Ka’li Love and Bushy Meadows (aka Victoria) are doing something no straight couple has ever done before in America: selling their sexual services at a legal brothel. Last year, the engaged couple travelled from Portland to Nevada to work at Bella’s Hacienda Ranch in the tiny town of Wells (pop. 1,244). Clients can hire Ka’li or Bushy Meadows separately or as a package deal.
Unsurprisingly Ka’li and Victoria, who are newly engaged, exude sensuality. 29-year-old Ka’li has long curly black hair that grazes his toned chest, adorned with a lion tattoo between his biceps. “I’m a pleasure dom who gets off on your ecstasy. Being pansexual, I’m open to all types of people,” he declares on Bella’s website. 31-year-old Victoria has long black hair, large breasts, and as her name indicates: a big bush. “I love embracing my natural look and being the only babe in the house with one,” she says on her Bella’s profile that includes a picture of her posing underneath a giant clitoris sculpture.
It’s taken over a half century for a male-female couple to work in a legal brothel in the U.S.. Brothels are patriarchal spaces that cater to the straight male gaze. Providing services that could appeal to both women and men has never been a priority. Most brothels are owned by men, and male brothel owners “tend to be extremely misogynistic,” Victoria says. Male owners don’t recognize that women “can also pay someone for sex in a safe, legal establishment.” 18 legal brothels currently operate in the United States, all in Nevada. Bella’s is the only one to host male “courtesans,” as they’re called in the state.
There’s a reason that Bella’s is more open to male sex workers and couples. It’s the rare legal brothel owned by a woman. Its owner, 76-year-old Bella Cummins, has worked as a madam for 34 years and isn’t afraid to shake things up. Earlier last year she hired her first male sex worker, Romeo Uncaged. He was only the fourth legal male sex worker in Nevada’s history (the other three worked for mere months). Ka’li is the fifth. Until 2010, cis male sex workers were barred from brothels because laws required licensed sex workers to have vaginal exams. A female brothel owner challenged the law as discriminatory, paving the way for male sex workers.
The city of Wells has mixed feelings about Bella’s brothel. “They want Bella’s there, but they really want to keep a low profile as far as being supportive. They know we’re really good for City Hall monetarily,” Cummins says. Bella’s does bring in money to the town – people from across the country and the world are drawn to Bella’s, where they spend money at hotels and restaurants.
Cummins liked the idea of having a couple at the brothel because it attracted other couples as clients who were interested in swinging in a “safe, discrete, and legal” way. “Ka’li and Victoria are professionals and can help guide couples… into that fantasy they’re looking for,” Cummins says.
How Ka’li and Victoria ended up making sex history is a story that begins in Portland, Oregon, when Victoria was dancing at a strip club and Ka’li was working as a bouncer at the club. Victoria had graduated from the University of San Francisco with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and hospitality, and had worked in a hotel before becoming an exotic dancer. Ka’li also danced at male strip clubs. They began dating, and soon after they both explored new forms of sex work, including OnlyFans and escorting. It didn’t take them long to realize that they preferred in-person work. “When we did porn or OnlyFans, we felt like it was more performative…Being authentic with another person and having that connection, that’s what we both enjoy,” Victoria says.
When stripping in Portland became less lucrative a few years ago, they began looking for other jobs. Victoria was flipping through Exotic magazine when she saw an ad for the legal brothel The Love Ranch in Mound House, Nevada. Victoria liked the idea of working in a legal brothel because it was safer than being an independent escort and income was more secure. But before applying, she conferred with Ka’li. “I have a gut feeling that I need to explore this. How do you feel about that?” Victoria recalled asking him. He said he supported her 100 percent.
Victoria applied and began working at the Love Ranch in early 2025 for what was supposed to be a month-long shift. But she felt uneasy immediately. The brothel “was an absolute shit show,” she says. “It just wasn’t well run. There weren’t that many clients. I wasn’t making that much money.” She wanted to give the legal brothel industry another chance. So, she looked for other brothels that were hiring and found Bella’s. She started at Bella’s in May 2025. Her experience was completely different. “I loved all the people there, including the other working women,” Victoria says.
One day Ka’li visited Victoria at Bella’s, bringing along his sugar mama and a care package for Victoria. Ka’li was impressed with the 7,000-square foot space where sex workers both live and work in the 12 or so bedrooms. “It was a very welcoming atmosphere. It was really easy to talk to everybody,” Ka’li says. Cummins was impressed with Ka’li and thought he’d be a good fit at the brothel. He was hired in July 2025.
