The Art of the Pimp: One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money (16 page)

Johnny Buss

I met Dennis almost fourteen years ago, not long after the attack on the World Trade Center. There were a number of charity organizations in Los Angeles trying to raise money for the families of the victims and I was thinking about making a contribution in the name of the L.A. Lakers. My late father, Jerry Buss, ran the team for many years and I’m currently vice president of corporate development.

Dennis, in his inimitable fashion, was doing his best to contribute. He had porn stars auctioning off their bras and selling autographed photographs of themselves, but I was actually more interested in the big-ticket item: The winning bidder would fly to Nevada to visit the BunnyRanch and if he felt so inclined, could stick around and wash the girls’ panties. I don’t really have a “thing” about girls’ panties, but I was in the middle of a divorce and this was for a good cause, so I bid generously and won.

A few weeks later, I found myself at the BunnyRanch with Dennis at my side, introducing me to the girls and
showing me around. “You’re going to stay overnight in one of my VIP bungalows and tomorrow Sunset’s going to shoot a porn film, so we’ll watch some of that together,” he said. “And if you decide you want to wash the girls’ panties, we’ll go door to door, collecting them.”

Until that moment, Dennis had no idea who I was, but I finally told him. “I think you know my father, Jerry Buss.” Dennis was floored. “You’re Jerry’s son!” He and my father were friends. My father had never been a client at the BunnyRanch, but he and Dennis had moved in some of the same celebrity circles in Los Angeles and Dennis had occasionally been my father’s guest at a Lakers game.

That was the beginning of our friendship. I spent two nights at the ranch and had an absolutely fantastic time. Dennis was a terrific host.

In some ways, he reminds me a little of my father. Larger-than-life, charismatic, and always surrounded by beautiful women. I have seen Dennis with many women over the years — often in the throes of love — and I have seen Dennis when the love affair is over, looking as miserable and as crushed as the next guy. People think, “Oh, Dennis will be fine. He’ll just go on to the next woman.” And he has plenty of women to choose from, certainly. But after a breakup, I have seen the pain in his eyes, and it’s clear to me that this is a man who knows how to love deeply.

Dennis isn’t going to show that side of himself to the world, though. He pretends everything’s fine and pours his energy into his business. He’s a very good businessman. Very driven. Do I have a problem with the business? Absolutely not. In the past decade, I’ve met hundreds of women
who have worked at the BunnyRanch, and they all have their reasons for being there. Mostly they’re there to make money and I’m sure a good number of them would prefer not to be there at all. But an equal number seem to have made peace with what they do for a living and they strike me as very well adjusted.

• • •

There’s one other thing I’d like to say about Dennis — even if he doesn’t want to hear it — because it’s something else he had in common with my father: Most everybody loves him, but he doesn’t let them in, and I think he’s lonely. He has Madam Suzette, whom he’s very close to, but I think what’s missing from his life is a real partner. Someone he can turn to in a moment of need, or when he has a decision to make, and say, “Honey, what do you think we should do about this?” I think in his heart he’d like that more than anything in the world and as someone who cares about him, I hope he finds it.

B
Y 1997, THANKS TO TEAM
effort and hard work, the BunnyRanch was becoming the go-to brothel in Nevada. With Suzette by my side, we had transformed the place. It had a swanky new parlor, clean rooms, Jacuzzis, a swimming pool, and a full bar. But the biggest change had nothing to do with the fortune I’d poured into construction. The biggest change was my girls. I had the best girls in Nevada. Suzette got calls every day, from all over the country, from girls who’d been told the BunnyRanch was hands down the best whorehouse in the state. Working there was
fun
, they were told. You negotiated your own deals, arranged your own parties, made lots of friends, and you left whenever the hell you felt like leaving. For many of my girls, the BunnyRanch was the closest thing they’d ever had to a family.

Five years earlier, when I first settled in Nevada, the business was basically legalized pimping. The brothels had total control
over the girls. There were several brothels on Homestead Road in southern Nevada, for example, which were collectively described as Homestead Road Women’s Prison. Many of those places hadn’t changed much over the years. The girls got searched when they came in, and searched again when they left. They had to get permission to leave the premises, and they had to ask for it at least forty-eight hours in advance. If they were on medication, they had to leave their meds at the front desk because they couldn’t be trusted to manage them on their own. They weren’t allowed to handle their own cash, either, because they might not share their tips with the house.

I liked none of that, which is why I had worked so hard to change it. I didn’t do it because I was Saint Pimp. I did it because I had spent twenty years in sales, and because I’d learned that nothing is more important than treating your people well. That’s what I was trying to do at the BunnyRanch, and that’s why I was getting the best girls.

