Frequently Asked Questions – For the Ladies
Thank you for your interest in joining the team at Donna’s Ranch.
Prostitution first came to Elko County, Nevada in the 1860’s. Donna’s was the first house established by the Central Pacific Railroad to service the needs of its men installing the intercontinental railroad – 1.912 miles of track from Oakland to Council Bluffs, Iowa
The source of the Humboldt River is spring and swampy area just west of the present town – once called Humboldt Wells. In the late 19th century the town was burning – and a frantic telegraph was sent that said simply “WELLS IS BURNING.” After the town was re-built it was simply referred to as Wells.
Once the railroad was completed the area became a major watering station and transfer point to load cattle onto the Central Pacific. The cowboys would be paid for the herds, and “with their pockets filled with money and their hearts with desire” they would often visit Donna’s. Local ranches would establish a “line of credit” with the house by “donating” a few head of cattle.
During the Great Depression Donna’s made major donations of food and money to help prevent starvation in Wells.
rom 1919 to 1935 world champion boxer Jack Dempsey owned Donna’s but faced criticism and eventually sold it.
The last 154 years:
- 1867 to 1919 – People loosely affiliated with railroads
- 1919 to 1935 – Maxine and Jack Dempsey
- 1935 to 1955 – Hazel ?, then Ida ?
- 1955 to about 1965 – Helen Smalley
- 1965 to 1971 – Dorothy and Roy Jett
- 1971 to 1987 – Helen Smalley and Ada Hull
- 1987 to Present – Me, Geoff Arnold
What is required to work at Donna’s Ranch?
- You must be 21 or older.
- You must have a photo ID, usually a State drivers’ license or State ID card to verify your age.
- You need your Social Security card for the City license.
- You have to be “cleared” with a current doctor’s clearance or medical – details below
- You have to pass a background check through the FBI fingerprint system
- You have to have a City of Wells, Nevada “Work Card”
- You need a Nevada State Independent Contractor’s License
Comments regarding age
Just like professional athletes, this is a game that goes to the young and the swift, in this case also to the pretty, sexy, alluring, hot lady with a sparkling personality and a good attitude.
Per the City of Wells ordinance, the minimum age is 21, however most working girls who work at Donna’s have been at least 24. The average age has been about 35 to 37. The oldest working girls have been about 62. The three who were 62 included an Asian and a black gal who had youthful skin and who most people couldn’t tell their age. There was also a German lady who had giant knockers and a very sweet personality. You can look through the picture gallery to see typical ages and make judgements about typical personalities over a couple of decades.
The Girl Next Door
Our ideal has been “the girl next door” as glorified in the World War II pinup art by Gil Elvgren. In addition to photos of Donna’s Girls, we used to have framed art of Gil Elvgren pinup girls. This would be similar to the drawings of Vargas, although a bit less modern. This girl next door was young, innocent, beautiful and often caught in an innocent compromising position that simply highlighted her inherent beauty. This was the girl for whom the American servicemen in World War II went to war, and she is as American as the flag and Apple Pie!
When to Plan Your Arrival
Plan to arrive at Donna’s on a Sunday night, Monday or Tuesday. The medical check, the fingerprints and the local and State licenses take a few days, and if anything goes wrong (like a computer system being down or an office being closed) then you want a little leeway to make sure you can “get on the floor” before the weekend.
The Medical Clearance
Most of our medical clearances go through Veronica Stevens at Chimney Rock Medical Clinic in Wells. 197 Baker Street, Wells, NV 89835 (775) 752-2111 We actually prefer this because it is easier than a trip to Elko. The process of working girl medical clearances is standardized throughout the State, and the doctors involved are approved to perform the specialized medical checks. Veronica is helpful and very important to us, so treat her respectfully and well. As soon as you arrive, the manager will make your appointment at a clinic, or after you have started, you should make it yourself.
Working girls are required to have a blood test once per month, and a culture every week for the other weeks of the month. The day and date you go for your medical checkup establishes your “Doctor Day.” Your subsequent blood test is due on the same date the following month. After your initial checkup and clearance, your culture is due on that day of the week the following week. For example, if you go for the initial test on a Tuesday, then the culture is due on the following Tuesday. For your initial test, you are “cleared to work” when your clearance comes back usually the following day. Your clearance is faxed or emailed to the City of Wells and to Donna’s. Once you are cleared and in the house, then you remain cleared. As long as you go to the doctor on your Doctor Day in the subsequent week, then you remain continuously cleared. If you miss your Doctor Day and go to the clinic the next day, then your clearance expired at midnight because you were late, and you can’t work the floor until your new clearance comes through usually the next day. If you miss a weekly culture test, then your blood is still good for the rest of the month. If you’re gone for a week in the middle of the month, you only have to test for the culture when you start up again, although you will have to wait for the results to come back from the lab before your clearance is validated.
Many of the working girls also go to Dr. Louis Bergeron at Pioneer Urgent Care, 160 12th Street, Elko, NV 89801. 775-738-2034 Dr. Bergeron has been an important part of the medical clearance process for many years.
