Newspaper Intern Goes Undercover in Nevada Brothel: A Story of Deception and Discovery

A young journalist goes undercover in a Nevada brothel, unraveling secrets and confronting her own morals

Newspaper Intern Goes Undercover in Nevada Brothel: A Story of Deception and Discovery

The Hen House – Ch.2

Jessica Comes Onboard
By reddear

On the Beach of the East Bay

I’m Jessica. As in Mitford, though that’s not my last name. My parents teach at UCB, and it’s a Berkeley thing. It could have been worse, but they never met Emma Goldman.

I just finished a journalism degree at Stanford which, I delight in reminding my parents, has a better reputation for such things than UCB. I interned at a newspaper in the East Bay during the summer between my Junior and Senior years, and I’ve been engaged in the game of trying to persuade them to hire me for several months. Practically, this means phoning the under-editor who supervised me last summer and wheedling them into giving me another follow-up follow-up interview every three weeks or so – whereat three or four members of some board whose name I haven’t been able to work out make encouraging noises about how much they’re impressed with me and assure me that they have great hopes of ‘bringing you onboard’ someday. I’ve heard that they have great ambitions of netting a Pulitzer, or three, and they want to corner all the talent they can – cheap. Sort of like a bottom-of-the-league sports team.

I hoped that was about to change when they called me yesterday and set up an urgent meeting this morning. This time the Features Editor, my mentor, a 40ish senior reporter named Catherine (not Cathy – last name classified), a 30ish guy photographer who wasn’t named and I were present.

“Welcome, Jessica,” the Features Editor (henceforth FE) began. “We’ve called you in because we’re planning to do in in-depth piece of investigative reporting, and we’re considering taking you onboard, conditionally, because we think you may be a good fit and a valuable member of the team.”

“Gag,” I thought, “does any senior editor in the world really talk such drivel? What reporting isn’t investigative?”

“The subject is legalized prostitution in Nevada. It will be a multi-part series and Catherine will be the lead reporter. She’ll cover the legal angle, history, and with some help she’ll interview some illegal prostitutes in Reno and Las Vegas and elsewhere. The focus will be on legal brothels, though, and the women who work there. I’ll let her tell you a little about her ideas”

“It has been suggested that women who work in the legal brothels are little better than white slaves. It’s been said that the brothel owners collude with the girls’ pimps outside the brothel because it makes the girls more controllable, and that working there is nothing but, in effect, signing a contract to be raped. The prostitutes are confined for weeks at a time, not allowed to live in the county where they work and are nickel-and-dimed out of much of their fifty percent of their gross earnings, being charged for lodging, housekeeping, food, condoms and sexual supplies. We intend to investigate this injustice and blow the lid off. It’s as simple as that.”

“Where we think you may be able to help, Jessica, is by infiltrating one or more of the brothels,” the FE said.

“Your youth and attractiveness should let you apply to work as a prostitute. The way the law works is that each prostitute must have a health check once a month and be checked for AIDS once a year. The health check is basically a pap smear and the AIDS check involves laboratory blood work. We’re told that results of the lab work generally take about three days to be processed and be returned to the local Sheriff’s Department so that Work Cards may be issued. Most of the women applying for Work Cards come from out of state and stay in the brothel for several days waiting for their cards to come through. You can see where this is going. If you were to go to a brothel and apply for a card you would have several days to befriend the women working there and find out from them the secret of what’s happening in such places.

“If you’re willing to take on the position of inside investigator we are prepared to offer you a three-month contract, renewable by mutual consent and contingent upon the success of your mission.”

“God,” I thought, “somebody’s been watching too many 60s TV adventure capers.” But I said,” Yes, I think I’d be interested.” After barely three more tedious hours I had a job, or was gaffed – in the FE’s fishing metaphor.

…………

Armargosa Valley

On Monday about a week later I pulled my old and battered car, with its California plates, into the gravel parking lot of the Hen House Too near Armargosa Valley, Nevada -- conveniently located between Death Valley National Park and the Nevada Test Site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Cunning agent that I was, I’d scraped off the Stanford parking stickers. There was a surprisingly professional and grammatical website with an Employment link, and I’d simply sent an email saying that I was interested in a job. Within hours I got a reply from the Manager (unnamed) saying that yes, they were looking to hire “girls” and suggesting that I pick a day within the next week or so and show up for an interview at noon. I suggested the next Wednesday and my appointment was confirmed an hour later. The plan was that if the tests took three days to come back I’d have all weekend to interrogate the working girls before doing a bunk. Brothel keeping was obviously run much more efficiently than the newspaper business.