He became the second male-sex worker currently working at Bella’s. He’s got a different vibe and look to Romeo Uncaged, who is in his 40s and dresses in a goth style. “When I saw both of these gentlemen, I saw something unusual in them, that they were really courtesans, authentically,” Cummins says. She says that both seemed to want to help clients “explore their curiosity.” Men who come into the brothel have options, “now, women get that opportunity,” Victoria says.
Since the arrival of Ka’li, Bella’s has received eight applications for men who want to work there. They are currently sorting through them. It’s a tough process. They ask all prospective male courtesans if they can get erections without the help of Viagra-type drugs, Cummins says. Ka’li doesn’t have any trouble in that area. “For me, it’s more about the connection of it, and I don’t necessarily need pharmaceuticals to be able to achieve that,” he says. Male courtesans also must be bisexual since the number of female clients at Bella’s isn’t high enough yet to support a male escort. In part, the lack of women is due to restrictions on brothel advertising.
Women don’t know they’re welcome because advertisements can’t describe sexual services, since prostitution is not legal throughout the state or country. “It’s really a huge violation of the Ninth Amendment,” Cummins says. Her courtesans are allowed to advertise to truckers over CB radio as long as it’s not explicit. They announce their services on the CB, which reaches drivers motoring nearby in the eight to ten miles between mountains on I-80 or U.S. Highway 93. When Ka’li jumps on the CB, “Sometimes he gets a little grief. Sometimes he doesn’t. But guess what? The ladies get grief too,” Cummins says. Victoria says she’s trying to modernize the advertising, taking it to social media, but she and Ka’li have been censored on nearly all platforms. Social media censorship “specifically goes after women, especially sex workers and women who have curvier bodies,” Victoria says.
Life at Bella’s for the couple has settled into a satisfying routine, or as routine as any job at a brothel can be. The two have separate rooms so they can see clients on their own. They’ve been working 10-14 days a month, but they’re shifting to full time, about three weeks a month. Usually they get up around noon, work out, eat, shower, get dressed and then film content before starting their brothel shift. The brothel is open 24 hours, but they can choose what shifts they want to work since they’re independent contractors. They work the later shifts. During a shift, there can be a lot of downtime, which they spend in their rooms as they wait to hear a bell indicating a customer has arrived. Once the bell rings, they have three minutes to scramble from wherever they are on site to the bar area to line up in front of the customer.
The number of clients they see daily varies. Ka’li and Victoria can see anywhere from a handful of clients to 15 a day. Bookings range from 30 minutes to an overnight stay. Clients come from all walks of life, all genders and sexualities: cis and trans, queer and straight. They also come from a variety of political persuasions and backgrounds. Mormons are frequent customers. MAGA-hat wearing Trumpers have booked Victoria. No client has made a big deal about Ka’li being there.
Though Trumpers come to Bella’s, Barbara Brents, professor emeritus of sociology at University of Nevada Las Vegas, found that brothel customers “are generally more progressive than the population as a whole. I did a study on… a few markers of more feminist kind of ideas, and they’re certainly a lot more progressive in that way,” she says.
More female and couple clients have come to the brothel recently, thanks to Victoria and Ka’li. Ka’li’s been attracting more female clients since appearing on Season 7 of Love During Lockup.
Clients either arrange for an appointment beforehand or walk in and request a line-up. When a client enters the brothel, they walk into a space featuring a bar, a TV, an ATM machine and a painting of a naked woman.
Usually they order a drink and sip it as they eye the men and women in the line-up. Sometimes sex workers join them at the bar. “We like to talk to them and make them feel comfortable. We’ll have a drink with them, hang out. We won’t even talk shop,” Victoria says. The casual introduction “is all about creating a safe space for them to be comfortable and be able to let go,” Ka’li says.
If clients see a courtesan they like, they follow the worker to the negotiation room, where they discuss sex acts and price. Fees for experiences are usually over $1,000, whether they are with Ka’li and Victoria by themselves or as a couple. (Brothel workers are not legally allowed to disclose exact pricing). The house takes half of the amount. “What we’re providing, not only is it a luxury experience, but we’re also providing [a] healthy [experience],” Victoria says. She and Ka’li have weekly STI testing. In the negotiation room they discuss consent policies and what sexual acts their clients want to experience. Condoms are mandatory. No fluids are exchanged during sex acts. Workers also sometimes do a “dick check” or vagina check where they shine a light on a person’s genitals to see if they have any visible sores.
Female clients take longer in the negotiating room than male clients do, Cummins says. “Women are still dealing with that old archetype scenario of: is this going to make me a bad girl? Is somebody going to look down on me for this? …This is very old cellular type programming within women,” she says.
Though grappling with the social implications of the act takes longer, the payoff is worth it. Hiring a courtesan can help a woman “heal” so she’s able to experience the whole range of sexuality from the vanilla to the taboo, Cummins says. Victoria says she and Ka’li help women to not “hold shame” around their sexuality.
