There was something beautiful about the only brothel in Nevada that allowed customers to piss all over the backs of hookers (something not allowed elsewhere) while letting them film the act simultaneously. The Nevada Prostitution Supervision Agency (NPSA) received a report from their paid spy/hooker — maybe a redundancy — saying that male customers of Hot Tamale Fire! Brothel were injecting hookers with microdosages of LSD to make them more compliant to extreme sex acts. But NPSA knew that the complainant hookers were being wickedly mind-controlled by the MK-ULTRA CIA team — now based in Las Vegas — which was using them for experimental purposes and getting a lot of pleasure out of the deal, too. The older hookers, with their sagging titties, were noteworthy for Hot Tamale Fire!’s special offer to get two for one in a special deal some called “immoral.”

Outside the brothel, night was coming on. Lisa Hernandez, a 23-year-old hispanic girl with a mustache, sat in a rocking chair outside, reading a romance book from the 1990s by Nora Roberts. If all went according to plan, her first customers should be treating her like shit in about thirty minutes. This john, with his thick rolled-up ball of bills, was unusual in that his first name actually was John, but he asked everyone to call him “Freddie.”

Silently, Lisa Hernandez closed her book. She was careful to bookmark where she left off. Standing up and yawning, she felt bored with her life. She didn’t mind ho’ing herself particularly, and unlike most of the hookers, she didn’t use drugs, but she was suspicious of her perverted boss, Mel. The men was always trying to get in her pants for free. None of that shit for One-Eyed Lisa.

The door opened a moment later with a pale white hand reaching out. This hand, with its gaudy red-painted fingernails, was dedicated to the proposition that all ho’s must look like loose girls. The door opened wider, a figure stepped out, and the door closed behind her.

Two hookers were now on the front porch, one standing, one seated, located in close proximity to one another. The new arrival was Mandy Jane, an Englishwoman from Liverpool, whose father had once beaten her and threatened to kill her with a large steel wrench he’d stolen from his government construction work-site. Mandy, 25-years-old and possessing big boobs, was almost like a big sister to Lisa. Lisa really liked her. Now Mandy sat down on the splintery wooden bench projecting out beside Lisa’s rocking chair, and smiled.

“God, what a day!” Mandy sighed, blowing out a breath to rustle her light brown bangs. “I wanna kill myself with all the things the guys made me do.”

“Tell me about it,” Lisa said. She threw her romance book in the corner of the porch. It landed with a thud. “I’m about ready to kill Mel, though. Madre de dios. What a scum! He touched me last night twice! I couldn’t believe it.”

Inside the brothel, a party was gearing up to beat all parties. Mel pranced around the middle of the action with a champagne bottle in hand — an expensive Dom Perignon given to him by a rich customer last June, when the feds were raiding all the brothels in west Nevada.

Mel was afraid that the hookers were secretly getting ready to form a union — a disgusting practice supported by the Democrats in power — which would be challenging and clawing at management over every little nitpick. Mel didn’t want anyone to have a say in the running of the Hot Tamale Fire! but himself and his immediate boss. After getting a whiff of the union talk among the girls, Mel had spoken in private with “Big Gus” Gustavson, the owner of the Tamale. Gus had been sympathetic to Mel’s concerns but not particularly concerned. With the new payment schedule coming up — scheduled to bump up the girls’ pay by 10% — it seemed like there wouldn’t be much restlessness in the ranks.

When Mel was finally motionless, he took a sip of the champagne. It was pretty good. The bottom of the champagne, with its residue of heavy settling ingredient, was noteworthy for the vineyard’s special ability to draw potent aftertastes other vineyards couldn’t match. Mel watched a petite redhead’s bra, a skimpy thing barely containing her artificially augmented breasts. He couldn’t get enough of it.

Just then the door opened, and Mandy and Lisa came in. Lisa was dragging her heels as though she was being pulled by coercion with an invisible rope. Mandy, the leader and an impressive slutty girl, was smiling. The two hookers stood in a roomful of 15 working ladies, where Max was the only man. The two newcomers bowed.

Mel dropped his champagne glass to shatter on the floor. Mandy shrieked in surprise. Mel gestured arrogantly at the shards of glass with a sweep of his arm. “Pick that up,” he ordered Lisa.

Though she hated to be ordered around by anyone, Lisa knew that her job was at stake so she complied. On her knees, scrubbing valiantly with a J-cloth, Lisa looked like an illegal immigrant employed at a Beverly Hills hotel. Mandy looked on sympathetically.

Mel put his dress shoe toe over her moving fingers, stilled her motion, and grinned like a wolf. “I think that’s enough. You should come with me to my office. There’s… things… I want to show you.”

