The Art of the Pimp: One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money (12 page)

When I flew back that Sunday night and got buzzed through the security gate, I knew immediately that Suzette, the cocktail waitress, had been the right choice. She had dirty-blond hair done up in a bun, and a round, friendly face. When she smiled she lit up the whole room. She smiled a lot. I think she had a little crush on me.

That week, I sat down with Stacy and Suzette and told them about some of the many other things we needed to change as we moved forward. In those days, as I’d learned from Charlene (who
wasn’t
a buyer for Macy’s), the girls lived in virtual lockdown for three weeks. I wanted to change that. I told Suzette that in the weeks and months ahead we needed to start thinking about creative scheduling. We wanted to give the girls their freedom, but we couldn’t have all of them disappearing at the same time. I also wanted to make changes regarding pricing, and was determined to eliminate minimums. I wanted the girls to think of themselves as independent contractors, and to try to get as much as they could for whatever services they provided. Later, with Stacy and Suzette on either side of me, I shared this with the girls: “The sign says, ‘Blow job: $100.’ But
what if you can get two hundred dollars from the guy? What if you promise you’ll lick his balls real good if he makes it
four hundred
dollars?”

It made sense to them and it made real good sense to me. The house got fifty percent of everything, including tips, so the more they made, the more I made.

I also told the girls that they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to do. If a man came through the door and wanted anal sex and the girl wasn’t into anal sex, she could say no.
Politely
. There were plenty of other girls who had no problem with anal sex. Also, if a girl had a problem having sex with a client for any reason whatsoever, she didn’t have to service that guy. There were plenty of girls who would be happy to take her place.

In most brothels, as I’d discovered in the course of my research, the girls had no say at all. In fact, if a girl refused a customer or refused to humor his requests, management could put her on probation and deduct the “loss” from her next paycheck. I didn’t think that was fair. I wanted my girls to be happy. If they were happy, the customer was happy. And if the customer was happy, I was happy.

I wanted a bar, too, and I wanted to put it in a little room behind the main parlor that wasn’t serving any useful function. When we applied for a license, however, I was told I needed running water, an ice machine, stainless steel sinks, and I can’t remember what the hell else. But in the interim they let me use miniatures, like the ones you get on airplanes. I handed out the little bottles with plastic cups and I stamped a message across the cups:
Warning: Contents may lead to sexual intercourse
. I knew people would take them home to show them to their friends, or simply as souvenirs, so in effect I was breaking the law. I was advertising. If I had my way, of course, I’d have put signs up on the highway:
Blow Jobs! Six Miles. (Ask About Our Hot Pussy, Too)
.

My goal was to create an upscale place, a destination brothel
that would put the competition to shame. And my immediate competition, at the time, consisted of two ranches: the Shamrock, which I had visited twenty years ago on that father-son road trip; and the Sagebrush, which was bigger than my place and classier (and which I now own). I wanted the BunnyRanch to be filled with guys like me; good, solid guys who knew how to party. I wanted a brothel that felt like spring break every year. As I told Suzette, “I want the BunnyRanch to feel like a great singles bar, but unlike regular singles bars, your chances of getting laid are really, really good.”

It took a while to make it happen. Everything always takes longer than you expect, but this took even longer than that. As Suzette put it, for the first couple of years we were focused on separating the wheat from the chaff. She said the cream would rise to the top, but warned me that it would take a while — and she was right.

Meanwhile, to help me out on that time-share in San Diego, I hired an older gal, Judy Gloria, and put her in the second bedroom of the condo I was renting. I didn’t realize Judy was going to be my personal assistant for the next twenty years, and I am thankful for every one of those years. Judy was a consummate pro. She took care of everything, usually before I asked her. And she was always there for me. But here’s the weird part: I hardly ever saw her. In fact, that might be the mark of the perfect assistant: You never see her, but you know she's there, watching your back.

AROUND THIS TIME,
despite my great and continued love for Stacy, my penis was getting restless again. I’d fly back to Reno, make the 40-minute drive to the BunnyRanch, and I’d always get a very warm welcome from the girls. “Yay, Daddy! Daddy’s home!” From Stacy’s point of view, it was a little
too
warm. And the girls — being girls — enjoyed taunting her, inferring that we were
having sex, and worse. Stacy did her best to ignore them, but it rankled. And the fact that I was away so often didn’t help the relationship either.