In the months since they’ve been at the brothel, clients have travelled from across the and the world to see them. Many people “want a classic, vanilla experience,” Victoria says. “What they’re after is intimacy [and connection] more than anything. I think anything sexual is kind of second.”
Their first booking as a couple was a man from Mumbai who was going to Las Vegas for a business trip. He booked them for an hour. “He had never had a sexual experience with a man and a woman before, and he really wanted to feel connected with two people who love each other,” Victoria says. “He was very much about the connectivity and the passion and the love.”
Ka’li’s first solo booking was a male firefighter who had spent months battling fires on the west coast. He was exhausted and wanted a deep-tissue massage and no sex.
They’ve had several couple clients already and have other bookings in the works. A retired empty nester couple in their 50s recently emailed them to book a fantasy. “He wants to be dommed and watch his wife get fucked by Ka’li, and then he wants to be degraded in the process,” Victoria says. Many couples are “trying to find an emotionally safe space to explore their different kinks and sexual desires and fantasies, where it’s not like swiping right on Tinder … it makes it a lot easier when you’re paying professionals that you can have straight up conversations [with],” Victoria says.
Other couples are interested in swinging-type experiences. Sometimes couples “have had closed marriages [and] want to open it up, and this is a safe space for them to explore,” Victoria says. It’s safer both emotionally and physically. Consent is much clearer at a brothel than at a swinger club, Ka’li says. “Consent…is never just one conversation. It continues throughout the session,” Victoria says.
Another couple hired them for their honeymoon. “That’s what the wife wanted, and he was so happy. He loved her so much, and wanted to do that for her. So yeah, they booked us for a few hours, and we had an awesome time,” Victoria says.
The female clients she and Ka’li have been getting tend to be single women in their 30s-50s. “They have experienced some kind of trauma, or haven’t had sex in years, and they really just needed a safe space to feel doted on,” Victoria says. Ka’li’s clients have skewed more female than male. Ka’li has had a few clients who haven’t had sex in a decade because they “distrust” men.
Women have also hired them to experience being a “unicorn” in a relationship. One female client who hired the couple had sex with Ka’li while Victoria caressed her head, kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear about how beautiful and sexy she is.
Victoria is happy that the brothel clientele is shifting. “I like the idea of women feeling more comfortable coming into brothels and seeing that there’s an option for them,” Victoria says.
Working at Bella’s has not caused the couple jealousy. “Jealousy is a choice,” Ka’li says. “We have already done adult content for so many years that we don’t associate sex to be a jealous act. We associate sex to be a joyful experience,” Ka’li says. Victoria says they have “so much trust” that jealousy doesn’t factor in.
In the past she had more anxiety around her relationship. “That was a wound that I had from my inner child being hurt from my childhood. But I have a therapist who’s my biggest cheerleader, very sex positive, and I’ve done that healing with her,” Victoria says. The couple says working at Bella’s has improved their relationship. “It’s never been stronger,” Ka’li says.
Business has gone so well that they are upending their lives and moving from their home of Portland, Oregon to Nevada to work and live at the brothel full-time. “We are so lucky that we have the best job. We have the best bosses. We get to do what we love, and we get to work together,” Victoria says.
They’ve even told their parents what they do. Ka’li’s parents are supportive. “They are just really big, accepting, hippies. They’re like, we’re so happy for you that you’re happy,’” Victoria says.
Victoria’s mom is supporting her as well. “She just loves me unconditionally,” Victoria says. “She even commented how she hasn’t seen me this happy in years.”
She hasn’t opened up to her dad yet. (Her parents are divorced). She’s not going to bring up her job to him, but she says she’d be “happy” to talk with him about it. “I have no shame with what I do, only pride,” Victoria says. “But also, I don’t owe anyone anything, because nobody owns my sexuality but myself.”
So far their groundbreaking job at Bella’s has been a success, both financially and ideologically for the couple. “We want to be an example of showing that you can …be two people who are in sex work and have genuine, authentic love for each other,” Victoria says.
Bella’s is a place that supports sex workers. “They give us so much love, so much empathy, they truly see us, they care about us,” Victoria says.
The brothel holds Tony Robbins business trainings. “These courtesans share their money with me, and so what I do with what they share is work to move them forward, because this won’t be something they’ll do forever,” Cummins says.
The positive working environment helps them in their larger goal of making a political statement. “We are huge advocates for decriminalization and also legalization…laws need to be changed in both areas,” Victoria says. Ka’li would like to coach other men who want to get involved in sex work. Some day they hope that maybe they can own their own legal brothel with a non-profit organization as an off-shoot. In the meantime, Victoria will be studying for her doctorate in human sex and sexuality at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
