Sheri’s Ranch stands in the middle of the Mojave Desert, a white clapboard sprawl dropped into a landscape that may as well be Mars. The building is low-slung: a Disneyfied Old West saloon crossed with a motel, country club and porn set.
Humans should not be here. Desire absolutely should not be here. And yet, they both are. There are almost 20 legal brothels in America, and Sheri’s is the glossiest, as well as the most notorious.
Nevada is the only state in America in which prostitution is legal, and even then, only in parts of it. Of the 17 counties, it is permitted in only ten, all of them rural places with populations below 700,000 and very little else going on. Crucially, Clark County, the home of Las Vegas, is not one of them.
Those in search of real sin in Sin City must make the 60-mile drive west to Pahrump, Nye County, where Sheri’s Ranch is located. Until the 1960s, Pahrump had no telephone service. Now, there are gun shops with sun-bleached signage, pawn shops advertising NO CREDIT CHECKS, fireworks warehouses, and drive-through liquor stores.
And on its edge, right where the road runs out and the desert begins, stands Sheri’s.
Nevada has always been a state built on pragmatic permissiveness. After the Great Depression, the state had very few people, very little industry and no obvious reason for anyone to visit. Gambling was legalised in 1931 as a kind of economic flare gun, a way of drawing money and bodies into the desert. Prostitution, which had existed informally around mining towns and rail stops for decades, followed a similar logic.
Rather than pretend it wasn’t happening, Nevada chose to regulate it, tax it and push it out into places that needed the revenue most. The modern system dates from 1971, when the state finally decided to legalise brothels at county level while simultaneously drawing a hard line around its major cities. Las Vegas, keen to protect its casinos and its image, kept prostitution illegal within city limits (admittedly, to limited effect).
The result was a compromise, in which more than 90% of Nevadans live somewhere prostitution is illegal. In towns like Pahrump, however, it is licensed, inspected, and, crucially, profitable.
No one knows exactly who Sheri’s Ranch is named after. Some say it was after the original owner’s favourite girl. What we do know, however, is that it has been here since 1974.
Sheri’s has a marketing manager: a turtlenecked man named Jeremy Lemur, with whom I had arranged a tour. When I arrive, it is Lemur who opens the door and greets me with freshly lotioned hands. He explains that I should wait in the lobby, and that the madam, who “has been expecting me”, will be out shortly.
It is a cavernous room, pumped with aggressively air-conditioned air that can only half-mask the syrupy sweet miasma of disinfectant and cigarette smoke. In the middle of the faux-mahogany lobby is an arse-indented cream sofa and a plastic coffee table, holding up an ashtray and a small sign warning ABSOLUTELY NO REFUNDS. In one corner is a grand piano. In the other are three A-board posters cheerfully detailing the menu of services on offer: Straight Lay, Half and Half, Crème de Menthe French.
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