Nevada brothel shut down in the pandemic. Here’s how they’re getting by.

[r2d2]

 

Stimulus bill exclusions for sex work further devalue our already stigmatized industry.

As the lights of the Las Vegas strip flickered off in mid-March, signaling the start of the pandemic’s economic shutdown, the ladies of Sheri’s Ranch prepared for our party to end too.

The night before we officially closed, I took my last client, then packed up my room into my storage bins. I hugged the girls goodbye, and drove home just a few hours before the sun rose, anxious to get back and stock up on supplies.

I work as a full-service sex worker at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal Nevada brothel and the state’s only full-service sex resort, located about an hour outside the city. My title is courtesan, as it says on the work card I receive from the sheriff every quarter under Nevada law. My services include a range of activities that I’ll leave up to your imagination, but they’re all physically intimate and temporarily unsafe to perform due to the possible transmission of Covid-19.

Just like the casinos and restaurants of Las Vegas, our livelihood depends on tourism. If it’s busy in Vegas, it’s busy at the ranch. Girls often coordinate their schedules with big conferences that come to town, and some take time off in the summer because extreme heat slows conventions and special events. So when casinos began announcing closures to halt the spread of Covid-19, I knew that the livelihoods of brothel workers and all Las Vegas area sex workers were in jeopardy.

I had been considering my options since mid-March, when the World Health Organization classified the virus as a pandemic. I didn’t know what to do, conflicted between staying and making what might be the last of my income for months, or leaving to lessen my risk of exposure, and to lessen the possibility of giving it to others had I been an asymptomatic carrier. Some girls had already left early and many who travel here to work from other states had canceled their March tours.

Even as the panic increased, we continued to see steady business. Sex work is legal only in certain counties in Nevada with populations under 700,000, and it’s a bit of an adventure to get to the ranch — from Vegas, you have to drive through the Spring Mountains, and we’re the last stop before the road ends and the desert begins. I think once clients make up their mind to come, little will stop them, not even the looming threat of a pandemic.

Then came the day that Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered the temporary closure of nonessential businesses in Nevada. As we watched the announcement, a bar patron insisted that, in his eyes, we were essential. But neither strip clubs nor brothels were classified as such, though some tried to stay open, like Little Darlings Strip Club, which tried offering drive-thru peep shows. I’d already been booked for a party later that evening — an oil wrestling match, no less — and afterward, I sipped champagne in a jacuzzi, my companions ate Surf ‘n’ Turf, and we tried to forget about the global public health crisis and the economic uncertainty of the very near future.

[kothavani]

Papam