Would you like to visit a brothel, but are struggling to decide whether or not to visit because there are too many unknowns? It takes some amount of courage to show up at a brothel, especially if you have no clue what the prices will be. Maybe you have some experience with sex workers on the streets, or in a foreign country, or online, or maybe even at another legal brothel in Nevada. However, unless you have gone in and recently (i.e., post-Covid) seen a specific courtesan, it is unlikely that you will know what the specific prices will be.
Why is this? The answer to this question is potentially convoluted in the extreme; however, I want to use this space to break it down for you as best as I can manage.
Background Context: The Costs of Doing Business
The process of becoming a legal courtesan in Nye County, Nevada is more thorough than the process for even the most high profile jobs. The late Dennis Hof, former owner of many legal brothels in the State of Nevada, including the famous Bunny Ranch, stated in an interview with Marc Andrews, “The County Sheriff here used to say, ‘it’s more difficult to become a working girl in Nevada than it is to become a deputy.’”[1] To be fair, I technically do not have epistemic certainty whether that is accurate; however, given my personal experience in this field, I frankly would not be surprised!
Before becoming a legal courtesan, an applicant must complete: a background check, and a full panel STD test, including a cervical and/or vaginal swab in conjunction with an HIV blood test. Then, she must go to the sheriff’s office with her STD results to receive clearance, sign paperwork, have her photo taken, and get fingerprinted.
If nothing is amiss, the sheriff will then issue her card (i.e., a prostitution license) with the name of the sheriff’s office, the name of the brothel, and her legal name with a signature from both the sheriff and the applicant. After this process is complete, she must continue to have an STD test once per week, and also renew her license quarterly. There is a fee for the STD tests as well as the card itself. This all comes out of the individual’s pocket, because brothels themselves do not cover this expense.
The girl is also responsible for transportation to and from the brothel house to the sheriff’s office, and when there are no available traveling nurses, she also must pay to go to get tested in the nearest “big city.” This is important, because all legal brothels must be located in counties with populations under 400,000. Consequently, the girl must travel approximately one hour both ways to get anywhere.
It is no small cost to apply to become a legal courtesan, and people often overlook this fact. Society thinks that women turn to this line of work because they are desperate, but in the context of legal prostitution, this is a rare exception. Women make great investments to be able to have the opportunity to work in a legal brothel.
Legislative Restrictions and other Instantiated Limitations
As stated previously, the state government highly regulates legal courtesans and brothels. There exist many interesting rules, and it is difficult to say exactly why they are in place. For example, the law does not permit brothels to advertise close to a main road. Alien Cathouse is located right off of Highway 95, so the house itself is far off the road and our sign is limited to just the front of the house. There is, however, a big sign for the Area-51 gas station we are attached to, so if you are really looking, you will not miss it! This is why you never see sign advertisements in Las Vegas, so-called “Sin City,” for the legal brothels.
It is also not permitted to advertise outside of the brothel, with the exception of the internet; and even with the internet, there are still some regulatory pitfalls. For example, a courtesan cannot advertise her services on dating apps. Now, to be fair, I am not entirely sure if this is due to the county regulations, or if it is due to the specific dating apps’ internal ban on prostitution advertising. I myself do not advertise my services on platforms like Chaturbate, because it is against their terms and services. Granted, the consequences of violating those terms and services is merely removal from the platform; however, even that is enough to deter me, personally.
Now comes the legality issues with listing prices. Currently, I am not entirely sure why courtesans and brothel houses are not permitted to list specific prices. However, given that I regularly provide services alongside other women, I am certainly in a position to speculate. I think there are some definite pros to this type of business environment that are worth commentary despite the obvious cons that people intuitively associate with the inability to publicly list prices.
The Logic behind the Prices
The only place that a courtesan may legally discuss specific prices is within her own boudoir during negotiations. While negotiating, most (if not all) brothels require courtesans to leave the door open at this time to ensure safety (and likely also to prevent the courtesan from “hustling” the house by accepting payment privately rather than through the brothel front desk). Each courtesan has her own menu with prices, either printed on paper or in her head.
Prostitutes, assuming they are competent, generate these numbers by calculating the work hours-to-time ratio they require in order to cover the basic living expenses threshold set by the specifics of their current circumstances; and in that regard, the logic of that math is no different than how any other business operating in the free market calculates the profit margin it requires in order to be sustainable. That being said, the “intimate” nature of sex work adds an extra dimension to this, because, while that math provides a sort of “baseline” standard, prostitutes have an enormous amount of leeway to determine how far they want to stray from that standard (either up or down) on a case-by-case basis.
Often, prices can vary based on a client’s behavior, hygiene, and—though no one will say this out loud—even attractiveness, physical or otherwise. Granted, I do not by any means speak for all courtesans; however, I certainly can say that this is the case for quite a few. Most courtesans will not budge on their prices if the client is being particularly offensive, and will even refuse service if behavior is sufficiently problematic or reprehensible.
The Actual Implications of Empowerment
At this point, I feel it necessary to take a brief aside here to sufficiently emphasize the entailments of what I just said, because, once again, society uses false assumptions in the form of pathological “but what if...” questions to assault lucid inquiry into anything related to prostitution. Because the law is very clear about our status as independent contractors, we courtesans retain the legally protected and unquestionable right to refuse service to anyone [FULL STOP]. I cannot overemphasize this enough. Whenever the subject of entering the sex industry (particularly prostitution) arises, I far too often observe “civilians” (i.e., individuals who do not work in the sex business, and frankly, have no idea what they are saying) declare something to effect of:
“well, prostitution is bad and girls must avoid entering the industry, because their bosses/the brothel owners will force them to service an unending queue of nauseatingly hateful men by working brutally long hours in what functionally amounts to a life of unending gang rape.”
