Unique was standing on a street corner in San Francisco when she learned about Utah.
"I'm all the way in California and I hear about little ol' Utah," she laughs. Her friend Asha explains why they made the trip."We just heard the business was good, the cops are nice and they can't take you to jail, and the guys just want (fellatio) and straight forward sex - no kinky stuff," Asha said.
Asha and Unique consummate intimacies in back seats and motel rooms on "the circuit" - a network of prostitutes and pimps that circulates word about which cities are best for business.
Last weekend they were working in Salt Lake City during the year's first snowstorm, because the word is out - this town is prostitute-friendly. Conversely, Las Vegas is currently cracking down on "the girls," so most say they're avoiding one of their most lucrative cities.
That easy image bothers local police officers and infuriates prosecutors who blame an overcrowded jail and a lenient judiciary for what they're calling the city's worst explosion of illegal sex activity in 25 years.
It's bad enough that Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard himself was recently propositioned while in uniform.
"I've never seen it like this. We can literally count 15 to 20 girls a night," said South Salt Lake police detective Joe Bennett.
"These girls aren't hanging back like shrinking violets," adds Capt. Bill Shelton, a Salt Lake officer who has worked vice in one assignment or another for two decades.
The prostitutes' brazen methods are hardly the only evidence of the city's out-of-control sex trade.
For the first time in recent memory, undercover cops are seeing pimps with vanloads of girls pulling into town. Two weeks ago, vice officers closed an alleged brothel - only the third of its kind shut down in the city during the past 20 years.
The court system is so backed up with new cases that many women who are cited again and again simply toss their citations in the trash. Many flaunt those same tickets as their only identification when stopped by police.
Any night
On State Street and 2100 South, traffic is peppered with prostitutes and cops. It's difficult to find a place near the intersection where there's not one or the other. Both are in uniform.
"It was cool when I first got here," Barbie said. "I could work all day and night. It's harder now, but I'll just go to Main (Street) if it gets too bad (on State)."
Asha said she, too, worked day and night.
Barbie and Sharon turn and move on towards another pair of prostitutes who call out to them using street names. They exchange warnings about cops and clients.
The women say police may make doing business harder, but they can't stop it.
In fact, there's nothing coy about Toni, a local prostitute dressed in cheerleading skirt and high heels, who hops into a car in full view of marked patrol cars and vice officers. The cops respond by pulling the car over and ordering Toni out of the vehicle. The man behind the wheel says he was just giving her a ride.
"Would your wife believe you were just giving her a ride?" inquires Bennett.
"No," the man answers.
"Then neither do I," Bennett responds. All he can do is warn the man. To arrest a "john," he has to catch him in the act, or use a decoy and hear him name a sex act and a price.
Sharon and Barbie complain that all the police do is push them back and forth across the cities' boundaries.
"It's like a football game," Sharon said. "They (South Salt Lake) push us up here and they (Salt Lake police) push us back down there. Back and forth all night."
South Salt Lake Police Chief Robert Gray knows that's all they can do until they can arrest them. "All we're doing is pushing them around the valley," Gray said. "It's kind of frustrating."
Toni hassles the police about stopping her, and Bennett tells a uniformed officer to take her to jail.
"Are they taking us now?" Toni asks in disbelief, while the officer handcuffs her.
"No," Bennett admits, instructing the other officer to take her to 1300 South (in Salt Lake City's jurisdiction), write her a citation for soliciting and let her go.
"Another ticket?" she whines, tilting her head to the side. "That's the fourth one I've gotten tonight. How much do these things cost?"
Nobody answers and everybody moves on.
Crime and punishment
Until the city gets more jail cells, officials don't expect "circuit girls" and local streetwalkers to stay away.
The downtown lockup and its counterpart in South Salt Lake simply don't have room for females cited with misdemeanor offenses. Without the threat of incarceration, prostitutes thumb their noses at law enforcement.
They don't make their court appearances, which in turn means they're rarely convicted of the crime. And if they're not convicted, they do not have to be tested for AIDS - a requirement for any person found guilty of a sex-related offense in Utah.
Under the circumstances, the lack of jail space is also a major public health issue.
"These women's customers seem to either minimize the risk or somehow ignore it. They've forgotten that they are putting their families in jeopardy and they may not even know it because the girl on the street doesn't know she's infected. That puts us all in jeopardy," Shelton said.
But the women insist they will not perform sex acts without condoms. Police try to use this to their advantage by confiscating any condoms the women have in their possession when citing them for prostitution. Bennett reasons the prostitutes won't ply their trade without the latex sheaths.
Besides AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, the men should also be concerned about getting hepatitis - a feces-borne ailment.
Shelton said many of the prostitutes are drug addicts who get their supplies from Pioneer Park dealers, who lately have made a habit of swallowing balloons full of drugs to avoid police detection.
