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And Then I Found Five Dollars: Moral dilemma lurks beneath HBO brothel expos�
By Zach Miller
On
one lonely Thursday night not too many weeks ago, I was flipping
through the bevy of cable channels only to let the dial settle on the
last bastion of quality entertainment: HBO. Nominated for 109 Emmys,
this network is home to such fine programming as “The Sopranos” and
“Sex and the City.” For those media patrons tired of the rules and
regulations served up by network television, HBO, with its
characteristic no-holds-barred approach to entertainment, has become a
refreshing change of pace.
So what, pray tell, was this avid
premium cable subscriber watching? Well it wasn’t exactly Sex and the
City; in fact, Sex in the Middle of the Desert would probably have been
a better title. That’s right, HBO capitalized on its vast resources as
a subsidiary of AOL-Time Warner to do an hour-long documentary on the
Bunny Ranch Brothel out in Nevada.
Tucked away from the rest of
the world just a few hours outside of Reno, a building looking like a
couple of trailers fused into a one-story structure sits full of barely
dressed, busty women waiting for men and their wallets to drop by their
casa de amor.
Upon entering the “ranch,” men are treated to a
marine-style lineup of women ready, willing and able to do whatever
their potential customer may desire. Watching the men judge which
womanly woos they should respond to took me back to my days in retail
where customers would analyze the products hanging on the wall as if a
cure for cancer might be found. The only difference is this ranch was
offering women for $1,000 an hour, not golf shirts that cost $35
wholesale.
During the HBO documentary (remember, it’s not TV;
it’s low-grade porn) clients ranging from well-dressed businessmen to
boyish first-timers to a married couple strolled through the bunny
ranch’s poorly lit front gate, grabbed a sexual menu du jour, took a
seat at the bar and chatted up their gabby liaisons.
It turns
out the program was one part lesson in sexuality and one part lesson in
economics. The girls had the final say in who they invited back to
their rooms, what exactly their gentlemen caller was allowed to do to
them — even certain price adjustments were left up to the girl’s
discretion. The inside look at the sex for money industry was almost
like watching a care salesman at work, except with a hooker you’re
paying to get screwed, whereas with a car salesman, the screwing is
simply an added perk. |
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