workday, when you can give it your undivided attention, you’ll succeed on both fronts — in work and in your personal life.”

If they feel they can’t rise to the challenge, or even for themselves, I
urge them to do it for the team. I explain that their experience at the BunnyRanch depends entirely on them. If they play by the rules, it’s like a Girl Scout camp in midsummer. But if I have to keep ragging them, like a cop, it’s going to feel like a women’s penitentiary.

When the new arrivals talk to the veterans, they figure that out pretty quick. The Bunny Way is the only way to go. I’ve got plenty of girls who arrived in horrible shape — depressed, on meds, bulimic, etc. — and they turned their lives around. And no, I didn’t do it for them;
they
did. (A couple, perhaps, with the lure of the Almighty Dollar.) They dumped the drugs, stopped drinking, cleared their heads, went to the gym regularly, ate right, and when it was time to work they focused on the work. Of course, they all slip up from time to time. When that happens, I take them aside quietly and we have a few words. Occasionally I’ll ask them to take another look at a relevant passage in the Bunny Bible. “Page seven, section C. I think you need to reread that. It could have been written expressly for you.”

The Bunny Bible also explains how the days break down. The girls work twelve-hour shifts, with five days on, two days off — and it addresses the financial arrangements. The house gets 50 percent of everything, including tips. We are partners in the truest sense of the word, but these girls are also my friends and my family. They call me “Daddy” and I like it. I’m there to take care of them — within reason.

To me, prostitution isn’t about selling yourself; you’re selling a service. And there’s a big difference. Please don’t talk to me about exploitation.
Many of my girls are here out of need, of course, but they are in a safe place and a (more or less) wholesome environment. Under my roof they don’t have to worry about the law, because they aren’t breaking it.

Many of my girls have had regular jobs in the civilian world, with regular wages, and after spending time at the ranch it’s hard for them to go back to sitting at a desk for forty hours a week for $32,000 a year. And they don’t have to. The smart ones can make big money in a very short amount of time. Off the top of my head, I can name a dozen former bunnies who left here with a million dollars, invested it, and then went off to marry, raise children, and become members of the local PTA. I can also name a dozen girls who made very little and whose lives amounted to much less, but those are simply the odds, both here at the ranch, and out there in the Real World. Some will make it; some won’t.

Right or wrong, there is never any shortage of girls who want to come to work at the BunnyRanch. In the early days, as word got out about the pleasant working conditions, we would get maybe a dozen calls a week. Nowadays, we get more than a thousand a month and Suzette has to screen every last one of them. She weeds out the street prostitutes and hustlers, and she lets them know that the BunnyRanch has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs. Any girl with a felony or misdemeanor is of course immediately turned away, even if she’s a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe. But that’s only the beginning.

If we actually think the girl is a viable candidate, she has to make her way to Nevada on her own. And once she gets here, she has to get licensed. Yes,
licensed
. Prostitution is work and these girls are part of the service industry, not unlike, say, casino workers. They are governed by endless rules and regulations. But they are also independent contractors, which means they operate like any other independently licensed business. They don’t get health benefits, vacation pay, or retirement, and they are responsible for their own taxes. That’s what makes them
independent
. The ones
who buckle down can make their dreams come true in a very short amount of time — whether it’s buying a place on the beach in Hawaii or living in suburbia with a husband and two-point-five children.

During his visit, Al Goldstein asked me, “How do you know that some of these girls aren’t being forced to work here by pimps or abusive husbands?” And I told him that I didn’t. In fact, I had a girl there who was sending money home to support her father’s gambling addiction. I had talked to her about it and I had tried to convince her that her father’s lack of control wasn’t her responsibility, but it wasn’t really my business to tell her what to do with her money.

And money is what it’s all about, of course. Every woman is here to make money, but they all have different reasons and different goals. One summer, three girls from Wellesley College came out to work for eight weeks straight. They were smart girls from working-class families and they decided together that a summer at the BunnyRanch would be a great way to take care of their student loans. Another time I had a female reporter fly out to do a story about life at the ranch. She was here for a week, filed her story, and then asked Suzette if she could stay to work. In the next three months, she made as much as she would have made in three years as a reporter.

AL GOLDSTEIN WASN’T NEW TO
the sex trade, of course, but he wanted to walk his readers through the issue of safe sex. This is another aspect of the business that regular civilians don’t understand, and I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t.

In 1985, the Nevada Administrative Code ruled that any person applying for employment as a prostitute had to submit a blood
sample to test for HIV and syphilis, and a cervical specimen to test for gonorrhea and chlamydia. The girls were required to show up with a state health card certifying that they were disease-free and by law
I could not hire them without that card
. As I said, the cards are really not much different from the cards issued to hotel and casino workers and, like those cards, have to be renewed annually. But there’s more.

Once a week, the “hoochie doctor” shows up at the BunnyRanch and at every other licensed ranch to test the girls for STDs. The girls have a saying at my place: “I expire on Wednesday.” That simply means that it’s been a week since their latest medical check and they know they can’t get back to work without it. The girls also have to get a blood test every month and any girl who tests positive for HIV is barred
for life
from working at a brothel. That law dates back to 1987 and in all those years there has never been a single documented case in Nevada of anyone having contracted HIV in a brothel. In fact, in almost thirty years of testing, I don’t believe a single licensed prostitute has ever tested positive for HIV.