An accurate rendering of my reaction every time this subject comes up
For the sake of brevity, let us completely ignore the fact that the notion of being surrounded by approved men for hours of incessant fucking, on its own, makes my pussy wet and my nipples hard...
The power of legalized prostitution is such that there is no force on this earth, either individual or institutional, that exists with the power to compel me to do anything I do not want. Anything I do in this business (and I mean quite literally “anything”) I do because I voluntarily agree to it. The propensity of the typical civilian to regulate me to some category of victim or hostage on account of my having “fallen” into prostitution (as if prostitution was some kind of hidden ditch into which the hapless invariably find themselves), frankly speaking, boarders on the insulting. If I am to be criticized for my current profession, I would much rather those criticisms be rooted in something approximating reality.
Prostitute: A Subcategory of Small Business Owner
Returning to the details of an individual’s relationship with her work, I need to clarify that a legal courtesan is licensed as an independent contractor specifically within the county in which she works. This is why, fundamentally, each courtesan actually runs her own business operation. Brothels are merely a geographical location in which a courtesan can legally work. For example, the document I signed to stay at Alien Cathouse is entitled “Independent Contractor and Lease Agreement.” I agree to pay them rent to lease out the room, to follow the house rules, and to pay them a sizeable cut of every booking I make. Basically, I run my own business by using their facilities.
Nevada State law forbids brothels from determining our prices for us, as they are not our employers and do not run our business for us. They offer certain services that help us out, such as payment processing, security, keeping time for our sessions, marketing, and scheduling appointments over the phone, certainly; however, they do not set our prices, purchase our equipment (e.g. sex toys, lingerie, heels, condoms, lubricant, etc.), or decide which services we offer.
I personally am very grateful that the brothel houses cannot set our prices or determine which services we provide. This gives us full independence to run our business the way we see fit. Each courtesan offers unique experiences that are difficult to compare to others. Some ladies feel comfortable with offering BDSM services (I dabble), and others are not interested in offering those services. Some ladies only feel comfortable offering certain services at a premium rate, while others might be okay with something much lower. It all depends on the woman, her interests, and how she wants to run her business.
Whither Individual Prerogative?
Given all this, one can rather easily make an argument for a brothel’s legal inability to set prices for prostitutes being a good thing. But why cannot the courtesans, who are independent contractors, discuss their rates outside of the boudoir?
I must admit, the answer to this question is not exactly clear to me either. At the time of this writing, I have yet to delve sufficiently deep into the legal architecture and history surrounding this question in order to understand the greater contextual rational; however, I can comment on the implications of how these circumstances affect the way I run my business. I personally conceal my prices from the other girls in the brothel, because insofar as I reckon it, the default presumption ought to be: there is no reason for them to know.
As with any situation in which there are multiple girls in competition with one another, a certain level of workplace politics is unfortunately unavoidable; and while I have been extremely fortunate to find myself in the company of coworkers who are friendly and do their best to minimize such conflict, I find restricting discussions of my specific prices to my clients to be the best way to contribute to the harmonious brothel environment, in addition to the benefits of such privacy facilitating greater control over my business.
Ultimately, I prefer these circumstances in comparison to openly advertised numbers, because it allows me the freedom to customize my services and my prices with a greater degree of negotiation power and security. This way, when a client comes in, I can give them exactly what they want for the budget that they have, at a price that is fair for both of us.
The word “fair” is key here, because frankly, I despise the archetype of the “money grubbing whore;” because I am all too aware of women leveraging their physical beauty and sexuality for unwarranted and/or inflated personal gain. Abstaining from price gouging is extremely important to me, because I am here to please and be pleased, while balancing those desires with making enough money to make it worth my time and cover my expenses.
Obvious Problems and Workarounds
There do exist major pitfalls, however, to not being able to discuss prices outside of my boudoir. Often, potential clients come in with a price in mind and my services are double, triple, or sometimes quadruple what they were thinking. These clients do not irritate me, provided they handle the situation diplomatically and with tact. If the client does not wish to book with me after discovering the prices I have set, (s)he should first try to see if there is a service I can provide for them that is within budget (I always make a point to ask). If that still does not work for them, they should politely decline and leave a tip for the tour, the conversation, and the time we did spend together. We courtesans are here to please our clients and potential clients, but because this is our business, we appreciate compensation for our time, regardless of whether you decide to book with us our not. Even simply buying a lady a drink is a courteous thing to do.
Even though I know it is frustrating to not know the specific pricing for booking a session with a courtesan, please do not fret!
Minimizing the frustration of the unknown motivates me to write these articles; and it is within these writings that I hope to provide to you (within the stipulated legal limitations, of course) a sufficiently clear idea of what to expect when you come to see me, which I hope you will!
If you would like to know further details about the services I offer, my pricing, and proper procedure when you arrive, please click below:
For the sake of providing a quick reference guide without having to do extra reading, here’s an example of what a sex menu might look like, and a general idea of pricing, the idea being that—although I am not legally allowed to advertise specific numbers—I am legally allowed to provide you graphical hints to suggest a generalized range of what to expect in terms of pricing.
Sex Menu Sample (generic):
Sensual Massage: $$$
Handjob: $$$
Blowjob: $$$
Vaginal Sex: $$$$
Anal Sex: $$$$ to $$$$$
Threesome: $$$$ to $$$$$
BDSM Session: $$$$ to $$$$$
Overnight Session: $$$$$
Hope to see you soon...
吻~~
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