If you are coming from Las Vegas or Reno, there are other medical clinics that do medical checks which are also valid, but they’re a little harder to get organized.
Blood tests test for HIV and syphilis. Since the beginning of legalization in Nevada about 1971 through the efforts mostly of Joe Conforte of the Mustang Ranch in Reno, there has never been a legal Nevada working girl who has converted from Negative to Positive on her HIV test! This speaks volumes towards the effectiveness of latex condoms for preventing the transmission of HIV. It also means that statistically speaking, the Nevada legal brothels are a safer place to play than monogamous marriages. (Because married people commonly mess around. But we won’t go there.) Syphilis is also incredibly rare. Several years ago the State Health Department called upon George Flint, the Brothel Association lobbyist to help figure out a syphilis outbreak, and he successfully did so. At that time, there were only 7 cases of syphilis in the entire population of Nevada for an entire year. This could have gotten worse in recent years with all of the illegal immigration, however it’s still not common. The cost for the blood and culture visit is about $120 with Veronica in Wells, and about $160 with Dr. Bergeron in Elko. Please make your appointments as early in the day as possible so you are finished before the time cutoff for shipments of samples to the lab usually in Reno.
The weekly medical culture tests are for chlamydia and gonorrhea, the two most common STD’s and cost about $60 or $75.
Comments on Infrequency of Failed Medicals
Observing over a period of about 20 years, I can say that failed medical tests are very infrequent. They almost never happen, and certainly not from customers. When a failed medical pops up at the State Lab, the phones explode, like NORAD with a Russian missile launch! The State calls the City, the Sheriff’s Department, the Brothel and eventually the working girl. In that case, the working girl has to go back to the Medical Clinic immediately to be treated, and then she can’t work until she can pass a follow-up medical test after about a week.
Over about 20 years, there were about 16 instances of test failures, and all but about 4 were from the same source: the boyfriend! And of these 16, 4 were from one girl and 2 were from another. The girl goes home on vacation and her boyfriend has been messing around. She comes back in after vacation and goes to the doctor for her test, and the next day, the boyfriend is caught. I have had the amazing experience of listening to a one-sided conversation as the working girl cusses out the boyfriend on the phone. In the case of the girl who failed 4 tests, she was a member of a Spokane gang, and she had multiple partners. It stopped when the Sheriff’s Department told her that the next time she failed a test, they would pull her work card. There is only one time I remember a working girl getting something from a customer in 20 years, and that was when the condom broke.
Fingerprints and FBI Check
The City of Wells requires this check requiring fingerprinting at the Elko County Sheriff’s office in Elko. Elko is 50 west of Wells on I-80. Exit 303, go South, cross Idaho Street, one block on your right, through the main door, past the pictures of old Sheriffs, first door on your right. The cost is $40.25. They are looking for domestic violence, drugs and warrants mostly. If you have warrants for old tickets, clear them up before you come, because otherwise they will show up. You get a fingerprint clearance paper of some sorts which becomes part of the City of Wells licensing. The City of Wells currently charges $75, although that includes the fingerprint fee, so the additional amount due at the City is currently $34.75.
Nevada State Independent Contractor’s License – $200
This was really a revenue producing change the State made years ago when the Casinos got tired of paying for as much as they do. It’s a pain, but required by the City to get your work card. You can go on the Nevada Secretary of State’s website known as “Silverflume” and get the license yourself if you want to. You enter your real name, address and working name. Don’t say you are exempt at the beginning. That exemption is for somebody else. You type in your signature and pay with a credit card. The license is good for a year. Print out your license and receipt under the documents tab on the top right. You can print out copies of the license for about 60 days if you need to, but you should print out your license and save it. This is your license, not Donna’s, and you can use it to work at any other legal brothel if you want to. You could also use it for any other typical independent contractor type business.
If you don’t have a computer or the $200, we’ll help you with this if you’d like after your other paperwork is ready to go to the City. It takes about a half hour.
Getting Your License
The Wells City Hall is the nicest new building on 6th Street, the main drag in Wells. Through the main door, then left. You have to arrive before 4 PM. You have to have your Social Security card, or at least a copy or photo of it. You can e-mail or airdrop it to them. They will take your medical clearance, your fingerprint report, and your State license, and they will take your picture and give you a yellow laminated City License. The City License, the State License and your medical clearance then go into the Medical Box behind the bar. This Medical Box is checked weekly to make sure that all of the working girls are “cleared to work.” When you eventually leave or retire, this card is confidential and is retained by the City. The City will not give out information related to brothel work cards.
Your Room
There are 12 rooms at Donna’s. You will get your own room. You get to decorate it as you like. All the rooms are slightly different, but they all have their own sink, mirrors, vanities, chest of drawers, closets, beds, comforters, pillows and so forth. Usually you will have a 13 x 19 color portrait of yourself as part of the decorations, sometimes more than one. We usually give you a bunch of wallet size photos of yourself to use for promotional purposes.
What do the customers look like?
