Death of a Pimp
This article was originally published on Forbes.com on October 18, 2018.
Dennis Hof was a pimp. Perhaps he would've preferred the term "brothel owner," for that he was, too, at the time of his death earlier this week at 72. He was found dead in bed at his Love Ranch Vegas brothel in Crystal, Nevada, on Tuesday morning by adult performer Ron Jeremy. An autopsy will be conducted to identify the cause of his death, but foul play wasn't suspected.
It was a busy time for Hof, who was in the midst of a campaign to get himself elected to the Nevada State Assembly. Ironically, he may well be elected, despite the fact that he's dead, because, according to the New York Times, in the 36th District in which he's running, 45% of those registered to vote are registered as Republicans, compared to 28% who are registered to vote as Democrats. His Trumpian political platform included lowering taxes and defending gun owners' rights.
In June of 2017, I interviewed Hof for an article I wrote for this website in the wake of a news report that former FBI director James Comey had used the term "hookers" in a Statement for the Record released one day prior to testifying in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "Hookers" appears in Comey's summary of a March 30, 2017, call he received from Trump. "[Trump] said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia," Comey wrote. Was "hookers" Comey's word choice or Trump's? Interested to hear what sex workers and their minders thought of the high-profile disparagement, I reached out to Hof and his employees.
As it turned out, Hof had a Trump story of his own. "I met him 27 years ago," he told me. "I was in the timeshare business. He wanted to timeshare the [Trump] Taj Mahal, and he wanted me to come aboard to do that. I didn't do that. I said there's not enough money in the world to make me live in Atlantic City." It was hard to know whether or not to take Hof's claim seriously. Instead, Hof recounted, he became "the pimp master general of America," anointed as such by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. He'd voted for Trump and liked the guy—"We need a businessman," he said—but he preferred the term "working girls." Either way, Trump was good for business. "Business is humping," he told me. "We feel the difference with Trump in office."
It wasn't the first time I'd connected with Hof. Over the prior two decades, I'd encountered him at various events, from adult movie sets to X-rated conventions. The first time I'd met him was on the set of an adult movie being shot in the San Fernando Valley, the content of which was so outré that I won't detail it here. On another occasion, I talked with him at the Hustler Store in Hollywood. And he was a regular presence at the AVN Awards—the so-called "Oscars of porn"—in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He wasn't the first pimp that I met, and I'm sure he won't be the last, but he was like many pimps that I've encountered over the years. He was charismatic, likeable, friendly, a consummate showman, and the sort of person who could make you feel comfortable about anything, including, one presumed, showing up at one of his brothels in hopes of paying one of the women who worked for him a few hundred dollars, or more, to share some intimate time, in the parts of Nevada where that's legal.
In a way, he wasn't that different from sex workers I've known. For providing a service in demand across the country, they'd been publicly vilified and systematically ostracized. Hof was a larger-than-life character—a pimp, you bet—but he was also a businessman who knew well that if someone will pay for something, there's money to be made, and that's the American dream.
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