The Art of the Pimp: One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money (20 page)

I kept seeing Tara and I kept giving her orgasms, so the girl fell in love with me. (Try that at home, boys.) I tried to get her to party with me and Caressa, but she didn’t want to and she didn’t want to party with any of the other girls. She kept working at the BunnyRanch, though, and was doing fine, but I had a feeling she wasn’t happy. Still, I didn’t say anything. If she had something on her mind, I wasn’t one to pry. I assumed she’d bring it up when she was ready.

Within a few weeks, Tara and I were practically living together at my suite at the Gold Dust. I probably should have sent the sheriff over to my house to get Krystyn out of there, but I didn’t have the heart for it. Plus I was happy. And Tara was happy.

One morning, Tara decided she wanted to try the gym in town, and I told her to take my Mercedes-Benz. She loved that. Here was this little country girl, driving through Carson City in a $140,000 convertible. She rolled into the gym parking lot and the first person she saw was Krystyn. Krystyn was like, “What are you doing, driving my man’s car?”

Tara said, “He’s not your man. If he was,
you’d
be driving the car.”
They got into an argument, and it escalated. Tara is a tough-ass little country girl, and she really lit into Krystyn. “You’re a squatter, living in his house, and guess what?! He’s not coming home. He’s with me, and I’ll beat your ass if you come near him.”

Not long after that confrontation, Tara finally decided to tell me what was on her mind. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to fuck for money. You’re the man of my dreams and I love you and I want to be with you.” I had my reservations — as I said, I feel strongly that women should work and be independent and stand on their own two feet. I shared these views with Tara. She listened, but she knew what she wanted, and I didn’t try to talk her out of it. “You know what, baby? That’s great. Go tell Suzette you’re no longer on the schedule. I’m going to take care of you.”

Suzette liked Tara immensely and was actually very pleased with Tara’s decision. We decided to try to keep her active and involved in the business, so Suzette trained her to do some light bookkeeping and to help out with the scheduling. Tara was smart and a fast learner and loved what she was doing. A couple of months later I took her out to look at a property in Washoe Valley, not far from Carson City. The house was on forty acres, fifteen minutes from the ranch, overlooking a beautiful lake and the foothills beyond, with marble bathrooms and pile carpeting, a sleek modern kitchen, stables for twenty horses, and more than enough garages for my fancy cars, my motorcycles, and my boat. I closed on the place in thirty days and we moved in. For the next year, I really was convinced we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

But there were little problems along the way and they escalated. Mostly it was the way the girls teased her, which was par for the course. She was Daddy’s Girl and the other girls would talk shit to get her riled up. “Boy, that Dennis, he really knows how to satisfy a woman!”
To me it was meaningless, girls being girls, but Tara took it very much to heart. I kept trying to reassure her — “I’m with you. You’re the only one I love. I’m not going anywhere” — but I could see how much it hurt and how badly she struggled. I told the girls to lay off, to be nice, and most of them eased up a bit, but every so often one of them would find a way to torment my little Texas firecracker.

Before long, Tara began to hate the ranch and all the girls who worked there, Sunset Thomas in particular. She knew Sunset and I had some sexual history, which she was able to handle, but she suspected that Sunset was still hot for me and that really bugged her.

I took her away with me every chance I could. Los Angeles, Florida, New York. When she was away from the ranch, she became her wonderful old self and she was happy. But she also seemed more needy, a little clingy, even, and her eyes would narrow with mistrust every time a woman so much as said hello to me.

One night we were at a party in Las Vegas, hanging out with Larry Flynt and his brother, Jimmy. There were a number of hot porn stars around and Tara didn’t look particularly happy, so she began hitting the booze pretty hard. At one point she excused herself to go to the restroom and when she came back, one of the girls was sitting on my lap. It was good, clean, harmless fun, but Tara was fuming. “Get the fuck away from my man,” she said. The girl moved and she moved fast, and I tried to defuse the situation.