Every week, the results of all these tests have to be reported to the local sheriff’s office, and positive results are forwarded to the board. Bottom line? We know we’re going to be scrutinized, so we do everything exactly right. As far as I’m concerned, law enforcement is my friend.

The girls also do what they can to study the customers for visible signs of disease. They run a “dick check,” looking for lesions or redness. It may not be scientific, but it’s better than nothing. And of course, the clients are by law required to wear condoms. Most men don’t complain, however. The average man is usually done in about three minutes and sometimes a condom helps them keep the party going for an extra minute or two.

Goldstein, armed with this information, went back to New York and wrote a wonderful article about the BunnyRanch. He called it the best little whorehouse in the western world. The results were immediate. I was deluged by calls from reporters from every city in the country, and from a dozen cities around the world. I love publicity. Publicity is my best friend.

Suddenly I was the go-to sex industry guy. I had strong opinions, and I was happy to share them. In fact, until I came along, the general mind-set among members of the Nevada Brothel Owner’s Association was simple in the extreme:
Lay low in the sagebrush
. In other words, keep your mouth shut and enjoy the money. Le’Mon was from this same school of thought. He was so low profile than even some of his closest friends knew nothing about his business interests in Nevada.

I was doing the opposite, however. I was talking to
everyone
. That was one of the things I’d learned from Al Goldstein, and I’ll repeat it because it bears repeating: When it comes to publicity, you should talk to everyone and you should treat even the lowest man on the totem pole like a prince. One day that man is going to be anchoring the evening news and he’s going to remember. And if he never gets to anchor the evening news, that’s okay, too, because you treated him with respect, and respect is a good thing.

That lesson actually reminded me of Dale Carnegie, and I went back to study some of the passages I’d underlined in his various books. There were many observations that spoke to this same issue. People like to be heard, Carnegie said. It makes them feel good. When you make a man feel good, simply by listening, you make a friend for life. And
smile
; be pleasant. Carnegie even suggested that one should smile when talking on the phone, because the person at the other end can
feel
your smile. He said people listen to logic, but
they respond to emotion.

So the reporters called and I made time for all of them. When they were done with me, they couldn’t wait to “interview” some of my girls, if that’s what you want to call it. I also made sure they spent time with Suzette — my main girl, the mother hen, the wife I didn’t sleep with. The woman who ran the show.

Suzette would show them how everything worked. First, she would get an e-mail from a girl in Pennsylvania, say, expressing interest in employment at the ranch. Suzette would respond with her own version of a form letter, which contained some important details — starting with the fact that the girl would have to agree to a medical checkup and that she would need to get a sheriff’s card before starting work. If those requirements didn’t frighten her away, she’d ask her to send pictures, and if the pictures were good, she might talk to her on the phone. She also had a wonderful filing system, with a dozen little folders on her computer. She had a “Black” folder, an “Oriental” folder, an “Older” folder, a “Too Young” folder, and an “Other” folder (which should be self-explanatory).

She would put each file into the appropriate folder as the correspondence came in. Suzette also did all of the scheduling for the girls, which was a huge job in and of itself, and which only became more demanding as I bought more brothels. Her other job was to notify me anytime an especially attractive, Marilyn-ish blonde made inquiries about working at the ranch.

We had no secrets from reporters. I showed them how the rooms were monitored, explaining that it was for security. If a girl felt threatened, we’d be there in a matter of seconds. I also used the system to listen in on the negotiations, which I’d also done when I was in sales. I would make time to talk to the girls later, reviewing what I’d heard and telling them how I thought they could do better. After all, this was a business, and business is all about making
the best possible deal.

The other thing I did was to hire shoppers. Yes, that’s right,
shoppers
. These guys would come in as clients and they’d party on the house. In return I expected a full report.
How were you greeted on your arrival? Was the girl you chose pleasant? Polite? Did she have a good attitude? Was her room clean? Did she make good on her promises? Did you feel rushed? Did you get good value for your money? What did you most enjoy about the experience?

The girls knew we did this and they didn’t have a problem with it. The mandate at my ranches is to treat every man like a king, and I expect all of my girls to remember that all the time. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. I’m not locking my girls down, like they still do at some of the other brothels. I’m not telling them they can’t go into town for the day to shop or to meet a friend for lunch. I’m not asking them to leave their medications at the front desk. And I’m not searching their rooms. I trust my girls, and until they give me reason not to trust them, I’m going to keep trusting them. I’m not the kind of guy that is going to penalize all of them if just one of them screws up. I like to say, “This ain’t your daddy’s old brothel.” And I mean it. This is a new breed of whorehouse, with a new breed of owner, and we treat our girls with respect. That’s why we get the quality girls. That’s why our girls end up on the cover of
Penthouse
,
Hustler
, and
Playboy
.

Now that’s not to suggest that every day is a lovefest. It isn’t. The girls can get catty. They sometimes pick on the new girls. They might be jealous of a girl that’s booking three times the parties they’re booking. But that’s normal and I expect it. This is a commission sales business, and that’s just the way it is. It’s competitive — people say things, feelings get hurt — but that’s
life
. And the secret of life is simple: You fall down, you get up.