In the late 1990s to early 2000s, the internet expanded global networking in terms of finance, business, politics, academia and, of course, pornography. Any preteen with unmonitored access and an AOL account would most likely be confronted with explicit content. Some even explored it, fascinated, before fully understanding what sex even is, and thought “I can do that.”

One of those preteens grew up to be Kitti Minx, a sex worker who has intermittent residencies at the Mustang Ranch in Sparks and is also the (self-proclaimed) premiere geek girl “Cosplay Courtesan” in Nevada. With thousands of followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well as a blog and an interactive website, it’s safe to say Minx has a substantial online presence. Born in 1990, Minx prefers to not refer to herself as a millennial.

“I have always enjoyed cosplay since I was a kid,” Minx said. “I grew up in a nerdy family. I’ve gone to the conventions since they were small. I’ve always enjoyed dressing up. When I’d be in cosplay at conventions I’d get propositions for sex from people who just liked me. As I felt a following align for my cosplay . . . I started having fans. I realized there is a market for this.”

Minx started modelling in high school for magazines and fashion. In college, at the age of 18, she began modelling for adult websites, clips for sale, and later on, camming.

Nevada is the only state to offer legal prostitution. There are 19 operating brothels in the state. It employs approximately 200 women.

The first thing to spark her interest about legal prostitution was an episode of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit!” on HBO. She returned to an email she received from Dennis Hof years prior, offering good money from her fans if she came and worked for him. Originally, she declined, but in 2015 she reconsidered.

“I don’t exactly want to give credit to Dennis Hof, but he does put himself out there in the media a lot,” Minx said. “With the internet, once in a while, something about him and his business starts trending. Of course people interested in it will click on it and find a link to the Bunny Ranch website and there’s an application page on there.”

Dennis Hof is a Nevadan entrepreneur, millionaire and owner of seven brothels, including the famous Bunny Ranch in Las Vegas.

She heard back within 24 hours of submitting the application. She was offered spots at the Love Ranch in Carson City or the Love Ranch in Las Vegas. She went with the Vegas location because the flight costed less.

Her time spent at the Love Ranch was mostly negative. However, when life gives you lemons, you turn to the internet.

“I’m not gonna say business was bad, but the nature of how that house is situated and where it’s located, it does not get a lot of walk-in traffic,” Minx said. “So you have to do a lot of self-promotion. I managed to establish business through social media, a blog, my own website . . . just putting myself out there.”

On several occasions they butted heads.

“I gave the Love Ranch Vegas a run for their money because I was completely unpredictable, completely not pinpoint-able,” Minx said. “Not only because of my personality and how I did business, but also I offered things most sex workers didn’t. Like, I do cosplay and I openly promote that. That is not common in the industry, but just looking at porn and the general rise of geek culture. That is a very fast-growing niche.”

Ultimately, her decisions paid off.

“I was attracting customers from Silicon Valley,” Minx said. “You know the shy, nerdy guys who don’t always have the best luck getting intimate with women of their own merit, they have a hard time courting them . . . and because they work in Silicon Valley, they tend to have money, if you catch my drift. So I kind of blew [Love Ranch]’s mind, because I would have people coming in talking to me and dropping some change.”

One aspect she enjoyed about the Love Ranch was the serenity of the location: “I am an introvert and I do like my peace and quiet.”

However, after a year, the Love Ranch and Minx mutually decided to not renew her contract. She cites being “treated like garbage” as well as a rift between her and Dennis Hof.

She since transferred to the Mustang Ranch in Sparks and has nothing but nice things to say about the establishment: the kitchen, the gym, the nice rooms, the marketing team, the management, and, especially, the security. She complained at the Love Ranch about faulty panic buttons in the rooms after bumping one by accident and nothing happening.

At the Mustang Ranch, she usually works the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. shift, which goes to the more “girl-next-door” types, catering to older, shyer customers. She discussed the banality of her job, citing water cooler discussions in the break room as no different than when she worked in a call center.

She offers a multitude of services, including the “girlfriend experience” which involves sex, but also more intimate aspects like cuddling and kissing. She recalls one particular girlfriend experience: “They wwanted to watch something with me on Netflix. I had to hook up the Apple TV I brought to the TV in the room. I could not for the life of me get to the TV to be able to hook it up, and I was like ‘hey can you help me out.’ And he said ‘what is this, a wife experience?’ We’ve been joking about it since . . . but I really thought about it, and yeah, a wife party is something you can offer for people who don’t want the girlfriend type of experience, but want a deeper kind of connection, a more established feeling that you get with a spouse as opposed to just a girlfriend. Which especially appeals to those who lost their spouse due to death. They don’t want to waste time. They don’t want to fool around. They want someone they can really talk to, really connect with, really feel intimate with that they can’t get because the person they were with for however many years is gone.”

Her favorite part of the job is, “Getting to meet a diverse array of people, who come from all walks of life who have a whole variety of stories to tell. I really like getting to know different people and what makes them tick and how they came to be.”

Her least favorite part of the job is, “In lieu of getting professional help like a therapist or a psychiatrist, some people choose to come to a sex worker. They will give us their whole life story: every last heartbreaking detail. That mental and emotional labor is hard. We can only help them when they’re in our room. We can only save them if they’re with us and in physical jeopardy, but we can’t actually save them.”

Despite her taboo field of work, she has maintained healthy and relatively normal relationships, both familial and romantic.

“Doing physical intimacy legally for a paycheck is not the same as cheating,” Minx said. “People put sex on a pedestal: ‘It’s the be-all-end-all. When you have sex in a relationship, that’s when you’ve made it’ . . . But, there’s so many different kinds of intimacy. If you’re doing it to make a baby, that’s a big deal. That’s a life-long commitment. But sex for sex’s sake is just a thing . . . People are so backwards when it comes to platonic intimacy even. People think it’s weird if friends hug or cuddle or say I love you . . . You’re capable of loving people not romantically and not sexually. When it comes to sex, people do have a sex drive. It’s an urge. It’s a need. They need to have it met sometimes. If you can’t have it met through hookup culture or you’re divorced or widowed and can’t get it and you don’t want to go through the whole ordeal of a new relationship, paying for it from a sex worker lets you get that intimacy and such without all that hassle.”

Minx has migrated back to Texas for the holidays. When she’s not in Nevada, she works on a business venture into the IT world. She is also an artist, a writer and a performance artist. She is a widow and has a child.

“I’m a single mom just because of very unfortunate, very sad circumstances that have occurred that have left me alone, raising my young child with lots of support for family and friends,” Minx said. “The hardest part is every time I leave to go the brothel, because I spend so much time with my child and you miss your kid. The leaving and the first couple days adjusting to the new routine is hard. I’m so accustomed to waking up and doing the mom thing, then I wake up and I don’t hear the pitter patter of little footsteps.”

When asked about the day when her child finds out about her line of work, she responded, “The benefit of, I don’t even know what they’re calling them, Generation Z or iGen, is they’re all growing up connected to the internet . . . This generation, whether religious groups or school systems like it or not, they’re growing up more sexually open-minded and aware than previous generations just because they’re going to be exposed to it. They’re going to be exposed to the fact that people who aren’t heterosexual exist. They’re going to be exposed to the idea that transgendered individuals exist. They’re going to be exposed to the fact that sex exists and porn exists and it’s something that people do.”

Minx returns to Nevada in February.