"Then they just wait to get it from the other end. They may not always wash their hands before they pass the drugs onto the buyers," he explained.
"Need a date?"
Asha and Unique stand talking on the southwest corner of 2100 South and State Street, waiting for a "date."
The pair came to Utah before the big crackdown, before prostitution was one of the Valley's hottest political footballs for judges, elected officials and candidates alike.
They walk the streets because they claim they make an average of $1,000 a night. They won't go home until they make at least $500.
"Look at all these cops," Unique says, waving her long, gold fingernails at marked police cars. "I'm out of here on the next thing smoking."
Her next stop? "Hollywood," she says with a smile. "That's always good money."
"Johns"
Customers of prostitutes admit they think about the risk inherent in soliciting the women. Still, they do it - trusting their lives and perhaps the health of their families to a condom.
"I always wear protection. I demand it," said one man who faces an upcoming court date for sex solicitation.
The man, a 34-year-old father and a business owner, was cited after offering a police decoy "$15 for sex," according to court records.
"Men want to get out there just to get something different. Some of the girls are really beautiful," he said, noting that he had not told anyone, including his wife, about being caught.
"I admit I have a lot to lose . . . my reputation, the people I know. I think I'm done with doing this," he said.
Another man, a food handler for a local restaurant, also is trying to keep his recent citation secret.
"My wife and kids wouldn't see it the same way I do. It was just a stupid mistake; I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
"You see Cadillacs, Mercedes, pickup trucks, `beater cars,' a little of everything," Shelton said. "The business crosses every socioeconomic line."
Street life
Sharon started prostituting when she was 11 years old. She said she got out for a few years, but started selling herself again at age 18. All say it's the money that attracts them.
"They don't have to pay my rent, so they shouldn't look down on me," Toni said of police officers and public officials. "It's just another place to work."
These "visitors" to Utah say they don't have pimps, but vans and sports utility vehicles bearing out-of-state license plates circle the area, stopping occasionally to talk to the prostitutes but never picking them up. Vice cops say they're pimps.
A few prostitutes say it was hard to get used to selling sex. Others said it was an easy decision because they needed money.
Asha said she was enrolled in college - interior design school - but got into debt and had no other way to get out.
Sally said she used to sell herself for extra money while she worked full-time as a receptionist for an accountant.
"I started making more money on the street, so I just quit," she said.
Cash aside, the prostitutes put up with sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Asha said she was robbed just before police stopped her on a busy corner Friday night.
"A guy put a knife to my throat and took all my money," she said with disgust. When asked why she continued to put herself in danger, she said, "Because I'll make it up later."
Many of the women have been raped yet talk about it as an inconvenience, rather than a trauma. Sharon said a group of men in Arizona played Russian roulette with her, then raped her repeatedly. She went to the hospital that time, but usually she just tries to deal with it on her own.
Many are mothers. Asha's 17-month-old daughter spends most of her time with a nanny in California while her mother travels.
Tougher penalties
Until now, most of the enforcement effort has been aimed at the obvious - the sex sellers. But in a press conference Thursday, officials said they planned to focus new energy on the sex-seeking men who keep the women in business.
Specifically, prosecutors want judges to sentence men convicted of patronizing a prostitute to two days of home confinement. The "johns" would have to wear an ankle bracelet similar to other convicts on parole and check in hourly with the court.
"The prospect is obviously a big stick to some guys. I mean, it's hard to explain away a bracelet to your wife," said lead prosecutor Cheryl Luke.
She's already asked a judge on two occasions for the sentence. "You should see (the men). They go pale. They shake. They get nervous. I believe it's got to be a significant deterrent," Luke said.
The judges did not grant her sentencing request, but she believes magistrates will be more amenable to the idea in some cases.
Currently, most men convicted of the crime receive a $200 to $300 fine, a 10-day suspended jail sentence and six months of unsupervised probation.
The battle resumes
One Salt Lake police officer warns Barbie, 23, and Sharon, 18, that if he can ticket them for anything, including jaywalking, littering, running into traffic, he will.
"How come you all treat us like (dirt)?" Sharon asks the young officer.
Bennett provides her an answer.
"You've got to understand that we don't want prostitutes here," Bennett said. "The way you chose to live is a violation of the law. So expect to get arrested."
Sharon's been in Salt Lake City all summer and she said she's made thousands of dollars.
"Salt Lake is popping," Sharon said, adding she doesn't understand what all the hype over prostitution is about. "If we want to sell our bodies, then that's our choice."
Down the street another police officer is talking to four more prostitutes. They don't want to talk about their jobs. One who calls herself Sally stops just long enough to give a warning.
"You crack down on us and you watch rapes and molestations go up," she said, walking away. Later, she explains, that one of her regulars pays her to pretend he's raping her. He even provides the clothing that he rips from her body.
"These guys ain't your normal guys," she said. "They don't just go without."