Lisa hesitated, then glanced up at Mandy, who was standing aloof from the action, her eyes shadowed in darkness.

Lisa looked over to Mel, who nodded and smiled and tapped his toe. He was a real piece of work.

From the corner of her eye, Lisa could see a new presence entering the room. All the hookers picked up their attention. The incident that was unveiled by the presence of the newcomer and the sounds he made, shook Lisa to the core. The room, decorated with cheap oil paintings and shining with illumination, took on an aspect of ominousness.

The bossman Gus stared coldly at Mel, Lisa, Mandy, and the rest of the girls. He was not a happy camper. Although he could easily have fucked them all, Gus was married and kept hands off. His wife, a 31-year-old natural-blond former model, made him happy enough that he disdained touching the hookers who worked for him. Gus could be cruel, was naturally paranoid, and hated the government. He had moved to Nevada from New York City three years ago to get out of a bad situation with his frenemies. Ever since then, he had been fanatically dedicated to making his brothel work. Girls were disposable. Johns were treated like kings. Gus aggressively moved to expand his brothel, adding new wings to the building and hiring ever-younger girls to sleep with older men. Now he stared at Lisa on her knees. She was motionless in a pose that suggested she might cry. A slow smile curved on Gus’s face.

“Mel, why is Lisa down on the floor? Get her up.”

Scurrying obsequiously, Mel grabbed Lisa by the shoulder and none-too-gently helped her up. Lisa was pissed off by the contact and glared at him. Gus said, “Lisa, are you happy here at the Hot Tamale?”

Frozen in her brain, locked in mental gridlock, Lisa didn’t know how to answer. She sputtered and spread her arms.

Gus interrupted her vacuousness. “That’s okay. I know you’re happy. Do you know how I know? Because you’ve been calling your girlfriends in Mexico telling them to come up to Gringoland to work for me.” He smiled. “Good girl. Good, good girl.”

In contrast to Lisa, whose hooker job description included such delights as deep-throated blowjobs and anal fisting in order to present herself as sexually as possible, Mandy was much more vanilla — and as a consequence, made less money. This drove her crazy, because she didn’t think it was fair. The other hookers showed their true colors as they kissed up to Gus with smirks and small nods.

Fighting broke out around the room as a tall anorexic brunette kicked a chubby black-haired East Asian girl, a muscular girl put a chokehold on her neighbor, and Mandy pushed Lisa hard, driving her into the arms of Mel unwillingly. Gus looked on as if this was the normal state of affairs at the Hot Tamale Fire! He neither approved nor disapproved, though he could have put a stop to it with one raised hand. He didn’t.

These feminine voices were being loudly raised by the crowd — all of them emotional — which was surging and throbbing like a sports audience. Even though the hookers knew better, they couldn’t restrain themselves from reacting and starting acting out. Gus was pleased despite the annoying commotion the bitches made, because he knew they were hooked, emotionally and financially. Mel looked like a fool, not understanding the goodness of the pandemonium. Gus was fine with his subordinate being stupider than he was — it made him more malleable and easier to control.

The rug in the center of the room, with its frilly edge-pattern down in Southwest style, was treasured by Gus for its authentic Indian feel which gave it a bit of class. Lowering his voice slightly, Gus said, “That’s enough.” All the girls quieted down.

Bringing out a big fat Cuban cigar and biting off the end — his teeth were very sharp — Gus said indolently, “Man, this is some place I got here. If it wasn’t for my wife, I’d have each and every one of you knocked up with my seed. How did I get here?” He gazed heavenward for the answer.

Lisa looked down at her shoes demurely, hoping he would notice her nice obedient behavior. The bossman, thinking to himself in silence and giving an imposing aura, hardly paid her a second’s scant attention, instead looking at the prettiest girl in the room, a dyed-blonde vixen named Candy Breedlove. Her real name.

Gus nodded to Candy, and the hooker went placidly toward him. Her walk, slow and steady and immaculate, was the opposite of fearful. Candy was confidently composed, emotionally stable, and not liable to trip up in the face of even Gus’s wrath. Gus wrapped his arms around her to give her a great big hug. She didn’t resist it, but neither did she welcome it. When he released her, he was smiling.

Another hour and the brothel should be thronging with men, Gus thought with satisfaction and aggression. Let’s hope they tip the bitches extra, Gus thought. I get 50% of that, so… yeah.

Lisa was hopping back from foot to foot and trying to keep from peeing in her pants. She really had to go.

Mel noticed her, jerked his hand violently downward. Don’t.

A moment’s pause. Then the revels began anew.

Candy Breedlove adjusted her blouse, which had been showing a bit too much pink skin. This brought unwanted attention to her from both Mel and Gus. The male power figures showed a complete coolness from hell — their natural state — bordering on the sociopathic.

