Sinner Takes All: A Memoir of Love & Porn

by Tera Patrick; Carrie Borzillo

  On the set of Teradise Island

  The next day after we shot those scenes, Evan and I snuck off and had a really nice romantic lovemaking session on the beach in the middle of the night. It was great to go from our hardcore, raunchy sex scenes for the movie to real, tender lovemaking in our real life. We had such a great sexual balance and were both fulfilling every fantasy we ever had.

  CHAPTER 24

  Back to My Roots

  One night in bed Evan said to me, "You know what? You're a porn star. And porn stars don't only fuck their husbands on camera. It's not that I want to share my wife with anyone, but I know you love me and I know it would be just for our business. I think you should start doing other guys again on film."

  I didn't know if he was the most selfless husband in the world or the craziest. What man wants his woman to do other guys? At first I was like, "No way. I just don't want to sleep with another man. I'm married to you. I only want you."

  I wasn't ready to share myself. Here I was with my husband, enjoying being married. We'd just had the best sex, we had the best of everything, and now he was telling me that I needed to bang other guys. In my mind there wasn't one guy I wanted to fuck in the business. Been there, done that.

  I didn't want to question Evan wanting me to work with other men again, because it's different in porn. He knows and I know that having sex on camera is just work. It's just another day at the office for us. It wasn't like I was picking up some hot guy at Quizno's and saying, "Hey baby, wanna fuck?" You have a different mind-set when you work in porn. And even though on an intellectual level I knew that, deep down I was emotionally torn over it.

  But I gave it some thought and I agreed that my fans were getting bored of seeing me fuck my husband movie after movie. It was time for me return to my roots and be the full-fledged porn star who does everyone and (almost) everything. The problem was that at the time I didn't think there were any cute guys with big dicks who I'd be attracted to in the industry.

  "Baby, you can choose any guy in the world that you want to work with," Evan reminded me.

  I was worried about betraying my husband. I worried that I was going to do it and he was going to be angry with me because he was a little insecure about me doing it. As much as he was trying to talk me into it, he could be jealous sometimes too. Jealousy is natural, of course, when you're talking about your wife fucking another guy. He was like, "I don't really want to share my woman with anybody, but I trust you and I love you, and your fans will love this."

  We spent days looking through some porn websites to find me the right guy. I wasn't too picky, but I did want a guy who was taller than me. I decided on Tommy Gunn. Tommy Gunn is from New Jersey and he looks it, showing off the guido look to full effect. He is a real macho guy with short spiky brown hair, tanned skin, and usually some sort of facial hair like a goatee. More important, he has a rock-hard body and a pretty big dick--eight inches to be exact. He looked good to me, and it didn't hurt that he was one of the most popular guys in the industry at the time, all of the girls liked him, he had a good reputation, and Evan trusted him.

  Steve Hirsch at Vivid chose the second guy in the film: Jean Val Jean. He was a six-foot-two French guy with long, flowing, Fabio-like hair and a model-esque face. He was a little too pretty for me, but he worked great for the movie because he was tall, handsome, and made the director, Paul Thomas, happy.

  Steve already had a movie in mind for me to do: Tera Patrick's Fashion Underground, a feature film where I was a supermodel and the head of my own modeling agency. It was to be my next big Vivid/Teravision movie for 2006. We shot it on January 13, 2006, and I got paid a lot of money for it. It ended up winning an AVN Award for Best Cinematography.

  To make it more comfortable for both of us, the director of the film, Paul Thomas, was going to let Evan direct the boy-girl scene instead of Paul doing it himself. Actually, when I think about it, having Evan direct the scene was easier for Evan, but it actually made me nervous as hell. It was weird enough to be fucking another guy for the first time in four years, yet another thing to have my husband in the room watching, but having him behind the camera directing us on what to do was a bit unnerving.

  The first position we filmed was doggy-style, and I was getting into it and trying to ignore the fact that my husband was right there. As Tommy and I were fucking, I turned around to look at him and I kissed him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Evan's face drop. He was like, "Whoa." I didn't even think that a kiss would affect him more than fucking, but when you think about it, kissing and fucking don't always go together. "Oopsie," I thought.