The place looked to be a 50’s vintage trading post (Indian Jewelry 73 miles. Cold drinks! See the rattlers!!) with four stuccoed arches, and a mish mash of trailers and modular units behind a six-foot cyclone fence. A barbed wire arbor funneled me to the Entrance -- Push Button and I was let into a knotty pine bailey (seemingly without murder holes in the ceiling) and through another door into a large lounge in the midst of remodeling, full of mirrors and deep cheap burgundy carpeting. It was probably better than the green shag it had replaced, once. The person who let me in was Tammy, a buoyant twenty-something blonde. After she told me her name she confirmed mine. “You’re Jessica. Sorry about the mess. We’re still moving in and getting rid of all the disco dancing crap. I’ll take you to see Joan.” If she was a good example of the girls who worked here, there went the oppressed sex slave angle of the story.

She led me through some confusing jogs to the older stucco building and then into a large white plastered office with oxblood tiles on the floor. Pointing to a cowhide-covered sofa she said, “Have a seat. Joan’ll be here in a minute.”

Joan was tall, confident and striking. Dressed in freshly pressed khaki shorts and a safari shirt, she was slim, athletic and large-breasted. She looked only a little older than I was, and like a patently successful businesswoman.

Shaking my hand, she said, “Hello, Jessica, it’s good to meet you. Would you like a cold drink of something?”

“Maybe an iced tea if you have any.”

“Sure,” she said, getting one from a small bar refrigerator. “So tell me a little about yourself and why you think you might want to work here. “

“Well,” I said, “I went to junior college in San Jose for a year and a half, but then my mom got sick and now I want to make some money and pay off my student loans and help my mom out and then go back to school, I guess. I’ve never done anything like this before but, really, I need the money and I think I could make enough here so that I wouldn’t have to wait so long to go back to school. I’m not very experienced about sex, but I’m not very shy and I think I could do it.”

“You’re certainly pretty enough,” Jessica, “and as long as you’ve made the drive here you may as well come with me to the county seat and do some paperwork and such. I have business in Tonopah this afternoon, so you can ride along with me and we’ll file your papers for a Work Card and get your health check. They’ll each cost fifty dollars, but the House will pay for them. It’s take a few days to do the medical stuff and get your card, so you can hang around and look things over and see if it’s for you. It’s a bit of a drive but we’ll get a chance to get acquainted on the way. I’ll make a call to confirm your health check and we can get going.”

A few minutes later in the car, a little Mercedes, she said,” The reason it’s called the Hen House Too is that the original Hen House is near Beatty, about 26 miles down the road. Rusty and Faye, whom you may or may not meet today, bought the place five years ago and I started working for them two years ago as their accountant/bookkeeper. I was a year out of UNLV with degrees in accounting and computer science and desperate for a job. Six months ago the original Hen House -- the home place, as Rusty calls it – was doing very good business and there was a chance to buy out an operation in Armargosa Valley that was going bust and I bought in as a partner and moved here to manage the place. You’ll be amused when you meet Rusty, so I won’t spoil the treat for you. We’re open for business now, but as you saw we’re still refurbishing and staffing. We’re always hiring because the business keeps expanding. I think that’s largely because we’re efficient, but mostly because we treat the girls better than anyplace else, so they find out about us by word of mouth and want to come work here. I’ll tell you more about the pay and benefits later, but after your drive I suppose you might like to put your seat back doze off a bit. I’ll wake you when we get to Tonopah.” And I soon did.

Filling the papers at the Sheriff’s Department didn’t take long, and the doctor turned out to be a woman gynecologist named Sybil Hauser. She was in her mid-30s and quite pleasant; she obviously wasn’t contemptuous of working girls, and after the exam she asked me if I was on birth control. I wasn’t and I told her so. Then it struck me that I’d have to go on it to stay in character. That’s when I found out about Lybrel, a low-dosage daily pill that suppressed periods altogether. Not being a Cosmo reader I’d never heard of it, but I signed up on the spot and she gave me a sample packet. I’d believe it when I saw it. Maybe it came with free magic beans.

