Tera Patrick - Sinner Takes All

It was around Christmas of 1999 and I was sitting on a cold park bench with my dad in Lakeport, California, where he was living at the time. (Dad moved around a lot.) I went home to visit him and my stepmom, Kara, for the holidays. He was clutching his dog’s leash. Mick was a chocolate brown Irish terrier with wiry hair and this crazy Confucius beard. My dad was cool as usual. He was very relaxed. His legs were crossed and he was looking very proper. I was shaking partly because it was so cold outside and partly because of the bombshell I was about to unload.

“Dad, I’ve posed nude for magazines,” I told him. “And I just want you to know it’s my choice and I’m excited and it’s going well.”

His response shocked me: “Well, honey, you know there might be some people in that industry that might persuade you to do porn.”

Porn! He brought up the porn! I thought, “Oh, this is going to be easier than I thought. Maybe I can tell him the whole truth.”

Then he said, “I just want you to be careful. And don’t let anyone do anything you don’t want to do. Make all your decisions with a clear head.”

“Oh my God. He knows! He knows everything,” I immediately thought. My paranoid little mind was reeling. Dad’s a hippie from the ’60s. He knew I was a wild child and free spirited. I thought for sure he already knew. But he didn’t say anything. I almost told him right then and there but something came over me and I chickened out. I didn’t tell him I did porn until 2002 when my Playboy issue came out.

Meanwhile, my sister Debby found out on her own. Debby and her boyfriend walked into a video store one day and she saw a poster on the wall of me. My hair and makeup were really done up so it might have been hard to recognize me by face. But there was one telltale sign that proved it was me.

Debby told me she looked up at the poster and said to her boyfriend, “Oh my God. That’s my fucking sister!”

“Your sister’s name is Linda, not Tera,” he said.

“No, that tattoo! She has a fuchsia rose tattoo on her right ankle. That is her! I would know that tattoo anywhere.”

Debby called me that day and said, “I know exactly what you’re up to and exactly what you’re doing. You can’t hide it from me.”

I actually didn’t want to hide it from her. My sister and I had been really close and I knew she was open-minded like me. I had planned on telling her first out of everyone in my family anyway. I just didn’t get around to it. As I expected, Debby was totally cool with me being in porn. She always thought I should do something else in entertainment or modeling anyway. She told me, “As your sister I support you and I don’t judge you. And if you can be happy with yourself and look in the mirror every day proud of what you see, then I can too.” She became one of my biggest fans and still is today. When people ask her about it, Debby says, “My sister empowered a lot of women to explore their bodies, their sexuality, and gain confidence in the bedroom. I look at all of the positive contributions that she’s made.” I like that.

As for my mother finding out, well, I didn’t find out how she came to know my secret until 2009 when we reconnected and talked about it for the first time. Mom told me, “Debby told me right away. She was a tattletale too like you were as a young girl. I was shocked but also happy that you were doing well. It was mixed. I always wanted my daughters to be very strong, on top of the world, and taking good care of themselves, and both of my daughters are. I’m proud.”

With my New Year’s resolution of taking it to the next level still fresh in mind, I marched into Digital Playground’s offices on January 2, 2000, to talk business. I thought I was just there to talk, but Samantha Lewis, the co-owner of the company and my soon-to-be manager, had already prepared a contract for me and in my excitement, I did the unthinkable. I signed the contract without reading it, without having an attorney read it, and without knowing what the hell to say yes to and what to say no to. I blindly signed on the dotted line.

• Don’t sign it without an attorney reading it first

• Don’t be drunk when you sign it

• Don’t forget to trademark your name before you enter into any business agreements

• Don’t let someone else own your website

• Don’t agree to “air tight” (air tight means a dick in your mouth, pussy, and ass at the same time)

• Don’t make less money than your manager

• Don’t let your management and production company be one and the same

• Don’t shoot more than one movie a month

• Don’t agree to arbitration if it comes to that

• Don’t sign anything that contains the phrases “in perpetuity” or “throughout the universe”

The negotiations weren’t really negotiations at all. It went a little something like this:

Samantha asked, “How much do you need to live?”

“About five thousand a month,” I stupidly replied. It seemed to be my magic number. I got $5,000 for Penthouse and $5,000 for Virtual Sex . “OK, that’s what we’ll pay you,” Samantha was quick to agree. She was a bit too quick to agree and I found out later what a raw deal I signed.

“Great!” I was elated. I was now a contract girl. Sam, Ali, and I went out to Delmonico’s Steak and Lobster House in Encino to celebrate. I dined on lobster and champagne and was on top of the world.

From that moment on, things started happening really fast, and I was becoming very close with Sam. She became like a big sister, or almost a mother figure for me. We’d talk every day, sometimes three, four, five times a day. We’d shop, go out to lunch, gossip, share beauty tips, hit the gym, and do all the things that close girlfriends do. She handled everything for me, such as my schedule, hiring the right makeup and hair people for my jobs, leasing me a car to drive, everything. Because she was older than me, I looked up to her and learned a lot about life from her. And I trusted her like you’d trust a close family member. And even Ali acted like a father figure to me.

“Guess what?” Samantha asked me. “You’re going to AVN. You’ll be signing at a booth. It’ll be great.” Signing at AVN really meant you made it. Adult Video News is the Bible of the porn industry. Every year in January, they have an awards show and convention in, appropriately enough, Sin City—Las Vegas. And all of the big stars would go and plug their new movies, meet their fans, sign autographs, and party.

I flew to Vegas about a week later and immediately hit the convention floor. I arrived at the booth in Vegas, and there was a stack of 8 x 10 glossy photos of me that said Virtual Sex with Tera Patrick. Two Sharpies sat next to the stack. And next to the Sharpies were Nikki Tyler and Julia Ann, who used to partner with Janine in Blond-age , a dancing act they performed at strip clubs. And then there was this really loud, outgoing, beautiful woman named Teri Weigel.

“Hey!” Teri, dressed in nothing but a G-string and pasties, yelled to me. “You’re the new girl! Awesome! Hi! I’m Teri! So nice to meet you!”

I was a little nervous going in, but my nerves immediately went away. The other girls didn’t introduce themselves to me at first, so I latched onto the much friendlier Teri. She was a Playboy Playmate in 1987 and is the only Playmate to have gone into porn. I looked at her with awe. Here was this beautiful, powerful woman with a microphone in her hand, commanding a crowd of people to come on by. She stood on a chair, loud, confident, and gorgeous as hell.