If you go back into history the first customers were railroad workers. The Central Pacific Railroad provided Booze, Women and Gambling to their construction workers while building the transcontinental railroad. If you think about it, that’s still the Nevada tradition: Booze, Women and Gambling. After the completion of the railroad, Donna’s continued and the customer base shifted to railroad workers and cowboys. Wells was a major railroad stop due to the availability of the water for the steam engines, and ranching grew rapidly around Wells. Back in the beginning, before sagebrush, the land around Wells was largely pristine grassland, and the cattle herds were thousands of head larger than they are today. Wells is still a ranching community. Shortly after the completion of the railroad, Highway 40 grew to replace the California Trail which the 49ers and the wagon trains had used for travelling to California for about 3 decades.
Highway 40 grew into a major east/west highway by World War II, and during World War II Donna’s was supposed to be closed, but it really was still open. Many a serviceman snuck over from the B-29 training base in Wendover to sneak into Donna’s back door. As the highway grew in importance and traffic, truckers and travelers became more important at Donna’s.
This trend continued as Highway 40 turned into Interstate 80, the busiest east/west highway in the U.S. In addition, Highway 93, a north/south highway grew in importance recently becoming the Canada to Mexico NAFTA highway. Wells is at the intersection of I-80 and Highway 93, therefore the foundation of Donna’s customer base is truckers, travelers, salesmen, cowboys, railroad workers, miners, and curiosity seekers. Now, the traffic count at freeway exit 352 in Wells is about 60,000 vehicles per month, including over 30,000 trucks. Then to that base you add the Salt Lake market and the Wendover gambling market. These are professional people, couples, lawyers, judges, accountants, politicians, transportation workers, construction workers, service workers, musicians, real estate pros, students, researchers, farmers, State workers and some religious people. (The most legendary patron in Donna’s history was “Old George” a Mormon from Salt Lake who could come in and book all of the girls!) Many of the truckers are ex-military, so I’ve met many 101st Airborne, Army Rangers, Seals and Green Berets in the bar. They’re still in shape and active, and some years ago, one of the magazines rated truckers at the top of the “Best Lovers” list.
In recent years with the implementation of Electronic Logbooks and GPS for truckers, the prevalence of truckers at Donna’s has diminished. Because Donna’s is politically incorrect, many trucks are not supposed to be in the Donna’s 6-acred parking lot, so the drivers often have to come to Donna’s from one of the three truck stops via a shuttle. The customers are now becoming younger and more diverse.
Therefore, in answer to the girls’ question as to what the guys generally look like, they are usually older and nicer, not young and crazy. The young guys can go party at any bar, and generally don’t need to come to a brothel. The guys in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s are divorced a couple of times, maybe in search of companionship and are more often appreciative of some attention and companionship.
Still there are often some 21-year-olds who are curious, some virgins who want to try their first encounter, some dads who bring in their 21-year-old sons, and some college students who are just curious. (There was one grandfather, father and son trio I remember where Donna’s had been a tradition. Remember, there is no one alive on the face of the Earth who was alive during the first party at Donna’s in 1869!)
What should I bring with me?
Don’t forget your Social Security card for licensing at the City of Wells. Then bring your phone, probably a laptop. Donna’s has WIFI. Clothes are important! Bring at least one outfit preferably more than one, and some high heels in order to look good standing in line up. The rooms all have relatively new TV’s. If you have a car, it would be great to bring it. If you don’t have a car, it should be a high-priority goal to get one. Girls with a car are more independent, not tied down and generally happier. It can be frustrating if you need something like cigarettes or supplies, and you’re dependent upon someone else for a ride to the store. Elko is 50 miles West. Twin Falls, Idaho is 115 miles North. Salt Lake City is 184 miles East. Las Vegas is 382 miles South. For more fun, you might want to bring a girlfriend. You can’t bring boyfriends, kids or pets, although in some instances working girls have rented rooms at local motels. Since the freeway went around the old Highway 40 Main Street of Wells about thirty years ago there are still several old World War II era hotels along Main Street. Some operate as typical motels and some have been converted to long-term rentals. For supplies you need condoms, baby wipes, lube, personal care items such as toothpaste, shampoo and makeup. For these supplies Wells has a normal supermarket and a Dollar Store. You can also order everything over the Internet and have it delivered to Your Name, c/o Donna’s Ranch, PO Box 578, Wells, NV 89835 through the Post Office, or by UPS or Fedex to Donna’s Ranch, 679 8th Street, Wells, NV 89835. Therefore, you should bring your cell phone and a laptop or tablet computer. There is WIFI in the house.
What is the “Line Up”?
The line up is a tradition among the girls which comes out of history. In history, the houses, or “Parlor Houses” were the high-class establishments where the more refined, educated and classier working girls worked. There were cathouses all over the West: in the mining camps of Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, California and Alaska. There were houses in the big cities of Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. The importance of brothels in the settlement of the West has largely been written out of history, but the working girls were important, even essential!