Gus gave an impression of boredness over the events transpiring. It unnerved even the rock-hardest of the girls.

“Well,” he said, turning around, “I’ll be in my office checking some accounting figures. Sorry, that’s probably too smart for y’all. Never mind. Pretend I’m jerking off instead. Bye.”

Gus left the room with a series of thudding, departing footsteps. Once released from his psychological grip, the girls all began talking at once.

Mel screamed, “Shut up, ‘hos!”

The talk mostly died down, and Mel grinned. He raised both hands like Nixon at a political rally. “Harken onto me, ‘hos. Now is the time for you to shut your ugly faces and prepare to suck cock. We open in” — he checked his watch — “less than 30 minutes. Be ready.” He spun and left the room.

Lisa and Mandy breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief. One of the other hookers was on the rag, which she handled by shoving a wad of cotton waaay up her privates. One of the nuisances of the job.

Lisa sighed to herself. Put her head in her hands. Walked outside alone.

The night was dark, shrouded everywhere by shadows moving from the wind-tossed trees. Her hands were balled fists and spasmodically opened and closed. What was she doing here? Was she crazy? Her earlier life was remembered as a time of innocence, protecting her from the harsh, wild world and making her feel safe. Soon the boys would be arriving. The johns. They would be joined by the biggest sex sorority offering the fine arts of sexual pleasure and a kind of ego boost for loser men with no self-confidence.

Lisa was also coerced by the brothel in many ways, including — miserably, for a girl who prided herself on her independence — servile obedience to a john she passionately hated, Will Remente, a customer that responded by beating her arms and shoulders, and in the process, bruising her badly.

Lisa Hernandez not only hated his guts but also wanted to ruin his life by infecting him with one of her multiple STD’s (herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia). Lisa’s vulnerabilities were her weak arms, her defiant eyes, and the attention-getting hair on her legs.

There was something disgusting about a customer who fondled your breasts while jacking himself off in your presence. She knew all about the reports from the other girls — some of whom had had him — telling of Remente’s unpredictability and violent nature. A former bouncer, he enjoyed hurting the girls and had the muscle to do it. His lashings-out were a symptom of his diseased mind and obviously made him especially dangerous to Lisa. She dreaded seeing him.

Lisa looked for her romance book all over, but couldn’t find it, and she felt so so frustrated. Balling her fists at her sleek sides, and scowling as if she had seen a peeping tom — the adrenaline was surging in her breast — she finally spotted it lying half open on its pages. She not only needed the book badly now but also hoped to quiet her inner turmoil by reading the author’s beautiful writing.

Lisa knew that her friends among the working girls were being callously exploited by the sexist management– what else was new in this man’s world? — which was taking its time paying them and acting generally insufferable.

There was something particularly awful about the situation that had caught her up in its web and turned her into a common whore. Lisa, who had been raised a Catholic, hated herself for her immorality and wanton nature. She had turned from a good girl into a reviled woman who knelt on her knees to deliver impromptu blowjobs that promptly led to premature ejaculations in her mouth. Compelled by her employment contract, she was forced to swallow. She despised this and despised herself and despised Gus and the men she was sold to.

She not only despised these many things but also wanted to end her life by slitting her wrists in a bathtub. This suicide option was a thing on her mind a lot and consequently pushed her to make herself more positive. Suicide was a mortal sin in the church and she would not go to hell just to save herself a little anguish.

The romance book she was holding was full of sweet stories about love — seen from a woman’s POV — celebrating the bonding of souls. Despite her occupation and her life, Lisa was smitten by them. Holding her book sadly in her hand, the tears began to track down her face. Oh God! God!

Mandy was also afflicted by strong emotions, including — most horribly, for a girl insistent upon control of her own body — the revelation that she had been impregnated with a john’s baby, a man named Tommy Crudelaw, a sheriff’s deputy who responded by sneering at her and, in the process breaking her little old heart.

The irony of the situation was that Crudelaw loved her. The bastard had the gall to hold her heart-shaped face by the chin and say she was special. A whore! Like her! Special!

Mandy not only spat in his face but also turned her affection away by becoming cold as ice. The reaction from Crudelaw was precious in a kind of warped way, confirming that he was a pig but giving her scant comfort. Crudelaw punched her should so hard he left a big purple bruise the following day. Her skin was so delicate after that that whenever she flexed, it hurt, bad. She wanted to quit. Indeed, she craved quitting.

The brothel, the source of white slavery for almost 20 women, called to them with a siren song like no other. It was their hated enemy and frequently drove them mad.

A buzzer rang throughout the building. It was time to service the men.