We had a late lunch at a family Mexican place and then headed back. Joan decided that we had time to stop briefly at the home place and I got to meet Rusty and Faye. He was a big, handsome 40ish guy and when I saw him I immediately thought “drugstore cowboy,” a term I didn’t know I knew. Fay was a pretty blonde in her mid to late 30s, and she spent a large part of her time riding herd on her cowpoke’s enthusiasms. I was grinning when we left for Armargosa.
“He was actually a commercial realtor in Las Vegas for years,” Joan said, “and he met Faye in a house near here. He’s really quite shrewd, and I love them both, but if he ever wants to make me line dance with him it’ll cost him dearly.”

We got back to the Hen House Too just at dinner time. It was cafeteria style and quite good. I sat with Joan and Tammy and five other girls and started to plan my interrogations. I started to feel guilty about it but, hey, it was my job. Then we moved my luggage and laptop into my room in one of the modular units. There was wifi and Tammy gave me a card with the code on it. Each girl’s room had a card on the door with her name in ink. Mine was in pencil, so I assumed that I was on probation. I was tired after driving and riding all day, but I spent an hour writing up my notes and then sent them, encrypted, to Catherine using a secure program designed to protect me on public connections in places like Starbucks and airports. I was asleep by 8:00 o’clock.

…………

The next morning I was up early and there was fruit and juice available in the kitchen. I didn’t meet anybody else until around 10:00, when girls started trickling in. Tammy made a point of introducing me as a new girl and I tried to be subtle as I started talking to various girls about life in the Hen House Too. Unfortunately, for my purposes, they all seemed to like the place, though when I got some of them to talk about their experiences elsewhere I began to see that Catherine’s horror stories were probably partially true. I began to confirm my impression that if I was going to dig up dirt I was in the wrong house, or it’s garden. The FE must have affected my talent for metaphor.

I got to wander around and I met the bartender, the maid, the cook and, unfortunately, some carpenters and carpet layers who leered at me as if they were picking out choice cuts. Tammy was everywhere, bubbly and irrepressible, and she and Joan explained that although each girl was considered an independent contractor, there was a system of individual bank accounts where a portion of wages accumulated and were used to make quarterly 1099 payments. The house also helped keep track of deductible expenses and had an investment fund of some kind. Finance is one of my many weak points and I took their word for it. Somehow the day went by, and after dinner when things started getting busy for the night’s business I felt a bit left out as I went back to my room to write up my notes and send them off. I’d managed to learn everybody’s name, but I noticed that one door had a card for Nicole, whom I hadn’t met. I surfed the web and went to sleep.

The next day, Friday, was much the same and I was starting to get bored, but I was determined to stick out it for the weekend before I did a bunk, to get whatever story there might be. I found that Tammy was unofficially the head girl and had come here with Joan from Beatty. Tammy was genuinely and wearingly vivacious. They seemed great friends.

Tammy decided that I was getting bored, so she’d come up with a plan to let me get a feel for what went on in the House after dinner, though of course I couldn’t join in because I didn’t have a Work Card. She would dress me up in lingerie and I could hang around the bar and the edges of the lounge and get a feel for what went on. I was reluctant, but I managed not to let it show, and I knew that I needed to get firsthand experience of how a brothel worked if I was going to write about it. So after dinner I went to her room and she found me a voluminous but fairly modest baby doll nightie to wear and then did my makeup and gave me some low mules for footwear.

I haven’t described my appearance yet, but I guess I should now. Although it embarrasses me to admit it, because I’m determined to succeed in life using my brains instead of my body, I actually look like a stereotypical California surfer girl: blonde, 5’7”, 36-25-37, 125 lbs. with C-cup breasts. There, you have it: the full catastrophe. I’ve been slouching, dressing down, hiding from boys and holing up in my room studying since I was thirteen. Now when I looked at myself in Tammy’s full length I saw a brainless bombshell. Damn it, this was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. When this was over maybe I’d cut my hair to a buzz cut and turn dyke. Lipstick dyke with my luck, I supposed. My homegirl Gertrude would disown me. But duty called and there was nothing for it but to grin and go out with Tammy into the business end of the brothel.