The line up came out of this tradition. One of the most important things inside a brothel is that policies are “Fair.” Because there is competition among the women, there must be a “level playing field” when it comes to the guys choosing which girl they want to party with. Of course, on the guy’s part there needs to be some chemistry, although it could certainly be said that the selection process is superficial.
When the guys come in, the bartender (who is really the acting madam) will ask the guy if he “would like to see the girls.” He will say “yes” or “no” he’d just like to take his time and have a drink first. If he doesn’t want to have a line up, then the girls are free to “mingle” in the bar with the customers to get to know them.
If the guy would like to see the girls, then the bartender will “ring the lineup bell” which rings all over the house and on the patio. At that time the girls gather in the parlor off the bar, and when they are ready, they walk into the bar in a line where they stop, look at the guy and one at a time, say their name. “I’m Bambi” “I’m Faline” and so forth.
The bartender will say to the guy, “You can choose a girl, and she will take you on a tour of the house.”
If they guy chooses you, then you take him by the hand and take him on a tour of the house where you might tell him a little bit of history, ask some questions, show him the fantasy rooms, patio and hot tub, and then end up in your room to find out what he is thinking. That’s where the two of you discuss services, prices, etc. and decide whether or not you want to “party.” More later.
Isn’t this kind of a “meat market”? Yes, but it works, and the girls generally insist on this tradition.
What types of Services are on the Menu?
Here is a general listing of Services:
Outdates -= Where you and the customer are allowed to go to dinner or gambling outside of Donna’s. There are safeguards in place for your safety. Outdates are not common because they take a lot of time and therefore can be expensive.
Overnight parties — In the house in your room or in a fantasy room.
VIP Room Parties — In a fantasy room usually combined with hot tub or movies. These might be all types of fantasy parties, two-girl parties, all night parties, bondage, S&M, couples parties or three-ways.
Fetish or BDSM — Certain girls specialize in this broad specialty.
Hot tub Parties — The hot tub is big. It can handle 8 or 10 people. It could also be solo for a customer with a sore back. It is also used for “Soak and Poke” promotions where the soak might be free, but the poke would be extra
Bed and Breakfast — Sometimes couples might want to stay in a Fantasy Room without a girl for a special occasion or to say they had done it. This could easily lead to a 3-way.
Movies — This could be all kind of movies, from just hanging out to porn.
Sex Toys — There is a lot of variety here in combination with other things, like massage.
How prevalent are various types of sexual activity?
Here is a rough listing of sexual activities and their estimated percentage of the total. What this says is that most activities are pretty common or ordinary. This came from a discussion with some of the long-time working girls and actual activities are mixed up and variable. Massages, hot tub sessions and sex toys are of course sprinkled through all of the activities, and often one activity flows into another, so this is just a rough approximation so you can get an idea as to what goes on. Notice that the common, ordinary activities (blow jobs, half & half and straight lays) total about 82%. I suspect that with the implementation of the improved website and the Australian pricing model to greatly improve the remuneration of the girls for high-end parties, that the percentages for the Fetish / BDSM parties, couples adventure parties and specialty appointments will go up dramatically, and the old fashioned sex percentages will go down. I expect that the customers will shift away from the freeway traffic towards destination adventures from the Salt Lake valley and from Southern Idaho. We’ve already had people who have travelled from LA, the San Francisco Bay area and from Las Vegas. Because we are still a “Country Brothel” we are still a better deal than the bigger “Convention Brothels.”
Activity Percentage
Talking 2%
Massage 5%
Hand Job 5%
Blow Job 31%
Half and Half 26%
Straight Lay 25%
Fetish / BDSM 3%
Couple Parties 3%
100%
Are Condoms Required?
Yes condoms are required by Nevada State Law. This is the primary protection for the girl. The weekly medical tests and clearances are the primary protection for the guy. Are the condoms required to be latex condoms? No, but about 99.5% of the time they are latex condoms. Rarely, people with allergies to latex can use “natural membrane condoms” or “lambskin condoms” but it is not common.
For girl on girl parties a “dental dam” is required. Girl on girl parties are also pretty rare. Lesbians don’t seem to commonly frequent brothels. For example, we have a “VIP Card” which is similar to a “buy ten get one free” Subway sandwich card. In our case it’s “party 10 times and get $100 off the next party.” A full VIP card turns in to a $100 bill and is dropped just like cash. Before restarting for the Covid shutdown, we used to have about 6,000 VIP cards stored at the bar. Out of those 6,000 VIP cards, two were for women. Do you have to do women? No, just like everything else, you don’t have to do activities you don’t want to do. It’s often true that in couples parties, the working girls won’t go down on women. When you are negotiating parties, please make sure that the details are fully understood in advance.
Do I have to have sex with whomever comes in?
No, you don’t have to party with anyone or you don’t have to do or participate in any activities which you are not comfortable with. The brothel is a down-to-earth and real place. It is not progressive, modern or “woke.” You get to decide. You won’t be called racist, homophobic or sexist when it comes to who you are willing to party with or what you are willing to do. Your personal preferences, choices and freedom are more important than political correctness. You go girl!
