Tera Patrick - Sinner Takes All

I won’t put myself in any scene that I don’t fully enjoy doing, and I always make sure my movies are beautiful. I got into porn because I was a twenty-two-year-old free spirit who loved to get her freak on, live out wild sexual fantasies, and feel beautiful and desired. And frankly, I just love to get fucked. And it got me off. I didn’t have to fake orgasms because I was really into the sex and it was an extra turn-on to have people watching me have sex. That made me cum hard. It is empowering for me, not degrading. I can’t say what’s right and wrong for other girls. Maybe some girls actually enjoy getting spit on, and if that’s the case, then I don’t judge them. But I know what makes me feel good and what makes me feel bad and throughout my entire ten years of doing porn, I never said yes to anything that I didn’t fully and wholeheartedly want to do. Unfortunately, not all girls in porn can say the same thing and those are the films that give porn a bad name.

MY SEXUAL LIKES:

• Rough sex

• Hair-pulling

• Mild choking

• Getting tied up

• Playing the submissive

• Strong, tough, tattooed men

MY SEXUAL DISLIKES:

• Head-stepping

• Spitting

• Slapping (well, sometimes)

• Double anything

• Girlie-guys

With my rules firmly in place and a true excitement for the industry, I hit the ground running hard. Between June and December of 1999, I was shooting two or three times a week, making $15,000 a month, and had amassed a collection of about forty movies, including Sex Island, Up and Cummers, Foot Lovers Only, The Video Adventures of Peeping Tom 22, Farmer’s Daughters Do Beverly Hills, and others. I upgraded my car from a Mazda 323 hatchback to a much nicer Honda Accord and moved out of my little apartment in Canoga Park to a fancier loft in Woodland Hills, California. I also discovered Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and could finally afford Gucci and Prada instead of Forever 21 and Steve Madden. I even upgraded my name. My given name, Linda Ann Hopkins, wasn’t going to cut it in this industry, so after trying out a few stage names, I settled on Tera Patrick.

SAY MY NAME:

Here’s the history of my various names over the years:

• LINDA ANN HOPKINS: This is my birth name. My parents actually considered naming me Florida. Yes, Florida, as in the Sunshine State. It fit with Dad’s hippie style, but Mom thought it might be too weird and liked the name Linda because it means “beautiful” in Spanish. The nurse asked, “So, is it Florida or Linda?” and Mom just settled on Linda. It was a popular name at the time.

• BROOKE MACHADO: I used this name for the foot fetish film, Foot Lovers Only . I just liked the name Brooke for a first name, so I used that. The photographer thought I looked Brazilian and said it would be cool if people thought I was from Brazil so he gave me the last name Machado.

• BROOKE THOMAS: I was shooting my very first photo layout with Suze Randall for Club magazine and the photographer’s name was Chris Thomas. He asked me to come up with a name that I liked and I said Brooke and I liked his last name, so Brooke Thomas was born. I used this name for the movie Real Sex Magazine 22 as well.

• SADIE JORDAN: This name was given to me for the movie Paradise Hotel and I don’t even remember how or why I got the name. Sometimes they just put random names on the DVD box. They do that all the time. I’m also credited as Sadie Jordan for Gallery of Sin in 1999.

• LINDA ANN SHAPIRO: I never went by the name Linda Ann Shapiro. Wikipedia.orggot that wrong!

• TARA PATRICK: Misspelling! My name was misspelled as Tara instead of Tera for Crossroads , Aroused , and Real Sex Magazine 23 , both in 1999, and maybe a few others.

• TERA PATRICK: I loved the name Tera because “terra” means Earth. And when I found out Carmen Electra’s real name is Tara (with an “a” not an “e”) Patrick, that made it even better. Who wouldn’t want to be named after a sex symbol like her? I began doing business as Tera Patrick in 1999, but I didn’t legally change my name to Tera Patrick until April 3, 2009.

In 1999 I was feeling like a hot, young chick on my own, and for the first time I felt responsible and in charge of my life. And I felt beautiful and confident. I thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this! I get free sex with no strings attached. And I get paid good money to do something I love.” I was enjoying life. I was free. And I was horny. My motto was: “Get it up. Get it in. Get it off. Get it out.” That was my attitude on and off the set. I just didn’t want a boyfriend at the time. I threw my idea of getting married out the window for a few years and focused on having fun and making money instead.

Three shoots stood out the most in 1999. They involved rough sex, a Lost in Translation moment, and Jenna Jameson and a big black dildo. Let me fill you in.

One of my dirty little secrets is that I really do enjoy rough sex, but only to an extent. And it’s hard to articulate what that line is until someone crosses it. Well, a porn actor who I’d rather not name in this story stepped over that line on the set of a film I refuse to name as well. He was a Puerto Rican performer who is known for being a little rough with girls and he treated me no different. I told him I liked it rough, and I didn’t mind his hands on my throat or him pulling my hair. But he did it a little too hard. He touched me a little too rough. He grabbed my hair a little too tightly. He just did everything a little too much.

But the worst part was the look in his eyes. I can normally look a man in the eyes and feel a connection. I can normally turn a guy on with that connection while we’re having sex. But when I looked into his eyes, he wasn’t there. He was blank. He had this look like he actually hated women and was fucking me out of hate, not out of lust or passion. He was a monster to me. I used my “switch” and just turned it off, did my job, and got through it. My fans tell me that scene is a hard one to watch. I don’t know because I haven’t watched it, but I’ll never forget how I felt when I left that set.

That experience didn’t dissuade me from doing more movies, though. I just learned to be more specific about what kind of rough sex I liked the next time I shot. And I learned that I could choose whom I want to, and don’t want to, work with. I was the one in charge, and I never let anyone forget that.

On a lighter note, the funniest scene in my entire career happened on the set of Angel Dust with a Spanish performer named Nacho Vidal, who had the biggest cock I’d ever seen. He was the sweetest guy ever, but his English wasn’t so great. During our scene, he had me from behind doggy-style, and I looked over at him and said, “Fuck me like a whore.”

He obviously didn’t hear me correctly or maybe he got the words confused because he started saying in his sexy porn voice, “OK, horse. You like that, horse? How’s that feel, horse?”

I started to crack up. The crew started to crack up. The director lost it. And poor Nacho got very embarrassed and confused and asked, “What? What are you laughing at?”

“Oh, honey,” I said to him. “I said whore, not horse.”

We all just lost it. The poor guy was really sensitive about his English and he thought we were making fun of him. But it was too funny to not laugh.

My third most memorable moment of 1999 was a photo shoot I did with Jenna Jameson with the French magazine Hot Video for a sexy spread titled “The Blonde Is Not Enough.” Jenna showed up with her then-boyfriend four hours late, but I didn’t care. That just left more time for me in the makeup chair with Lee Garland, who was one of my favorite makeup artists. He painted the faces of every major star in the porn industry since the late ’80s and he was known for making any girl look flawless.