Bookstore brings brothel-book bard

Prostitution makes strange bedfellows.

In Kane Hall Wednesday night, listening to Alexa Albert discuss her new book, Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women, sat a former sex worker in her early thirties. In the same row sat an older woman knitting brown yarn.

These two audience members characterized the quaint crowd drawn by Albert's appearance.

The tour for her new book started in New York. Albert recently appeared on the NBC's Today show, and was featured in both Elle and Esquire magazines. Her fame and book come from her six years of study as a guest at Nevada's most infamous brothel -- the Mustang Ranch.

Lying on Interstate 80 near Reno, the Mustang Ranch was the Nevada's first legal brothel. It opened in 1971 and was shut down by the Internal Revenue Service 28 years later.

The former owner, Joe Conforte, was charged with tax evasion and racketeering and is currently hiding in South America, according to Albert.

"The IRS even considered running the brothel themselves," said Albert.

During her book reading, the Seattle native and pediatric resident at Children's Hospital and Medical Center animatedly illustrated what the "routine and systemized" life in a brothel was like. A slide show accompanied her speech with photos of the ranch. Attendees got a glimpse of women's rooms, workers lining up to present themselves to potential clients and even the automatic teller machine on the premises.

Albert mentioned how she went so far in her studies as to sit in with some of the women during their visits with clients.

"I won't talk about that today, that's mentioned in the book," said Albert.

When asked by an audience member if she had ever considered "crossing the line" in her studies, Albert confidently responded "of course. What woman hasn't thought about doing that."

Originally there to study condom use, Albert spent three years at the brothel before gaining entrance as an outsider. She had to petition the Nevada Brothel Association to get past the locked gates and guard towers surrounding the establishment.

Albert said she was fascinated with prostitutes ever since she saw them hanging around in Seattle's red-light district as a little girl. Albert became curious about "what these people do 24 hours a day" and "how they reconcile what they do with their families and themselves."

As a result of her study, Albert discovered sexually transmitted diseases didn't run rampant at the ranch as she'd assumed. Brothel workers, or "independent contractors," were required to be tested monthly for both HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and paid for these exams themselves.

"These women are amazing condom users," said Albert during her book reading. "They're very creative, responsible, and concerned."

With condom failure rates being relatively low in the brothel, Albert said the general public could learn a lot about proper condom use from the women who worked at the Mustang Ranch.

Workers at the ranch ranged from ages 18 to 63, and most of the women chose the job due to their financial dispositions: being thousands of dollars in debt, or having children and parents to support.

Reading an excerpt from her book, Albert told the story about a beautiful red-headad women whose husband asked her to work at the ranch because they were so deep in debt. She cried for a week before deciding to move to the Mustang Ranch.

The average worker had about five to six clients in a twelve-hour shift, and stayed for about three weeks at time, making the ranch her home as well as place of business, said Albert.

"This is a real job for these women, and that's all that it is," she said.

Besides performing clinical studies and ensuring condom use among the women, Albert, like most of the staff members at the ranch, became the confidante of some of these women. To this day she still keeps in touch with some of them.

Albert finds the sex industry to be a "a fascinating world," and hopes to decriminalize the industry and the stigmas attached to those who work in the sex industry.

"What this book is, is that it gets people to think about this issue," she said. "My hope is not to try to change people's morality about prostitution, but to get people to think about how we're going to deal with this reality: prostitution is going to continue, and how are we going to protect the people that are involved?"