Generally, if a guy is too big, or if he wants to do something with which you are not comfortable, then you will “walk him” or introduce him to another girl who you know can handle his size or otherwise specializes in or is comfortable doing what you prefer not to do. It won’t take you long before you will know the preferences and specialties of the other girls in the house.
How much can I make?
It seems like there is a different answer to this question for every girl who has ever worked at Donna’s, but I’ll try to give you a realistic answer. Is it possible to say that Personality is more important than looks? Probably not, looks are important. If guys can get it on with a beautiful woman, then they will break down the door to see her. Age, weight, skin tone, hair, in-shape body, figure and classic beauty are all important. Still, it’s amazing at how a friendly, bubbly personality simply works wonders! Attitude is very important to everything in life! It’s important to remember that Donna’s is a “Country Brothel” and not a “Convention Brothel” which I will explain later, and therefore the really big 1099’s, like $400,000 or greater, are not very likely, but possible, depending upon how often a person worked. About the biggest 1099’s I would see were about $160,000, but that was always for girls who were only working part time. Girls have a tendency to work for a while, 2 or 3 weeks, make some money, and then go home for a while until they needed to come back. Girls most often treat it as a short-term, easy way to make money instead of a job or a career. There was a 25-year-old black gal who came in to make enough money to pay for a house, then she retired. She got a $7,000 boob job, and I’d have to say that it paid for itself. I thought the boob job was terrible because you couldn’t even give her a hug because it looked like something might pop! But she had a goal, was serious, paid off her house and returned home. There were a couple of other working girls who were also serious about their work, and they retired after make some good money. One of the remarkable girls was a sister to a good-looking blond long-time Danna’s girl. Both sisters were fun and bubbly. She was probably 35, blond, short-haired, Mormon from Utah, and she looked like a reasonably good-looking housewife. But she liked sex, could have real orgasms from sex with the guys, and she was a screamer. The guys loved her, and she built up an adoring list of followers very quickly. I remember counting down her pay envelope full of $100 bills like they were $1 bills with 50 or 60 of them, or $6,000 per week. That meant she was booking about $2,000 per day, half of which would hit her pay envelope. If you annualized that, it would be about $300,000 per year, which wasn’t bad. She didn’t stay around very long. She ran off with a customer (which is frowned upon) and the guy bought her a car and a house. She was a remarkable combination of a sparkling personality with fairly normal looks.
Some of the really beautiful girls made a lot of money but didn’t stick around for very long. In many cases they hooked up with some guy (usually not from Donna’s) and I don’t know what happened to them.
Creating “The Party”
How much you make also depends upon your ability to work together, keep your problems at home, and how much you can help create “The Party.” At Donna’s we are a dramatic production, we’re all on stage. There’s no love sold in a cathouse, only sex. It’s of paramount importance to create a fun, unique party atmosphere where the guys can come in, be entertained, escape their problems, watch an interesting world go by and to get laid. That’s “the party” and it’s created by all of the girls together, along with Patti, Fanny and the bartenders. At Donna’s, I believe it takes six girls in house to create “the party” because all girls have ups and downs, and not everyone can be “up” all the time. It takes a variety of girls on the “menu”: black, white, Asian, Hispanic, blond, brunette, redhead, big girl, skinny girl, real boobs, fake boobs and so forth. The ideal range is 6 to 8 girls. If we’re down to 3, we’re out of business. More than 8 at this time is too many. It takes a commitment on the part of everyone to make “the party” happen. Kenny Merrill, my predecessor, used to tell me that “Donna’s has got kind of a song, the juke box is playing, there is laughter in the bar, and when you get it right, you can hear it playing.” And Kenny was right. Creating “the party” is an important part of your making money.
Country Brothels vs. Convention Brothels
This has to do with the markets and customers. Convention Brothels are the brothels outside of Las Vegas, Reno and to some degree Carson City. For these brothels, their customers are dependent upon the cities and often large conventions. Reno has Hot August Nights for the cars, Rolling Thunder for the motorcycles and the Reno Air Races for the airplanes. Reno and these conventions historically made Joe Conforte’s Mustang Ranch the number one brothel. Conforte was shut down by the IRS for not reporting income. Much later, the Mustang was purchased from the IRS by Lance Gilman and moved down the Truckee River from Exit 7 to Exit 14 where it was collocated with his beautiful Wildhorse. Lance is a good guy with a classy operation.
Las Vegas has numerous very large conventions, by far the largest in the State. After Mustang was shut down by the IRS, Chicken Ranch in Pahrump, 45 miles outside of Las Vegas, took over as the leading brothel. Sometime later, Sheri’s Ranch built a beautiful facility right next to Chicken Ranch and arguably took over the number one spot. Then Dennis Hof through creative and dynamic promotion of the Moonlight Bunny Ranch bought Kitties, Kit Kat, Sagebrush and 3 smaller brothels outside of Pahrump on the way to Beatty, including what is now the Alien Cathouse.