  Then I hear Paul Thomas say to Evan, "Wow. I guess she really is into it." Evan looked a little disturbed, so for the rest of the scene, I made sure not to kiss Tommy again. Actually, I felt weird throughout the rest of the scene, like I was holding back a little.

  When the scene was over and I was in my dressing room, I saw Evan walking up the stairs toward my dressing room. He announced loudly to everyone to clear the set and looked mad as hell. I thought he was going to scream at me for something. But instead, he didn't say a word. He just took off his clothes, grabbed me forcibly, and fucked the hell out of me. I guess he had to mark his territory. And it creeped me out to see him that jealous and take such control.

  We talked about it afterward and he was like, "You kissed him. You kissed him." Kissing is very intimate, so I agreed never to kiss another performer again. He never brought it up again. He said that he didn't want to hold me back as a performer, but kissing was off limits.

  I definitely had a hard time getting through the rest of the movie. My scene with Jean Val Jean was really cold. I didn't get close to him. I wasn't really into the scene. But at the end of the day, Evan and I were on the same page about what was needed for my career and what would be best for Teravision. And Evan had had to make some hard, selfless decisions that ended up paying off big-time in terms of us growing our business . . . and our bank accounts.

  I was really proud of the work I was doing with Vivid and Teravision. It felt like the drama with Digital Playground was light years behind me. I felt relieved, but I also felt a sense of vindication. I won. I was able to not just be successful on my own, but to find even greater heights of success and satisfaction by doing it my way. I could do porn, be in love, and have it all. Sinner takes all!

  CHAPTER 25

  Three Awful Weeks

  Chopper's been kidnapped!" I cried into the phone to Evan as I stood shaking outside our Cadillac Escalade with the door wide open. My six-pound black-and-white fox terrier dog, Chopper, and his carrying bag were missing.

  "Get here now!" I wailed.

  I couldn't believe what just happened. I was running into the Westfield Fashion Square Mall in Sherman Oaks for just a few minutes, and I left Chopper in the car alone. Big mistake. I don't know if I forgot to lock the door of if I hit the Lock button but it didn't work, but when I walked out of the mall and approached my car, my heart sunk as I saw the door wide open and my little baby nowhere to be found.

  Evan was used to getting 911 calls from me for a variety of reasons, but usually it was because I went shopping by myself without a bodyguard or assistant and ended up being trapped by fans or autograph-seekers and couldn't deal with it. But this 911 call was a real emergency, and Evan dropped what he was doing and rushed over to the mall. It was useless looking around the parking lot because I knew Chopper was kidnapped. Someone took him. I immediately thought maybe it was an enemy of mine or maybe it was even a fan because I put Chopper in some of my movies and we did photo shoots with him. So, maybe someone knew it was my dog and took him for a ransom. Evan immediately sprang into action. As I cried and hyperventilated, he went through the security tapes with the mall guards.

  I bonded with Chopper like you bond with your firstborn. As someone who didn't have or want children at the time, my dogs were my babies; and Chopper was my first. (Mr. Big Time, a teacup Chihuahua; and Bandit, a Dutch shepherd, came next.) I
took Chopper everywhere with me--to the set, to shoots, to dinner, on vacation, when I travel. He was my constant companion. I was devastated when I saw the car and him not sitting there waiting for me.

  Everything stopped and Evan put everyone at Teravision--especially Robert Mora, my assistant, and Maxx Padilla, our VP--on the job of finding Chopper. Teravision production stopped, I canceled all of my work, and for three long weeks we had teams of people looking for Chopper. And for three whole weeks I didn't sleep a wink.

  We even called our publicist at the time, Lizzie Grubman, and did a full-court press on it. She got me on every radio show on Sirius radio, on KTLA TV in L.A., on The Howard Stern Show, in New York Post's Page Six, and other media outlets so I could let people know we were offering a $5,000 reward for my baby. We also put ads in every newspaper we could think of, including the Los Angeles Times, The Daily News, the LA Weekly, Star magazine, and Spanish publications like La Opinion.

