My Life as a Sex Worker at a Nevada Brothel
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Men come to me for sex, yes. But in an age of profound loneliness and disconnection, they turn out to be looking for so much more.
I had no idea how to land my first client.
It was a random Friday in April, karaoke night at Sheri’s Ranch, the legal brothel in the Nevada desert. I don’t sing. Four of the women on shift were professionals, and I sat picking at bar food with another new girl, already discouraged after a first shift that yielded nothing.
Jules—a statuesque brunette and one of the ranch’s top earners—dragged me up to duet “Cheri Cheri Lady.” I was terrible. But she insisted that being visible was the first rule of survival: if you’re seen, you can be chosen.
Within minutes, a hostess pulled me aside. “Paloma,” she said—my newly minted work name, spoken with intention. “That gentleman would like to speak to you.”
Paloma Karr was supposed to be breezy and fearless. I had willed her into existence through contracts, background checks, STI testing, and fluorescent-lit paperwork. The glamour I’d imagined—Champagne flutes and silk sheets—had given way to sheriff’s permits and cervical swabs set to outdated make-out music.
Now my first client sat across the bar: handsome, nervous, mid-thirties. Because he requested me, I skipped the flirtation and led him down the corridor to my room, pink-lit and staged with pinups and props. Pricing happens in private. He offered $700. I negotiated him up to $1,300—my first small victory.
After payment came the mandatory health check, supervised by Jules. Clinical, brisk, oddly intimate. He passed. Then it was just the two of us.
He knew he was my first. That excited him. He paid for an hour and lasted ten minutes.
When he left, I toasted myself with tequila soda. I was officially a courtesan.
Sheri’s is one of the few legal brothels in Nevada. It markets itself as the classiest: full bar, restaurant, mingling instead of mandatory lineups. Clients range from retirees nursing O’Doul’s to high-dollar regulars flying in from Los Angeles or Las Vegas. The women live onsite during two-week “tours,” rarely leaving; a client can appear at any hour.
I ended up there after a brutal breakup left me covering Manhattan rent alone. In my civilian life, I’m a novelist. I’d written about sex workers and had dabbled in adjacent worlds before. Nevada offered legality, distance, research, and income. It felt both outrageous and rational.
Veterans schooled me in economics. Harmonize on high prices. Undercutting drags everyone down. Some women clear tens of thousands in weeks. But timing matters—holidays are lucrative. I booked the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, and promised myself I’d reassess on January 1.
Fourth of July
Babak found me first. Iranian, like me. In my room, pillow talk preceded sex; intimacy is part of the negotiation. We slipped into Farsi. He told me I was the perfect Iranian woman. I laughed. The connection surprised us both. The sex was mediocre. I didn’t care.
The next day, I approached Glenn, a heavyset, quiet man who wouldn’t make eye contact. In my room, he told me he was a virgin. Then he added: tonight was lose it—or kill himself.
My stomach dropped.
I told him he’d made the right choice. I shared something true about my own history with despair. He softened. We talked. Afterward, we spent half an hour strategizing how he’d ask out a barista he’d loved for years. When dawn broke over the desert, he thanked me.
I’ve wrestled with whether money influenced my decision to keep him there rather than send him to a hospital. But we’re paid for time, not acts. What he needed most wasn’t sex. It was a witness.
I cried watching the sunrise.
Thanksgiving
By my fifth tour, I’d experienced both near misses and near love.
A wealthy woman strung me along with gifts, then canceled in favor of a rival. Another client, David—charming, almost seventy—confessed he loved his wife but hadn’t had sex with her since menopause. He said being with me restored something in him. I sometimes think I helped save his marriage. I sometimes think that’s a lie we both tell ourselves.
On Thanksgiving, only twelve women were working. Before noon, a charismatic father arrived with his twenty-one-year-old son. The mission: eliminate the boy’s virginity.
The son, Jake, chose me. He charged thousands to his father’s credit card for a Roman-themed bungalow, Champagne, steak, lobster—the works. We talked about college and football. He was enthusiastic, surprisingly skilled, and steeped in porn logic. At one point, he said he loved me.
“You love sex,” I corrected gently.
Late,r I learned his mother was home waiting for them.
After they left, I ate cold pie alone at a long, empty table and pictured a wife sitting by herself on Thanksgiving. That unsettled me more than anything else at the ranch.
New Year’s Eve
Rain slowed business. I had planned for this to be my last day.
Near midnight, I joined Hana, a Japanese courtesan, for a two-girl session with Joel, a former Mormon who had left the church and lost his community. He was depressed and isolated. We lay on either side of him, offering warmth.
Hana performed a traditional Nuru massage she had learned in Japan—precise, fluid, almost reverent. I watched her glide over him, bodies merging under warm gel and coconut oil. It was sensual, yes—but also tender. Sacred, even. Joel glowed afterward.
At midnight, we toasted in the bar. I texted clients and civilian friends alike. Paloma’s world and my own overlapped in strange ways.
The next day, clear-headed, I realized I wanted to stay.
Men return to Sheri’s for reasons they can’t articulate. They seek relief, affirmation, confession, and absolution. Many are lonely. Some are addicted. Some just need someone to see them without consequence.
I used to believe sex was either deeply meaningful or degrading. At the ranch, I began to see it as language—atrophied in some, overused in others, but essential all the same.
On what was meant to be my final day, I met a man in an iridescent suit who’d been coming for a decade.
“Why do you keep coming back?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same,” he said.
Maybe that was the real answer. They return for a connection structured by boundaries. I return for the same reason, wrapped in transaction.
I perched on the edge of the bed the way the veterans taught me—composed, inviting, in control.
“So,” I asked, smiling, “what can I do for you today?”