SEXIS WRONG

Never talk prices on the floor. When a guy’s interested
in you and wants to know your price, take
him to your room. This is a classy joint. We don’t
talk in the parlor about what we do and how much
it costs.
While it’s perfectly legal to exchange sex for money here, it’s
not polite to talk about it. Politeness, delicacy, and “class”—
in the sense of etiquette and “good taste”—replace the legal
prohibitions against whoring. You still can’t talk about sex and
money in the same breath, only behind closed doors—hiding
the raw economic relationship where you’re working him for
money and he’s paying you for sex.
conflict, but I like to see some effort at solidarity. One of the
friendlier women mentions, “I’m here to work, not make
friends.” I feel the absence of women’s solidarity more acutely
because bisexual and lesbian women are in short supply.
I comfort myself by enjoying occasional glimpses of queer
culture—unintentional drag shows by pornstars who dress
like Liberace and wag their tits at the camera. One of the
platinum blondes, Candy Curvature, dresses like a petite,
hourglass-shaped Elvis impersonator—white polyester pantsuits,
fringe skirts made of fluorescent-green latex, and stilettos
that light up red and green in the black light of the parlor.
Her bedroom eyes droop under mounds of sparkly gold glitter
paint and false eyelashes.
A lot of the women who work here come from middle-class
backgrounds—like me and many of the whores I know in San
Francisco. They chose whoring over straight work largely because
they found that prostitution was less exploitative or
more lucrative than many straight jobs. Some are students
or have graduate degrees. But as I talk to them, I find they’re
much more conventional than the whores I know in San Francisco.
They don’t seem especially interested in challenging
the codes of sexual propriety.
San Francisco draws a fundamentally different kind of whore
than the Nevada brothel. Since the glory days of the Barbary
Coast, the city has lured mavericks of all sorts, including sex
radicals. For those with the temperament to enjoy the work,
prostitution makes a lot of sense. It saves the creative and
adventurous from nine-to-five tedium, offers
good money and flexible hours, and allows
one to go to school or to pursue other projects
one simply wouldn’t have the time or money
for otherwise. San Francisco is known for its
bright, witty whores. Like the Nevada brothels, we’re a tourist
attraction, and we provide a service that will always be in
demand.
The Nevada brothel-workers are a different breed. There are
some bright and witty whores here, too, but most are less invested
in sexual freedom. Hence, they don’t mind the highly
regulated brothel system. Unlike some of the radical whores
in San Francisco, many Nevada girls are more concerned with
“class” in the sense of upwardly-mobile pretensions and refined
aesthetic taste. The legalized brothel system reproduces
middle-class values, such as the expectation of privacy
around sex. The whores are confined to the brothel while
working, and even in the brothel, they aren’t supposed to talk
about sex in the parlor, because it’s “bad taste.”
In short, “classiness” eclipses class consciousness. It’s not
that I think all whores should read Marx and analyze class
She notices me quickly averting my eyes and starts flirting
with me. The main problem with cruising these girls is that
they’re hypersensitive to being cruised, and most of them
aren’t lesbian or bisexual—just panseductive. As I unwrap my
Quaker granola bar, the sweet strawberry smell wafts over
to Candy, who coos, “Oooh, I want...”—knowing that she
never has to finish a sentence before the basking addressee
(me, in this case) places it in her hand like a mechanical doll.
“Thank you,” she mouths sensually—before I even realize
she’s taken most of my lunch—and plants a kiss on my cheek
in slow motion. When I come to, I wonder why she worked
me as if I were a straight guy. It’s not like I could give her anything
she’d want, not even an expensive dinner. Candy’s not
malicious, but she’s so used to seducing men for money that
she can hustle a granola bar from a coworker without realizing
While it’s perfectly legal to exchange
sex for money here, it’s not polite
to talk about it.
it. So much for sisterhood.
The lack of solidarity goes hand in hand with a kind of heterosexual
orthodoxy. The first time a client chooses me from the
line-up, Starlet comes into the room with us. She’s there only
for the very beginning—to teach me how to do “dick check.”
That’s when I check the client’s penis for visible symptoms of
STDs. Once “John” and I decide on a price for a blowjob and
intercourse, Starlet spreads a towel on the bed and asks John
to drop his trousers. As he pulls down his pants and boxers,
his erect cock springs up like a flagpole. Starlet puts on a latex
glove and squeezes the tip of his cock, which eagerly emits
a clear droplet.
“What you’re looking for,” she turns to me, “is anything
greenish white—that’s gonorrhea—or any blisters or sores
on the skin.”
She peels off the glove. “It’s that simple. Now he can put his
A SAN FRANCISCO WHORE IN A NEVADA BROTHEL 221