  I asked Evan to call his biker buddies, street gang members, and even guys with ties to the Mexican mafia--who, according to Evan, know everything that goes down on every street in L.A.--to comb the streets looking for Chopper. We even hired street teams of people to pound the pavement for us. We signed up for every dog-search service we could find, such as Sherlock Bones, FidoFinder .com, and Home Again.

  Within the first hour of Chopper going missing, we had four-color flyers made up and started posting them from the Valley into Hollywood and all the way to Downtown L.A. and other surrounding areas. We spent thousands of dollars looking for Chopper, and lost tens of thousands in the work we missed for those three weeks.

  I was beside myself. I was sleeping with Chopper's leash around my neck, crying myself to sleep, and even walking the neighborhood at night in my bathrobe with a flashlight looking for Chopper under parked cars. Evan and everyone really thought I was heading for another breakdown and would end up in the psych ward again. It was awful.

  Fans were sending flowers, cards, and gifts of condolences to the offices. Evan had already begun looking for a new dog to get for me. He was convinced Chopper was dead or off with another family and never coming back. But I kept saying, "He's coming home. I just know it." They thought it was crazy.

  I couldn't eat. I couldn't shower. I couldn't put makeup on. I certainly couldn't work. But around the third week of the big Chopper search, after everyone else had given up hope, I finally pulled myself together enough to make a personal appearance at a party during the Pro Bowl in Hawaii that I was booked for. The night before I left for the trip, I went on The Howard Stern Show to make one last plea for the return of Chopper and to remind people that we would give a $5,000 reward with no questions asked.

  I'll never forget our last day in Hawaii. I was on my phone with my sister Debby, crying about Chopper. I was calling Debby every day during this time and sometimes at two or three in the morning. And my sister got serious with me and said, "Linda, you just have to let him go. It's been three weeks. Just think of him as this little angel who came down to live with you for a short while, and let him go." I hung up the phone with her, and Evan got a call from Robert.

  "We got him," Robert told Evan.

  "You have Chopper?" Evan couldn't believe it.

  "We don't have him yet, but we got a call and I believe it's him."

  Evan was skeptical because we received many other calls from people saying they had Chopper but it never ended up being Chopper. We hopped on the next flight back to L.A., and Robert was right. It was Chopper. Two Armenian lesbians from the Valley had the dog. It was a "no questions asked" deal, so we never did get the full details of how or why Chopper was abducted. But Robert gave them the check for $5,000 and got Chopper back. The Armenians told him that they renamed the dog Prince because he pranced around like he was royalty and because he looked like a pygmy, kind of like the artist Prince.

  We got Chopper back on Valentine's Day 2005, two years from when Evan gave him to me, and it was the best Valentine's Day ever. It just proved that if you don't give up, the unthinkable might come true. I knew Chopper would come back to me, and he did. I squeezed him so hard and never left him alone again.

  Oh, and, when we got home from getting Chopper back, Evan tried to cancel the $5,000 check, but it was too late.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Power of Tera

  Working with Evan as my manager, my costar, and the CEO of my company was starting to really pay off. On a personal level, it brought us even closer together. On a business level, all of the moves that he made--from lining up my feature dancing gigs to the deal with Vivid to encouraging me to expand my sexual horizons on film--led to my big crossover year in 2006. This was the year Evan vowed to take me from top of the porn world to the mainstream world.

  When I entered the adult industry, it was not my goal to become a mainstream actress or star. If that's what I wanted to do, I would've gone the typical route of taking acting lessons, going in for auditions, and trying to get bit parts like every Hollywood hopeful does. But that wasn't my quest. I'll be honest, I just wanted to be famous and I liked to model and to be nude. Porn was satisfying. But once the idea of mainstream popularity started becoming more of a possibility, I was pretty excited at the non-adult-industry opportunities that started coming my way.