At these “convention brothels” the customers are primarily businessmen from the conventions or visitors to the big cities who come out to the brothels infrequently to party. Although their trips are more infrequent, they generally have more money to spend.
The “Country Brothels” are those brothels stretched along the lonely roads of Nevada, along I-80 for Wells, Elko, Carlin, Battle Mountain and Winnemucca, or Highway 93 for Ely, and to some degree along Highway 95 between Reno and Las Vegas. Customers for the “Country Brothels” are mostly blue collar workers including truckers, miners, railroad workers, construction workers, farmers, ranchers and other travelers. These customers generally don’t have as much money to spend as the convention goers. This difference in typical customers leads to a typical difference in brothel lineups. Typically the “convention brothels” will have a younger, skinnier, center-fold quality girl in their lineups. When the girls are a little older and heavier, and when they have trouble standing in the larger lineups, they will migrate to the smaller “country brothels.” Then this difference in the typical girl in line up leads to a pricing difference. We’re not supposed to talk about pricing, online but it would be fair to talk about some historical facts, and roughly ten years ago, say 2011, the girls in the country brothels would price themselves out at roughly $300 per hour, while the girls in the convention brothels were trying to get $900. You can factor this historical data up somewhat for inflation to get an idea of current pricing. Shorter times will have a higher hourly rate, while for longer times the average hourly rate would be lower, i.e. you’ll get a better deal as the time gets longer.
Also, from the standpoint of pricing, ten years ago, the arithmetic average for the cost of a party at Donna’s was about $440. The house minimum was $100, and in the summer there were an average of 22 parties per day. That meant with about 6 girls in house, there would have been about 4 parties per day per girl. Keep in mind that prettier girls would do more parties, so you might adjust your expectations up or down based upon your looks.
Independent Contractors vs. Employees
Working girls are independent contractors, not employees. This is due to some complications with respect to Workers’ Compensation Insurance, whereby even in the assigned risk pool for the State, the underwriters at the insurance companies will not write workers’ compensation insurance on working girls. The IRS accepts this, and the issue has gone up the flagpole twice a long time ago. As a result, all of the major brothels issue 1099’s to their working girls. Only a couple of the smaller brothels don’t comply with this IRS mandate, and those who don’t are at some risk of being beat up by the IRS. As independent contractors, the working girls are responsible for the expenses and activities necessary to operate their businesses. That includes supplies such as condoms, lube, baby wipes, sexy clothes, shoes, makeup, Dr’s visits, travel, phone and so forth. Because working girls are independent contractors, they are not covered by workers’ comp or Nevada unemployment. They are also not covered by some of the employee benefits which are sometimes associated with employees. Once again, this all flows from history with the Nevada State Industrial Insurance Program, the individual Workers’ Comp insurance company underwriters and the IRS.
Your Income Taxes
As a legal independent contractor, you need to file your tax return just like everyone else. Nearly all working girls file a Schedule C with their 1040 showing 1099’s from various brothels as income and writing off all “ordinary and necessary” costs as expenses. Those expenses include auto, travel, supplies, hair, nails, work clothes, makeup, medical exams, licenses, tax prep, cell phone, promotion and whatever other expense are necessary to run your business as an independent working girl. Your “net income” will be subject to income tax and self-employment tax. Self-employment tax is expensive, but it counts towards your quarters of service and contributions to the Social Security system. That should come in handy someday. It’s important to file your tax returns because I’ve known a couple of working girls who didn’t file and then suffered greatly when the IRS eventually caught up with them due to the fact that their income was reported on 1099’s.
Drugs and Alcohol
Prescription drugs under control are OK. Illegal drugs are not OK because we try to keep the house calm and under control. Illegal drugs make it out of control, therefore we can’t keep working girls around who have drug problems. With respect to alcohol, we have traditionally worked with working girls who have controllable drinking problems. Usually the madam and through her, the bartenders will figure out how much alcohol a girl can handle, and then work with the situation. This is usually spacing out some drinks through the day, plus allowing some customers to buy you drinks. You have to trust the bartenders’ judgement as to when you’re cut off, or the whole plan won’t work. The house has to stay under control.
Periods — How are monthly periods handled?
Different girls handle periods differently based upon their own experience and level of discomfort. You can talk to Fanny or Patti about this. In most cases we just go along with what the girl wants to do, or you could say we go with the flow. Most girls shut down for a few days. Some girls stay in their room. Others take a bit of time off. They might go to Wendover, Elko or Jackpot. Some girls might do a combination with a bit of time in their room plus taking a 24 or a 48 bit of time off.
“Taking a 24” means taking a day off
Sometimes you just need a day off. Sometimes you might get burned out, or mad, or sick or for whatever reason you might just want to take 24 hours off. In this case there is a provision for “taking a 24.” Also, there is a grace period of another 24 hours to get back, so taking a 24 might really mean taking 48 hours off.
What if I have a Pimp?
Actually through the years, we have helped working girls become more independent and not be dependent upon pimps. Pimps are not allowed to stay in town, and they are not allowed to hang around Donna’s. If working girls have pimps, they usually stay in their home town.