INVARIABLY, EVERY REPORTER
I’ve ever talked to gets around to the issue of legalization, even though they already know my position on the subject. I am passionately
for
it. In fact, some years ago, I was invited to Oxford University in England to lecture on this very topic. Oxford is arguably the most respected university in the world, and some of the former speakers have included six U.S. presidents, Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa. I was of course honored by the invitation, and excited to be there, but on my way to the lectern I found myself filled with dread.
What the fuck am I doing here
?
Me, Dennis Hof, a pimp who is still three credits shy of a high school diploma
.

But I took a deep breath, braced myself, and plunged in. “Thank
you for having me here at the world’s oldest university to discuss the world’s oldest profession,” I began. “I’m here to convince you that legal brothels are the answer. I’ve been in the brothel business for twenty years, and I believe I understand it better than anyone else.”

Then I proceeded to lay out my arguments: If you legalize it, you regulate it, control it, and tax it. You provide a safe working environment for women. You keep prostitutes off city streets. You take the business out of the hands of criminals.

The list went on, but my arguments then, as always, have never changed. Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession and it is not going to go away. If we stop marginalizing prostitutes, we empower them. If we continue to criminalize their behavior, we end up with cities like Las Vegas, a sexual cesspool where 2,000 women are arrested every month and where ten percent of them are found to have HIV.

The other issue that always rankles is the way people generally assume that working girls are victims. That’s a narrow, moral perspective. I’m not going to pretend that coming to work at one of my brothels is a lifelong dream fulfilled for every one of my girls, but some of them are happy to be here. In that sense, the BunnyRanch is just like most workplaces in America. Some of the people are having a good time, and some are not having a good time. But they’re working. And they’re all here
voluntarily
.

Plus they pay taxes, and
I
pay taxes: More than half a million dollars a year last year in Lyon County, and that’s just for my four brothels and my strip club, Madam Suzette’s Red Light Cabaret. Those taxes support doctors, a police force, EMTs, and even the public schools. And that’s why people in the community continue to support us, because everybody wins.

But you want to know the irony? If I owned four McDonald’s in Lyon County, I’d be paying around $1,200 in taxes. And no, that’s not a typo:
twelve hundred dollars
. And the reason for this is because owning a brothel is considered a privilege, and that’s the price we pay — it’s our “sin tax.” But we don’t complain. And the community certainly doesn’t complain.

Still, when all is said and done, I know prostitution will never be widely legalized. Any intelligent politician knows it’s the right thing to do, but he’s not going to stand up in front of Congress, or the PTA, or his church group and tell them what he really thinks. To speak his or her true feelings would be an act of political suicide. And that saddens me. The answer is right in front of us, but we don’t have the courage to open our eyes or to act.

WHILE I WAS IN THE
middle of the pleasant firestorm of publicity generated by Goldstein’s article, a new arrival caught my eye. Her name was Krystyn and she was from Oregon. She was a gorgeous little blonde, eighteen years old, and I began to see her right away. Sometimes we slept at the ranch, in her room, and sometimes I’d take her back to the riverfront condo in Tahoe, but I never let our relationship interfere with work — hers or mine. When she was on duty, she’d line up in the parlor with the other girls and go about the business of business. I know this sounds odd to many of you, but I didn’t have a problem with it because I didn’t think about it. If that’s what they call compartmentalizing, I don’t have a problem with that, either.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to make the same mistakes I’d made with Stacy, so I sat Krystyn down and immediately explained how things were going to work for us as a couple. “When you’re dating me, girls are going to do mean things to you,” I said. “They’re
going to be jealous. They’re going to lie to you. They’re going to try to convince you that I’m fucking them, too. And on this last point I am going to be honest with you. I might be fucking them. I can’t be monogamous. We are never going to have the monogamy talk, ever. By the same token, you go ahead and do whatever it is you want to do. I mean that sincerely. Don’t stop from going on a trip, or hanging out with your girlfriends, or going to visit your family. If you want to ask me along, great. If you don’t, that’s great, too. I don’t ever want you to miss an opportunity to have a good time, whatever that entails. Because I believe we should all have a good time. By the same token, I’m going to do exactly what I want to do. If you don’t have a problem with that, terrific. But if what I do makes you unhappy, then you need to end this relationship. I don’t want you unhappy; that would make
me
unhappy. Similarly, if you’re doing something that makes me unhappy, I might point it out to you, but I’m not going to make you stop. I don’t want you trying to be somebody you’re not and you shouldn’t ask me to be somebody I’m not. That’s where the problems start. That road leads to hell.”