  Evan's first mission was to get me on the cover of a major mainstream magazine. Evan set his sights on FHM. It was hip and known for its sexy covers and classy spreads. He worked those FHM editors for months, letting them know what I was up to and dragging me out to every FHM party so I could network with the magazine and be seen on their red carpets. Finally, one day we got the call. They wanted to shoot me. But at first, I thought it was just another one- or two-page feature. I had no idea it would be for the cover and that I would be the only porn star to ever grace the cover of FHM! That was a huge deal.

  I shot the FHM cover on January 30, 2006, at Quixote Studios in Studio City. What a way to kick off the year. About a month after the shoot, Evan got the call from the editor at FHM who told him, "Guess what? It's going to be our July cover." When Evan told me, I couldn't believe it. He said FHM felt that the photos were just too good not to use--I'd have the cover plus an eight-page spread in the magazine. I went to bed that night with the biggest smile on my face and gave my husband the sex of his life as a thank-you. The FHM cover and the Playboy cover from 2002 are the two proudest moments of my career.

  Even though Evan and I proved that I could be successful in life after Digital Playground, landing this cover really nailed it for me. Every little bit of mainstream success I would get, I thought of it as a big "fuck-you" to Digital, and that felt good. It further proved that I could do it on my own, and that was the best feeling ever.

  I couldn't believe how many people came out for my signings of the cover, which had the headline THE POWER OF TERA, at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square on June 19 and the Virgin Megastore at Hollywood and Highland in L.A. the next day. I'd done many signings at porn conventions and adult video stores, but I had never done a mainstream store like Virgin and wasn't quite sure what to expect. My fans didn't disappoint, coming out by the hundreds. To my surprise, there were a lot of fans there who didn't know me from porn, they just knew this cover and came out for that. The FHM cover was the crossover moment of my career and really put me on the mainstream map. I ended up on their Sexiest Women in the World list that year (number 57, not bad for a porn chick!).

  That one cover brought a new level of recognition, and with that my fears and anxiety increased. I didn't feel safe doing everyday things, like shopping or getting gas, by myself. It was probably one part paranoia, one part reality. One day I was grocery shopping in my neighborhood and a guy was following me around the store. He kept his distance and didn't make contact with me, but he was definitely following me. I left that store and went to another one and he showed up there as well. That really scared me. I'd have to call Evan to rescue me sometimes because I didn't feel safe driving home by myself and risking
this guy finding out where I lived So, Evan would sometimes come out to get me or tell me to drive around a bit to make sure no one was actually following me.

  At the Virgin Megastore to sign copies of my FHM cover

  The upside, of course, was that lots of new doors were opening for me. I did a ton of mainstream TV, including E! True Hollywood Story: Rock Star Wives, VH1's Top 40 Hottest Rockstar Girlfriends and Wives, WE's The Secret Lives of Women, A&E's Mindfreak, Spike TV's Guys Choice Awards, and HBO's porn documentary Thinking XXX, and I hosted the AVN Awards in its most pivotal year--2008, the year it finally crossed over to the mainstream by airing on Show-time for the first time.

  Also in 2006 we appeared on VH1's show SuperGroup, which featured a bunch of musicians getting together to form a band, write a song, and play a show. Evan was invited to participate, along with such legends as Jason Bonham and Ted Nugent; one of my favorite singers ever, Sebastian Bach of Skid Row; as well as Scott Ian from Anthrax, which was the closest in genre to Evan's band, Biohazard. The show shot for about two weeks at an extravagant mansion in Las Vegas.

  One week the wives were invited, and Scott's wife (and Meat Loaf 's daughter), Pearl, greeted me with a big hello. I gave her an even bigger hug, and the two of us became close pals. Pearl's a very touchy-feely, huggy, warm-spirited girl, who would always greet Evan and me with a sweet kiss on the lips. We didn't think anything of it, of course, until one night Pearl was a little buzzed and said to me, "Scott doesn't want me to have sex with you."

  I just thought to myself, "Hmmm. Why on Earth would she say that?" At the time I was really confused and thought, well, I guess everyone thinks that since I'm a porn star that I'm out to fuck them. Pearl and I are good friends; I respect her a lot as a woman for all she's accomplished, and not only do I think she is beautiful and talented, but she and Scott have been good friends and supporters of me.