The relationship of working girls to their pimps is another thing which comes out of history, and it is an interesting study. As I see it, the girls do this because in some ways it is easier for them, and in that neighborhood there is significant social pressure for illegal sexual activities to operate in a certain way. And it’s also true that from the girls I’ve known, many working girls really like their pimp. It’s often a love / hate relationship, but then aren’t all relationships that way to some degree? A story: There was an attractive, skinny, blond working girl from Iowa who had a pimp. She was one of the girls who I listened to cussing out her “boyfriend” after returning from time off when she couldn’t pass the medical check. She was a successful working girl and made pretty good money. At home she drove a Mercedes, and she had purchased her pimp a fancy, black pickup truck. One time she returned home and discovered her man riding around in his pickup truck with another woman, so…………
She took her Mercedes and rammed it into the pickup truck! I always wondered how it was possible for a girl to smash up all of her own stuff when she got mad! The legal brothels are kind of a halfway house to normalcy, and they help working girls in many ways to get away from the illegal world and back into what might be considered normal, legal society, and in this picture, pimps aren’t necessary.
How about College Girls working to pay off student loans?
As long as the college girls are at least 21 and comply with the licensing and medical requirements, this is a great way to pay off student loans. Of course young girls are always going to be very popular and have the guys lined up for them. It seems like modern young women are just as sexually active as the young guys are, so it does make some sense. When I’ve given tours to groups like golf associations and the Senior Pro Rodeo people, at the end of the tour I ask people if there was anything which surprises them. The most frequent comment from the women, who seem to be a lot more “with it” than the men on tour, is “You mean I’ve been giving it away all of these years?” Over the years I’ve had some programs where I paid the tuition for some of the working girls who said they wanted to develop some alternative careers such as accounting or office work, and they haven’t been too successful. The girls talk about it but don’t follow through. In the end, working girls seem to like being working girls because they think it’s easy money and they enjoy the party. In the end it seems that most of the girls from the past eventually move on, hook up with a guy, have kids, and often become very traditional.
It’s also true that most young girls never think about being paid for sex. There are a few who think about it, and generally they are curious about just having a lot of sex. They call up sometimes, but they seem to be more interested in coming in for a lot of sex or a variety of sex, or a variety of guys than they are at the prospect of setting a financial goal. But occasionally they will come in to give it a try. It would be fair to say though that the usual path is for strip clubs, pole dancing, easy money, lap dances, then escorting, usually independent escorting, and then wanting to go legal because they don’t want to keep getting busted or have their faces show up on arrest reports or even TV.
Pricing Structure: — Experimenting with the “Australian Model” – Better for the Working Girls
Life goes on, and things always change. It happens that when a cute working girl hijacked our old website (which she had created) and forced us to start over, that we stumbled upon a sophisticated and brilliant web guy who has relevant experience, thinks outside the box and may succeed at bringing us out of the dark ages of cowboys and steam trains. Craig started pitching for some way to sweeten the pot for the working girls. (Notice that’s “for the working girls” not “of the working girls!) His researching how it’s done around the world led us to want to try out the Australian Pricing Model in which we simply charge the working girls by the hour for renting a room. What they do in the room and what they charge for their service is their business, and therefore, they keep amounts in excess of the standard room rental charges. This could result in a substantial increase in the split retained by working girls over the traditional and nearly universal Nevada brothel pricing model, especially for high-end or specialty parties.
Again, we’re not supposed to discuss specific prices either over the phone or the Internet, only generalities, however, this explanation should be sufficient.
The traditional brothel pricing model has always been a 50/50 split with the girl. Often the girls and sometimes various books have taken the position that this was excessive. The word was “OMG! The rotten house takes half the girls’ money!” This position was naïve and shortsighted at best. The biggest issue is that a brothel license is a restricted license, similar to a liquor license. Liquor licenses around where I’m located go for about $200,000. Brothel licenses in Nevada sold over the last twenty years or so have ranged between about $300,000 for some of the smaller houses and about $5,000,000 for one of the big houses outside of Las Vegas. Because prospective brothel buyers have to buy an existing license, the payments for the brothel purchase are a major expense. Brothel licenses are not cheap. Then there are all the other expenses which the house has to pay in order to give the working girls a clean, safe, legal place to work: 24 hour wages, managers, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales tax (on the bar,) liability insurance, fire insurance, workers’ comp insurance, food, booze, furniture, tools, phone, internet, website, water, sewer, electricity, food, repairs, advertising, signage, promotional items, computer systems, software, license fees, auto, travel and working girl assistance and support. Over the years I paid over $106,000 just in bad debts from bailing working girls out of problems and saving them from their emergencies and crises. People who criticize owners simply don’t understand or appreciate their commitment and efforts to help the working girls chase their dreams. There is more on this in the Men’s section on the Nevada Brothel Model. The legal brothel model is good for everyone, and it works, but it requires a significant input from the brothel owner.
