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Saturday, June 13, 1998
VIAGRA BOOM OR BLUFF?Some Nevada
brothels say an impotence drug has improved business
By
Lori Roniger
Review-Journal
The new
impotency drug Viagra has caused a windfall of increased business for
pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer, urologists and pharmacists. Now some
Nevada brothel owners are piggybacking the trend, saying they, too, are
seeing a rise in business.
"A lot of
guys coming in are taking it," said Joe Richards, owner of Cherry Patch
Ranch and Mabel's brothels near Crystal, north of Pahrump.
Richards said use of the drug had
caused his business to increase some 10 percent. He said some old-timers
who used to be customers have been making recent appearances at his
businesses, including a 75-year-old man sporting a button that says, "I'm
back."
But some brothel owners are
calling such reports an outright lie. A woman who answered the phone at
Mustang Ranch near Reno said Viagra had not caused an upturn in business.
"It's a crock," said the woman, who
refused to identify herself.
George
Flint, spokesman for the Nevada Brothel Owner's Association, said
Viagra-related business increases are "absolutely a figment of someone's
imagination."
While Flint conceded that
Viagra could have resulted in a small increase in brothel traffic, he said
it would not be statistically significant. He said 90 percent of the
Mustang Ranch's business is from men younger than 50.
So why are those in the business making
contradictory claims?
"It's great
hype," Flint said.
But Richards said
his phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from around the country
and the world.
"Amy," a 32-year-old prostitute at Cherry Patch, said she has been seeing
many men in their 50s through 70s who have been using Viagra. She said
they have "new enthusiasm" and "staying power."
She said some of the women have had to
start charging these Viagra-fueled older men by time instead of by the
activity.
Over at the Moonlight
Bunnyranch brothel near Carson City, from which rumblings of Viagra's
prowess at pumping up Nevada's legal brothel industry first originated,
general manager Suzette Gwin said business has increased 20 to 30 percent
since the drug's debut.
"Princess Rio,"
a 29-year-old prostitute who works at the Moonlight Bunnyranch, talked of
a sickly, Viagra-popping, 70-something customer who "worked just fine" in
the sexual arena.
"They think they're
it," she said, regarding men's response to their Viagra vigor.
The Bunnyranch is the publicity-happy
franchise that hired and later fired John Wayne Bobbitt as a bartender and
public relations envoy earlier this year. Bobbitt initially gained fame
when his wife, Lorena, cut off his penis in 1993.
Miss Kitty's Guest Ranch, another
brothel that claimed the same Viagra-related business phenomenon, is owned
by Dennis Hof, who also owns the Moonlight Bunnyranch.
Carol Leigh, a prostitute and sex
worker activist in San Francisco, said she knew nothing about the
so-called benefits of Viagra to the business of either illegal or legal
prostitutes.
"It's the most nonstory of
the decade," Flint insisted.
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