“Tara, honey, she didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t even find that girl attractive.”

“Right,” she said. “You’ll fuck anything that moves.”

Things went steadily downhill from there. One time she almost came to blows with Sunset. “Tell that bitch to stay away from you,” she said. “I will beat her ass down.”

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “This jealousy stuff isn’t working for me,” I said. “I think it’s time for you to go back to Texas.” She was a smart girl, so I suggested she go to college and I offered to pay for it. She went home and took me up on my offer, and we spoke from time to time. She was doing well in school, but she was sad about the breakup.

“I’m sorry I was so jealous. I don’t know what it was exactly. I guess my life with you was so perfect I was afraid of anything that might derail us. Now I realize the thing that derailed us was me.”

It made me sad, too. When I commit to a woman — and I realize that the word “commit” is open to interpretation — all I want to do is spoil them. I’m going to take them to the best hair salons, buy them the best clothes, and spend big money on Louis Vuitton handbags and expensive shoes. My attitude is, if you’re spoiling a woman — emotionally, sexually, and financially — it’s going to be pretty hard for a guy to come along and take her away from you. And in fact no man has ever taken a woman away from me. The women take themselves away because they can’t accept my inability to be monogamous. It’s tough because I love these girls to death, and I give them everything I’ve got, but I’m never going to stop fucking other women. I just can’t do that. That’s my tragic flaw and it has pretty much destroyed every single one of my relationships.

Whose fault is it? Mine. Absolutely. What can I do about it? I wish to hell I knew.

While I was in the middle of this, I got a call from Ron. He was on his way to Vegas to visit a married friend and he told me I should come along. “You can be my date,” he said. When I got there, I told him about Tara and I acted like it didn’t bother me at all. “A relationship is like a shower. When the temperature’s just right, you feel like you can stay in there forever. But when the water goes cold, it’s
time to get the fuck out.” Ron looked at me and shook his head.

“Dennis, this is me you’re talking to. I know you’re hurting. You don’t have to bullshit me.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I
am
hurting. I really liked Tara.”

And he said, “Well get the fuck over it. Boo hoo hoo. I can’t respect a man who cries over a girl.” I think he was kidding, because for the next three days he really went out of his way to entertain me (at my expense, of course). During much of that time, we partied with his married friend and his wife, who were devoted swingers. They couldn’t stop talking about the advantages of an open marriage: They never got bored. They enjoyed seducing people together. They had tons of swinger friends. And they loved learning new sexual tricks.

By the third night, thanks to Ron’s ministrations, I was beginning to forget Tara, but I was also exhausted, and begged off and said I was going to bed. Ron walked me to the elevator and gave me a hug. “What the fuck was that for?” I said, pulling away.

“I hope you’re over Tara,” he said, but he was grinning. Ron turns everything into a joke.

“Actually, no, I’m not over her,” I said. “I really liked her. I keep thinking about all the things I might have done differently. Maybe she wouldn’t have left.”

“You sound like a girl,” Ron said, then turned on his heels and disappeared into the casino.

That fucking guy! He knows nothing about women. And he’s got his own issues. When Ron falls in love with a girl, he can’t fuck her anymore and the relationship ends. Compared to him, I was almost healthy.

I took the elevator up to the room, put a note on the door telling
Ron not to wake me up when he came in, and crawled into bed. About an hour later, there was a knock at the door. I got up, pissed, to find Mrs. Swinger in the corridor. “I’m horny,” she said, so I did want any self-respecting red-blooded American male would have done in my place: I took her to bed and fucked her. The minute I busted a nut I heard clapping, and I whipped around in shock to find Ron and Mr. Swinger at the foot of the bed. They had snuck in and watched the whole thing, and I think I was too stunned to be angry. Ron complimented my performance and seemed very pleased about the
breakthrough
in our relationship: “I’ve seen your cock,” he said. “That changes everything. We can swing now.”

