Tera Patrick - Sinner Takes All

Two very pretty strippers walked in and said, “Hi, Tera. We’re really big fans. And we have a little present for you.”

“Oh, no,” I thought. “Are they going to get naked or something? I’m sooo not a lesbian.”

“We heard you love pot, so we got you some marijuana popcorn,” they said.

Strippers aren’t usually that nice. You know how girls can get.

The only place I didn’t feel welcome was in Las Vegas. Vegas is such a strip club town that they don’t really need to bring in feature dancers, and when they do, the girls get pretty snippy about it. Such was the case one night at Little Darlings. I didn’t ask for this, but the club owners gave me the entire dressing room area instead of just one room. Naturally, this pissed off the regular dancers there. As I was getting ready for my show, I had to listen to strippers bitch loudly, “Tera Patrick has our dressing room. Who does she think she is?”

I’m usually nice to the girls. I always gave them free Polaroids with me and hung out and talked with them. But if these girls were going to be bitchy, well, two can play that game.

I fired back: “That’s right, bitch. I have your dressing room. You know what? You get your pussy ripped on set and you can have your own dressing room too!”

Now that we’d become famous, there was terrible gossip about Evan and me in the adult industry trade papers and on gossip sites. They were saying things like Evan got me hooked on heroin and he was just using me to get ahead. Here is this guy who has a crazy fiancee who’s been institutionalized, is on medication, had filed for bankruptcy and who he spent all of his money on, and they are saying he’s the bad guy? It really hurt me. He treated me so well and I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for his love and support.

The worst rumor was the drug thing. Evan’s been sober since August 1, 1988, and I quit drinking for a while the January after I met him, thanks solely to him. I’ve never done heroin, cocaine, or any hard drug—just Valium when I was young or some pot here and there. But I do still drink, even though I went to AA and spent 2003-2007 sober. AA got me through a period in life where I was abusing alcohol and using it as way to cope or escape. Once I became more stable, I learned that I could control myself and handle a glass of champagne or two with a friend or at a party.

Now would be a good time to set the record straight on the other rumors that have plagued my career….

RUMOR VS. TRUTH:

RUMOR: Evan made me get a boob job, dye my hair blond, and get tattoos.

TRUTH: Hell no. If you don’t already know by now, I’m a strong-willed woman who makes my own decisions and have been violating my own body of my own free will long before Evan came along. In fact, Evan has never been fond of girls with tattoos. And as for the boob job and dye job, I did those in 2003, which was the roughest year for me. I just wanted to treat myself to something special and make a change. So I got Lasik eye surgery so I didn’t have to wear glasses anymore. I always wanted to be a blonde like my idol Marilyn Monroe, so I dyed my hair. And when I first came into the business I was 130 pounds, but when I did Playboy in 2002, I lost a ton of weight and dropped down to about 107 pounds and then stayed around 110 for years and I lost some of my boobs. I used to be a full D cup, then I went down to a small D, almost a large C, and I wanted my boobs back, so I got them upped to a DD. It was 100-percent my choice.

RUMOR: I’m half Jewish.

TRUTH: I’m not Jewish, but I got a lot of it in me over the years because Evan is Jewish. I don’t practice any one religion. I don’t consider myself religious. But I’ve always been very spiritual and I do believe there is a God. Both of my parents, however, are Buddhist and I do believe in some Buddhist ideas. And as a child, when my parents were still married, I attended Sunday school at a Pentecostal church and loved to sing and read from the Bible.

RUMOR: I worked with Salma Hayek on a USO tour.

TRUTH: I did do a USO autograph signing in January 2002 at Edwards Air Force Base in Mojave, California, but not with Salma Hayek. I never met her, but she has great tits and I would love to meet her someday. That autograph signing was special for me, though. A young military daughter came up to me and said, “I wanted to meet you because when they said your name in the announcement, all of the guys in my section cheered.” So I signed to her, “Maybe someday they’ll cheer for you too.”

RUMOR: I’m a hunter.

TRUTH: Nope. I love animals and have never killed an animal, unless fishing counts. But my dad was a hunter and I would go with him on hunting trips.

RUMOR: Carmen Electra was mad that I used her real name as my professional name.

TRUTH: False. We’ve actually met, and she was very friendly with me! In fact, this is what she says on the matter: “The first time I heard about Tera Patrick, the porn star, I truly thought that was her real name. When I found out Tera Patrick was inspired to use my name as her porn name, I was flattered. Every time I see her at an awards show or event, Tera is so sweet, beautiful, intelligent, and obviously sexy.”

RUMOR: I was a Ford model.

TRUTH: False. I was signed to the Morning Sun Agency in Tokyo, Japan. I was scouted by Ford, which referred me to my agency.

RUMOR: I speak fluent Hungarian.TRUTH: No. I only speak sexy. But I once had a Hungarian boyfriend and I learned a few Hungarian phrases.

RUMOR: I dated and/or slept with Vin Diesel, Eminem, Gene Simmons, Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Nicolas Cage, and Reggie Miller.

TRUTH: Hell to the Fucking No. Except for the one sexless date with Reggie Miller, the only other celebrity I fucked was the late Alice in Chains lead singer Layne Staley.

RUMOR: I’ve had gangbangs with a S.W.A.T. team, Navy SEALs, and an entire firehouse.

TRUTH: No gangbangs. Sure, I fucked in front of some fire-men but I only did the one. I did once confess that I fantasized about filming a gangbang, but I never did it and I think if I did, I would’ve regretted that big-time!

Tony Lee was right. I made a ton of money from feature dancing and it more than covered our legal bills. After battling it out in court for most of 2003, we settled with Digital. Steve Hirsch, the owner of Vivid Video, was instrumental in convincing us to settle with Digital.

Steve’s interest in me helped me make the decision to settle with Digital. The deal on the table was this: I would be a Vivid Girl, and he would help us with our new company, Teravision, by guiding us and serving as the distribution company for our company’s films.

But I still had this thing about settling with Digital. I didn’t want it to mean I was backing down. Evan and my lawyer came to me and said, “Listen, you’re operating off of emotion right now. If I learned anything from the music industry, it is that I got ripped off on my first album. I signed a really bad deal. You just have to let it go, let the anger go, and take what they give you. You’re going to work. You’re going to be Tera Patrick.”

I agreed to settle on Thanksgiving 2003, and boy did I have a lot to be thankful for. I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner for Evan and Sammy, and it was the beginning of a fresh new start in the industry.

I never dreamed of owning my own business until I met Evan. I just didn’t think it was something that I could even do if I wanted to. But Evan made me realize how much I was capable of doing if I really wanted to. Just when I was ready to give up, he encouraged me to fight on and made me believe in myself and that I was capable of more. My goal for Teravision was to form a company that produced beautiful movies where the women always looked gorgeous and classy and the performers in it where treated like stars. We were trying to portray women in a positive way. We were also trying to make high-quality films to elevate the business. We had our movies at high price points, and we wanted everyone else to have their movies at high price points to bring us all up.