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defense attorney. “He was supportive, but he couldn’t handle it; he ended up in the hospital with a heart attack,” she says. “So after that I lied and said I was only going to do foot fetishes. And I do have some clients who have foot fetishes.” These are men who become extremely aroused at the sight of an attractive woman’s foot and like to lick, suck, and sniff her feet.
    Michelle also has clients she refers to as adult babies. “They wear diapers and regress back to an infant when they’re with me,” she says. “I feed them, burp them, and they play with their toys, and then they go home to their wives.”
    Michelle will satisfy other fetishes as long as there is no pain or humiliation involved. “When I’m with someone, I get pleasure out of seeing them get pleasure,” she says. Her work, she says, doesn’t get in the way of intimate relations with her husband. “The sex is a much deeper, real experience,” she says. “If anything, my job has enhanced my relationship. It reminds me of the importance of listening.”
    That evening, I find Michelle, along with a group of other sex workers, splashing in one of the hotel’s pools. (The July sun in Las Vegas is too hot to even sunbathe near a pool during daylight hours.) Michelle is talking to Donia Christine, who owns a consulting company in New York and works with men and women in the sex industry to help them improve their business.
    â€œ Eros.com ’s days are numbered,” Christine is saying as I wade over. Michelle, who is wearing a one-piece black bathing suit with a plunging neckline, is dangling her legs in the warm pool water. “They arecharging sex workers too much and attracting third-party players who bring phishing software [used to con browsers of the site into giving away personal information] to the site.” Christine, who has submerged much of her body in the pool, talks up Slixa as a good website on which to advertise for adult sex.
    â€œBackpage is a good site too, particularly for high-end escorts, because there are so many low-end prostitutes advertising there,” she says. (In 2013, the company that owns backpage.com sold all its print publications, including the Village Voice , to another publishing entity, Voice Media Group. But it retained the lucrative online website, which competes with Craigslist in posting all kinds of ads, including ads for paid sex.)
    Michelle listens intently, and by the end of the evening, she has agreed to pay Christine $8,000 to do a website for her with better search engine optimization, including new photos and a more upscale look. “I’m willing to pay that much if it allows me to clear between $4,000 and $6,000 a week,” Michelle later tells me.
    Michelle is confident that mastering the art of online branding will boost her business. And she is not alone. The next day at the conference, a late-afternoon panel session titled “Hooker-nomics: The Business of Sex or Your Pleasure Is My Business” attracts an overflow crowd of sex workers who are eager to learn the tricks of the trade. All the seats in the conference room have been taken, and people are sitting in the aisle or standing against the back wall. While there are three or four young men scattered around the room, most of the attendees are women, ranging in age from their twenties to their forties and fifties. Everyone is dressed for the heat (the air conditioning isn’t working too well), some in shorts and sleeveless T-shirts, others in cool flowing skirts and low-cut blouses. I spot Michelle and Maddy in the back of the room. Donia Christine is on the panel, as are three female sex workers and a male escort who calls himself Legendary Dave.
    Dave, who strolled into the room barefoot and bare-chested, in cut-off shorts, with close-cropped graying hair and gray chest hairs to match, tells the crowd he has been working as a gay escort in