We went to the bar and each had a glass of something pretending to be champagne. Tammy warned me that working nights were long and it was a very bad idea to get into the habit of drinking for courage or to pass the time. She explained the system of line ups, where a buzzer would sound when gentlemen came in the door and all the girls not otherwise engaged had five minutes to form a line in the lounge. Each girl would then step forward and tell the guy (or guys) her name, simper a bit and step back. The guy would then choose a girl to open negotiations with, go to the bar to ponder, or leave. If a girl was chosen she’d take the guy to a negation room, where they’d discuss what he wanted to do and they’re come to an agreement on a price, based on what he wanted and how long he wanted to spend doing it. Then she’d do a dick check, to see that he was free of disease, and then collect his money and take it to the sift manager – usually Joan – and return to take the guy to a bedroom. Condoms were mandated by law for oral, vaginal and anal sex, and the guy had to wear a rubber glove if he wanted to finger her pussy, or use a dental dam if he wanted to eat her. There was a lot more, but I gave up trying to follow it when the buzzer went off. Tammy had me wait at the bar while she went off to the lineup. She wasn’t picked and was back with me in a couple minutes. I was trying to remember it all so I could transcribe it later, though I’d noticed in my surfing that there were entries on brothel etiquette. I’d avoided than because I‘d always found trying to sort out what fork to use next tedious and I hoped not to have to get into the brothel equivalent.

The buzzer went off again and Tammy left for the lineup, but she was back in a minute with a guy in tow. “Hank,” she said, “this is Jessie. She’s new and I’m sort of breaking her in. You don’t mind if she comes along with us for a little bit so she can see how things are done. It’ll be like having an extra girl for free, kind of.” Hank, a handsome, tall and lanky cowboy type, was very biddable and off we went.

When we got into the negation room she whispered into my ear, “Just smile and look sexy.

“So, Hank, what do you think you’d like to do?”

“Well, I don’t have all that much money, so I guess just straight.”

“Would you like like thirty minutes for $300? We could have a really good party.” she said.

“Well,” he drawled, “I don’t know as I got enough for that.”

“How about $200 for twenty minutes? That’d be neat!”

“Well,” he said, “I guess I could go that.”

“Great!” she said. “I’ll just do a check and we’ll get down to having some fun,” whereupon she got a big ceramic basin from someplace and filled it with water and brought it to the counter near where we were all standing. Then she came up with a towel, a small bottle of soap and some wet wipes. She then put one hand on the bulge of his penis growing in his Levis while she used her other hand to undo his trousers. She pushed his pants and briefs down around his thighs and began a close scrutiny of his pubic hair, penis and testicles. I’d been standing there grinning and staring fascinated at the choreographed performance through all this, but she now turned to me and said, “See, you want to make sure there are no sores or anything anyplace and you want to start getting Hank nice and hard, like this, and try to get some pre-cum, just like this, see? Yup, you’re fine Hank, and how! If you give me the money I’ll take it to Joan and we can start our party.”

He paid her and she disappeared for a minute while I stood there smiling ingratiatingly and staring at his semi-erect penis. Then she came back in and pulled up his pants and said, “Come on. I want to show Jessie how to put on a condom and then we can really have fun!” She grasped his dick through his flies and drew us both a few yards down the hallway to one of the lushly furnished bedrooms that were reserved for things other than sleeping. Once we were through the door she was out of her clothes in seconds, and starting taking off Hank’s. She stroked him gently and cooed, “Do you like that honey? It sure looks like it.” She giggled and said, “Except it looks like Jessie sure has a lot of clothes on. I think she could at least show us all her tits, don’t you, Hank? Wouldn’t you like that, honey? I bet it’d make you super hard extra fast.”

He nodded as his mouth dropped open and his breathing grew ragged. Tammy turned to me and said, “Well, Jessie, don’t you want to help Hank out? Jessie’s got to have super nice tits.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off his hardening cock, and my hands moved to take off my nightie and flimsy bra. Hank stared at my tits while Tammy brought him to full erection.

“Now watch this, Jessie,” she said as she took a condom from a bowl and tore off its foil wrapping. “You hold this nipple thing on

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THE END

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