Stacy was all about monogamy. She kept an eye on me. She didn’t want me to have anything to do with my girls. But I was in the middle of the candy store. And I’m human. And horny. Hornier than most guys, probably, but still human.

Now I’m going to tell you a story in the interest of full disclosure, and I’m going to ask the ladies to please not hate me for it. I was home at the ranch for the weekend, recuperating from a tough stretch in San Diego. The place was still being renovated, one section at a time, and Stacy and I were living in a cramped room off the kitchen. I woke up in the middle of the night and went to get a glass of water, and I ran into one of the girls. She looked at me and I looked at her, and I took her by the hand and led her back to one of the half-finished rooms. I took the protective plastic off the bed and we went at it, when I suddenly heard footfalls coming down the corridor. I jumped up, grabbed the girl, put her in the shower, and ran back and dropped onto the bed just as Stacy walked into the room. “What are you doing?” she said.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “I came in to see how the room was coming along. It feels nice. I can’t wait for it to be done.” Stacy gave me that Stacy look:
Bullshitter
. She walked into the bathroom and looked around. My heart was in my throat, but she didn’t check the shower. “Come back to bed,” she said. I got up, took her hand, and walked back to our room and made love to her. Does that make me a horrible person? I don’t think so. I’m just a man like any other, with maybe a sex drive that’s out of control.

Judy Gloria

I met Dennis more than twenty years ago when I was just a girl of fifty-two. I’m seventy-four now. In 1992, I was working in the escrow department at Gas Lamp Plaza Suites, a time-share project. I knew nothing about escrow, but luckily the gentleman in charge of sales came to my rescue. He said, “Our bookkeeper needs help. Why don’t we have Judy spend half a day with the bookkeeper, and we’ll teach her escrow during the other half?” That was Dennis.

He was spending half the week in Nevada at the time and I sent him a fax explaining that I wanted to leave because the booker I was working with was a horrible woman and was poisoning my life. I didn’t know exactly what he was doing there, but I knew that he had a place called the BunnyRanch. I assumed he was raising rabbits.

Dennis’s girlfriend at the time, a lovely girl named Stacy, called me one day and asked if I still needed work. She had been doing the books at the BunnyRanch, but they needed a real bookkeeper, so they created an office for me in the
second bedroom of their condo, in downtown San Diego. Dennis asked me to move to Nevada, but I said I couldn’t, so he ended up hiring another bookkeeper. I thought I would find myself unemployed again, but Dennis said, “Don’t worry. I have plenty for you to do.”

I worked for him for almost twenty years, first doing his banking and then booking his travel. I still hear from him on my birthdays and on Christmas. He always sends me a card and a generous check. How many bosses do that? How many former bosses?

In those twenty years, I met many of Dennis’s girlfriends. He always thinks he’s in love and that he’s going to settle down, and I think he believes it, but after a few years the relationships come to an end. I think it’s like the seven-year itch, but in Dennis’s case it usually starts earlier. I remember Stacy, for example, and how much she loved to cook. They’d be in San Diego and he’d promise to be home by seven, and she would make these wonderful, elaborate meals, and Dennis would forget and go to dinner with the sales team. That’s what he said he was doing, anyway.

I don’t know how these young ladies put up with it. Every time he hired a new girl for the ranch, he had to test her out. I wouldn’t have put up with that, but maybe I’m old-fashioned. He was always very good to the girls, though. After they broke up, he would call his lawyer and change his will to make sure they were taken care of. He was generous that way.

I
HAD A CRAZY SCHEDULE,
flying back and forth to San Diego every week, but I have never been afraid of hard work. One weekend, less swamped than usual and eager to learn more about the business of sex, I drove to Las Vegas for the Adult Video News Awards. This is an annual celebration of the porn industry, which is not that far removed from the ho business, and I thought it would be wise to mingle with people who shared my interests.

As luck would have it, one of the first people I met was Al Goldstein, publisher of
Screw
magazine and a champion of free speech. My first impression was that the guy was a homely, disgusting pornographer. But it instantly became apparent that he was brilliant, and people were attracted to that brilliance like moths to flames. He’d been arrested a dozen times on obscenity charges, but it didn’t faze him. On the contrary, every time he walked out of jail
he seemed determined to make more noise, and I realized that it was all about
selling himself
, about getting noticed. That lesson had a lot to do with my later success, and I will always be indebted to Goldstein. He taught me much of what I know about the Almighty Press.