Sex Industry Sent Topsy-Turvy by Terror

"Business has slumped," says Sunny Delight, a bubbly escort who also models for a full-figured clothing line. "For the first two weeks after [the attacks of Sept. 11] happened, I didn't see anyone. I wasn't about to make an appointment -- I think that was partly my choice, just being scared -- but the phone didn't ring," she says. In August, Delight grossed $20,000 from a working stint and says she would have lost her apartment without having it as a cushion. Business has picked up gradually since then, but dwindling funds have sent her scrambling for new clients. "I think we're going to go into a full recession and I'm counting my money," she says.

On the steamy front lines of the sex industry, prostitutes are feeling the war on terrorism encroaching into their territory. It's created a paradoxical shift. On the one hand, September's events led to a spike in "terror sex," the much-reported need for sexual connection in times of heightened fear. But at the same time, the tanking economy has resulted in a marked drop in business, as clients -- just as the general public -- cut back on spending and struggle with post-traumatic anxiety. The competing dynamics make America's multi-million dollar prostitution industry look like a microcosm of the country at large -- confused, unpredictable and shaken, but resilient. And in some cases, booming.

Spectator Magazine, a listings and sex news rag, experienced an unexpected surge in advertisers post-9-11, according to its publisher Dara Lynne, despite fears that business would remain sluggish. Sex shops, too, have reported a general swell in sales. Others, like Taliesin the Bard, a porn actor and producer who runs several adult Web sites, says that surfing for salacious material has remained at a steady pace. "Things slacked off right after the attack, of course -- who knew what to do? But the Internet doesn't involve traveling for recreation." he says. "As far as a slump, there has been no dramatic change."

Where there has been a substantial upswing is at the Moonlite Bunnyranch, a legal brothel that has been running for 46 years outside of Carson City, Nevada. Owner Dennis Hof, who candidly refers to himself as the "Colonel Sanders of Porn," says his working girls -- all 250 of them -- have continued doing uninterrupted business. "In Nevada, during hard times, sales in sex, gaming and liquor go way up," he says energetically, estimating that his business has shot up 25 percent. "We're probably one of the few industries not suffering in America. I get the CEOs in the corporate jets, the big dogs -- they don't have money problems. This place hasn't been affected by any of the nonsense in the world."

Prostitution as Patriotism

During times of war, prostitution received support from organizations that historically opposed it, such as the military and police. In Hawaii during World War II, for example, prostitutes were licensed by a vice squad and given a strict set of rules for conducting business. Brothels also served to keep venereal disease in check. In World War I, more soldiers had contracted infectious STDs than were wounded in battle -- not great odds, boys, either way.

The idea that sex helps us cope in times of extreme stress, then, is nothing revolutionary. For most of us, sex is a liberating and necessary release. Sociology professor Pepper Schwartz at the University of Washington has been widely quoted on the mounting phenomenon of "terror sex," and has commented that sex makes us feel "real." "I'm alive, I'm functioning, I'm real. There's a euphoria, a triumph in sexuality," Schwartz breathily told Salon Magazine in late September. "People want to connect. It's life-affirming to feel your body attached to your head."

While it's a no-brainer that sex feels good, bin Laden or no bin Laden, it seems anxiety and fear have temporarily replaced alcohol as America's social lubricant. And sociologists like Schwartz are voicing their approval, predicting climbing birth rates as our sexual instincts override an initial sense of panic.