Tera Patrick - Sinner Takes All

Jenna and I got along great. We both joked around a lot and liked to have fun. So, for two hours, we goofed off for the cameras and had a blast. We had to act out all of these different sex positions together, including going down on each other and getting it on with a very large black dildo. We loved the dildo so much that in between photo set-ups, we’d take turns just sitting on it. Neither one of us wanted to take it out! We were cracking up the entire time, and comparing notes on how sore our necks each were from having to look up at the camera while eating each other’s pussy. Yes, neck pain is just one of the hazards of our job.

She must have liked working with me, because before leaving the set that day she gave me some advice: “You should do this series called Virtual Sex. I just did it. It’s with this woman Samantha Lewis of Digital Playground. She’ll pay you really well for it.”

“OK, Jenna. Thanks!” I replied.

An outtake from the Hot Video sessions

It was the second time that month that Samantha Lewis’s name came up. Ron Atkinson, a director and production manager in the adult industry, called me one day out of the blue on my cell (which, I kid you not, had the last four digits 6969) and said he had a friend named Samantha who was interested in doing a movie with me and that she pays top dollar.

I was always interested in working and was excited that both Jenna and Ron had vouched for this woman. A lot of money sounded good to me. The Van Nuys-based Digital Playground was a relatively new porn production company—it started just six years earlier in 1993. But if it was good enough for Jenna, it was good enough for me. I looked at it as just another movie, another fuck, and another day on a glamorous set. I was in.

So I met with Samantha and her partner at Digital Playground, Ali Joone, in December 1999 and shot Virtual Sex with Tera Patrick for them a week later. The Virtual Sex series is an interactive movie where you only see the girl performer and a guy’s penis and the viewer takes the role of the male star and can dictate which sex acts he does with the female performer. Here’s how it works: I welcome the viewer and invite him to control my actions by using buttons on his remote control. He can choose to have me tell him stories, perform fore-play, give him a blowjob, or have sex with him in a variety of positions. You can even choose the camera angles and decide whether you want me to be naughty or nice. Porn has always been at the forefront of technology, and this was an exciting, ground-breaking new format to be a part of.

Samantha asked me how much I wanted to get paid for the movie and still not having a clue about the business, I said, “Oh, $5,000 would be good.” Knowing what I know now, I probably could’ve said $50,000 since the video ended up being a top-selling DVD for the company. I even won an AVN Award for it for Best Interactive DVD. (The AVNs, put on by the industry trade magazine Adult Video News, are the Oscars of the porn industry and are held every January in Las Vegas.)

The movie turned out great, but it was not a fun shoot for me. I was not about making great movies at the time. I was about having great sex on camera, and this was not that. It was very technical and clinical and a tedious fifteen-hour workday. It was one of the hardest shoots I’ve ever done. I couldn’t really get off in that film. There was too much stop/start, this angle/that angle, do this/do that. I couldn’t just fuck, and that was frustrating for me.

The day after the shoot, Samantha asked me if I was under contract to anyone. I told her that I wasn’t and Digital offered me a contract. I wasn’t sure what to do so I talked my agent, Jim South, who was a good man with good advice. He was such a Southern gentleman. Jim was an older man with a lot of character in his face, slicked back hair, a big mustache, and talked with a soothing Southern drawl. “Well, you know, Tera,” he said to me. “You’ve been working freelance and making good money. But you might do better if you were under contract.”

He knew it was time for me to advance to the next level. I didn’t call Digital Playground back right away. Instead, I decided to shop around and see what else was out there.

The first company I went to was Wicked Pictures in Canoga Park. They are known for their big, elaborate, cinematic feature films. They were the most “Hollywood” of all the porn companies and they had big-name contract girls like Jenna Jameson, Chasey Lain, and Alexa Rae in their stable. I met with the owner, Steve Orenstein, and he wanted to sign me right away. Jenna had just left the company and they were looking for the next big thing, and that was me. But Wicked wasn’t right for me. I didn’t want to be stuck only doing big, elaborate movies. I was not into feature films. I was into so-called gonzo films. I never wanted to be an actress. People want to see Angelina Jolie or Johnny Depp act and they want to see porn people fuck. I was into fucking. If I wanted to be an actress, then Wicked would’ve been the place to be. Everyone said I was too good for gonzo, but it’s what I liked.

GONZO FILMS: These pornos are short on plot and long on close-ups of action. Gonzo films tend to run shorter than features. They are typically shot with a single camera and a smaller crew, and the performer often acknowledges the camera. I love gonzo!

FEATURE FILMS: These have plots, dialogue, and often elaborate sets and storytelling. Features tend to run longer, have a larger crew, and be more complicated to shoot. I don’t love features!

The next studio I checked out was Vivid Video. I liked Vivid because the two performers in the industry who I actually followed and admired were Kobe Tai and Janine Lindemulder and they were Vivid Girls. Kobe was a Taiwanese actress who I looked up to because she, like me, was Asian, and I thought if she could make it big as an Asian porn star, then maybe I could too. And Janine, well, Janine was so beautiful I could look at her for hours. I thought she was the most stunning porn actress in the industry. She has a really amazing face, and seemed like a true rebel with all her tattoos.

So, I met with Steve Hirsch, the owner of Vivid, who, by the way, is super cute. I had such a crush on him. He sat me down in front of his big desk. Twirling a phone cord nervously around his finger, he asked me, “So, what do you want to do? Do you want to be a contract girl? How many movies do you want to do? What are you willing to do?”

“Well, I don’t know. You tell me what you want me to do,” I said.

He said he’d want me to do twelve films a year, at $10,000 a film, which was a whopping $120,000, but he wanted me to do anal and DP (which means double penetration). I wasn’t willing to do either one. I left Vivid’s offices defeated. Vivid wasn’t the place for me either. I was running out of studios.

“What am I going to do?” I wondered. I didn’t fit in at Wicked. I didn’t fit in at Vivid. I didn’t want to talk to other companies. Wicked and Vivid were the big two. And Digital Playground was the underdog, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there, either.

I drank myself through New Year’s Eve alone and made a resolution for the year 2000: Take it to the next level!

After spending the better part of 1999 appearing spread-eagle for dozens of magazines and fucking on camera in dozens of porn films, I felt I had to let my family know what I was up to. But I wasn’t quite ready to tell them the whole truth. It’s one thing to not be ashamed of the dirty deeds I was doing; it’s another thing to tell your father all about it. I didn’t even want my dad to know I have sex, let alone that I was making a living by fucking. The thought mortified me. I wanted to be a virgin in my dad’s eyes, and I wanted him to be proud of me. I’d always sought out his approval, and I knew I wouldn’t be getting it for this. So, I decided to tell a little white lie.