As mentioned earlier, the old “Country Brothel” prices were roughly $300 per hour. Now, some 10 years later, they are probably somewhere around $500 per hour. The old house minimum was $100. Now the house minimum is $200. We are going to experiment with the “Australian Pricing Model” which will work around a billing rate of about $400 per hour for a party with a working girl. The girl pays for room rent, in this case $200 of the $400 or 50/50. If the girl booked $500 for that hour party, her split would be $300 to the girl and $200 to the house, or 60/40. If the girl booked a two hour party with a “golden shower” for $5,000, then the split would be 400 x 2 hours = 800 / 2 = 400 for the house and $4,600 to the girl, or a 92 / 8 split, which is phenomenally in the girl’s favor.
In this “Australian Model” where we are just charging the girl room rent, we are no longer a brothel. Instead, we are a “boarding house” or “rooming house.” Therefore we are hoping to get a normal credit card processor with normal (and not excessive) credit card processing fees. We are not sure that’s possible, and there may be some adjustments necessary to this process as we try it out.
Getting to Wells – Airlines to Salt Lake City, or Amtrak to Elko
Most get an airline ticket into SLC, Salt Lake City. There are lots of flights and they are inexpensive. Then you can catch the Salt Lake Shuttle Bus from the Salt Lake City airport to Wells. It currently leaves about 4:45 pm Mountain Time and arrives at Love’s Truckstop in Wells 3 hours later about 6:45 Pacific Time. The cost as of September, 2021 is $47.
The Salt Lake Express is at saltlakeexpress.com
The Salt Lake Express also has an operating territory ranging from Las Vegas up Western Utah to about West Yellowstone Montana including Southern Idaho and Northern Nevada west to about Fernley, outside of Reno. You can check their website for fares and trip information. It looks like the Salt Lake Express can handle most trips within about 300 miles of Wells, and if you can fly from another location to SLC arriving in the early afternoon, it’s a straight non-stop trip from the Salt Lake airport to Wells leaving about 4:45 pm.
It’s also possible you might catch a ride from someone else at Donna’s in their car or a Donna’s car. Sometimes if you can catch the owner, the ride might be free, but if you get a ride from an individual or from a friend of Donna’s who is a runner, they will charge you either a standard or a negotiated amount for their time, car and gas.
Ride Fees — Paid to Individuals for their time, car and gas
I always like to see working girls bring their own car to Donna’s, or if not, to buy a car to keep at Donna’s as a near-term goal. Having a car means freedom for you which leads to happiness and flexibility. Girls of course need to go to Roy’s Supermarket, Dollar Store, Smoke Shop, doctor’s office, nail salon, casinos, gym, swimming pool, convenience stores in Wells and occasionally shopping, Walmart, Home Depot, restaurants and Dr. Bergeron’s in Elko. Sometimes the girls want to take time off in Wendover, Jackpot or Elko, and sometimes they might want a ride to or from Salt Lake City. If the girls ask somebody with a car to give them rides to various places, then the drivers normally expect to be paid enough to cover their time and gas. These amounts vary by driver, but often are around $10 around Wells, $60 to Elko and $200 to Salt Lake.
The Bar — How does the bar work? What is the purpose for the bar?
The Bar functionally is not a bar. Its purpose is to operate solely for the benefit of helping the legal working girls to make money and book parties. Sure, it’s a full service bar with lots of different brands of cold beer, plus all of the famous brands of hard liquor. It has the liquor license and the Nevada State Health Department periodic checks, but it’s not as important as the working girls and therefore we use it primarily to promote the girls. We don’t cater to locals as most bars do because we don’t want to have to deal with drunks in the bar, and we definitely don’t want any mad Wells wives coming over because their husbands have shacked up with a Donna’s girl. We are a political entity which serves at the pleasure of the community, so we don’t want any Wells people mad, especially the women.
Mostly in the bar we serve cold beers and some shots. We seldom mix any fancy mixed drinks. The on-shift bartender is really the captain of the brothel ship at the moment responsible for booking parties and knowing everything that is going on in the house. Who is booked and for how long? When is their party over? Who is talking, negotiating, partying, and what is going on? The bartender is responsible for playing the music to set the atmosphere and for talking to the customers, also promoting Donna’s and passing out bumper stickers, boobie air fresheners and “blow jobs to go” plus inviting customers back to special events such as barbecues, hot tub parties or website promotions.
We try not to hire any bartenders who might have a problem with alcohol or drugs. This, plus the difficulty all businesses are having trying to find people who want to work after the original Covid 19 shutdown and during the during the current Delta variant surge means that we’ve had trouble finding bartenders. Therefore, in some cases, if we have a trusted working girl, we have gotten the working girl a bartender card in addition to her working girl work card. This is because the City requires anybody behind the bar to have a bartender card. In most cases the working girls know the drill, so they are capable of working “both sides of the bar.” It’s not hard to serve shots and beers, and this greatly helps with flexibility. If you join us at Donna’s please keep a good attitude and work together as working girls and bartenders to operate smoothly, efficiently and harmoniously!