Columnist Melissa Schorr: Touched by a Brothel

Melissa Schorr

Monday, Nov. 9, 1998 | 9:14 a.m.

I expected to be titillated by Lora Shaner's behind-the-scenes book on life in a brothel, "Madam -- Chronicles of a Nevada Cathouse." Illuminated, even.

What I didn't expect was to be moved.

So far, Shaner's new memoir on her five years working as a "hostess" at Shari's Ranch in Pahrump has been selling faster than, well, a working girl during National Finals Rodeo week.

Why not? If sex sells, it's no shock that a book on selling sex really sells.

Shaner herself is not what you'd expect: A former public relations worker with a penchant for Proust, she is, amusingly, a squeamish madam -- a customer's silk boxer shorts left behind in her office gives her the willies.

Although, expectably, she peppers the book with salacious double entendres (tightwad customers who should have paid on "layaway"), overall, it's a fascinating read.

We learn that brothels are bustling after a boxing prizefight, barren on Superbowl Sundays.

We learn about the men: the hunks and the husbands; the foreigners and the famous; the reluctant virgin, dragged in by his brother, who bravely faced Desert Storm but tearfully begs off from sex with a stranger.

Pointedly, we get Shaner's take on the women: They are human, no different than us, just "cloaked in mystery and subject to prejudice."

At the ranch itself, (which resembles no more than a dive bar, sterile Motel 6 and gift shop lumped together) I found that "normality" prevails -- or, at least, the semblance of it. Only the Liberace-style "line-up" room screams "whorehouse," with its gleaming white piano, chandeliers and red carpet.

Otherwise, a batch of freshly-baked muffins -- baked by Bonnie, the house cook -- sits on the kitchen counter. The office TV is tuned to the soaps. (A joking sign reads: "I can only please one person a day. Today's not your day. Tomorrow's not looking good either." Ironic, considering the circumstances). The girls are sunbathing out back.

But, of course, this is no sorority: Shaner's stories play more as Greek tragedy than Panhellenic high jinks.

There are the abused, the abandoned, the alcoholics. There is tragicomedy, too: the whore who found religion and would call out "Praise the Lord" during her sessions.

The common denominator for these women is money, though a few simply (how to put this?) "love what they do." One girl, tongue in cheek, tells her trick that she is "a philanthropist" who "believes in public service."

That quip, though, is telling.

Consider the 76-year-old World War II vet and quadruple amputee, who hadn't experienced a woman's embrace in half a century. One worker agreed to "lie" with him -- "sight unseen."

Shaner writes: "He pressed his face into her shoulder and wept ... William sent (her) sentimental love letters and long-stemmed red roses every few days until he died several months later."

Another time, a mother brought in her wheelchair-bound son, sitting patiently in the office until he was finished.

"There was an act of love going on in this house," the prostitute notes, "but it wasn't in my bedroom -- it was here, in the office, where his mother waited."

Stories like these -- albeit, the rare exceptions -- may just help Shaner's crusade for understanding. So what if the Earth didn't move on my trip to the brothel? Reading about it, to my surprise, was moving enough.