AFTER THAT LITTLE VACATION IN
Vegas, I returned to the ranch and tried to forget Tara by losing myself between Sunset’s thighs. (Tara had been right; she
was
still hot for me.) But I didn’t see her as a replacement for Tara. I liked Sunset — I liked her a lot — but with her it was all about sex — and it was absolutely mind-blowing sex. Sunset herself will tell you: She is a sex machine, a real monster, the ultimate porn chick. And that got me thinking: She was making loads of money at the ranch and her fame as a porn star was bringing in all sorts of new business. I needed to find a way to capitalize on her notoriety. Then it hit me: I’d use Sunset to forge a relationship with Howard Stern.

Howard needs no introduction, of course. He really is the King of All Media. But I needed an introduction to Howard. Over the years, I’d made several halfhearted attempts to get on his show to get publicity for my girls and for myself, admittedly, and I’d been on plenty of other shows, but Howard was always looking for a fresh angle or a special hook. And I get it: That’s basic salesmanship. Success in this business, as in many other businesses, is about
maintaining a high profile, getting noticed. Since I can’t advertise, unlike the folks at Coca-Cola and Nike, I have to find compelling ways to get noticed. And the best way to get noticed is through the Almighty Media.

I called my friend Jack Gordon, an entertainment manager who was married to La Toya Jackson, and told him I’d pay him to get me on Howard Stern, and that maybe we could use Sunset as a hook. Jack thought I should hire a public relations firm and I reminded him that I was legally prohibited from advertising, and that one step in the wrong direction could cost me my license. So he made a couple of calls on my behalf and the next thing I know I was inviting members of Howard’s Wack Pack to the BunnyRanch. Howard got a real kick out of that. He would call in on air and ask the boys how it was going. “So did you get laid last night? Was she hot? Did you wear a condom? Could you stay hard while you were putting the condom on?”

People loved it and Howard came back for more. Before long, the girls and I were regulars. He loved Sunset, too. He talked to her about the transition from porn to the BunnyRanch and he talked to me about the ho business. When did I buy the ranch, why, how many girls did I have working for me, did they have to fuck me on command, and was that part of the BunnyRanch contract,
etc.
It was great. Being on Howard’s show didn’t necessarily make us respectable, but it sure got us noticed. Also, as I said, he was always looking for an interesting hook, and he asked us to come up with a few ideas. One day we pitched
Find the Tranny
. The title is self-explanatory, but I might as well spell it out. We would take three girls to the radio station and they’d hang out, chatting and answering questions, and the idea was that Howard and his sidekick, Robin Quivers, along with some of the guys from the Wack Pack,
would try to figure out, on air, which of them had been born a man.

I decided Air Force Amy was a perfect candidate for the show. She has a lot of spunk and a great sense of humor. Air Force Amy is almost fifty now and she is
still
the Michael Jordan of the BunnyRanch. Guys will travel three thousand miles to book a party with her and nobody has ever gone home disappointed. Amy is not only funny but supersmart, and I took her aside and told her that she could really own the show. The thing is, I didn’t have a tranny. I had Amy and two other girls, so the goal was for them to try like hell to convince Howard and the others that
they
were the tranny.

Right at the beginning of the show, Howard looked at Amy and said, “It could be her. Look at her hands. Her hands look a little manly to me.” The next thing I know, Amy had broken down crying. Howard didn’t know what to do. He was like, “Hey, come on! You came on this show, trying to convince us you’re a tranny, and I buy your sales pitch and you start crying?!”

Amy was really sobbing, snot running down her nose and everything. “From the time I was a little girl, I was never very feminine,” she wailed. “People made fun of me growing up. And when I joined the military they made fun of me there, too.” It turned into the Air Force Amy Show. She was a huge hit. For months afterward, back at the ranch, she was so overbooked she could hardly handle the business. But Air Force Amy is tough, so she handled it.