DONNA: This post and the next two are from Alexa Albert’s Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women, excerpted in the Ottawa Citizen, June 3, 2001.

[Ottawa Citizen intro:] When Harvard Medical School student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study at the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in the U.S. where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the women of the brothel could have predicted the result. Mustang Ranch had never before let such an outsider in, but after three years of Albert’s persistent urging, it finally relented and opened its doors to her.

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Most of the women seemed reluctant to discuss how they got into the business, so I was caught off guard when Donna opened up to me one night at Mustang No.1, one of two buildings on the grounds.

…Donna and I frequently ate dinner at the same time, and the night she confided in me, she and I were sitting alone in Mustang’s kitchen. Over lasagna and garlic bread, we bantered about the weather, nearby Reno, the casinos. Then, apropos of nothing, she mentioned that her husband couldn’t get a job, “because it’s hard for someone his age.” He was 42 years old, she said, playing nervously with her wedding band. I wondered where the conversation was headed.

Donna went on to confess, almost apologetically, that she’d never planned to become a prostitute. “One day he came into the kitchen where I was preparing dinner,” she said softly. “He said he thought I should start working to support our family. We had all this debt, plus house payments.”

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