Sinner Takes All

CHAPTER 12 Four Reasons

In late 2000, I started dating singer/rapper Erik Schrody, better known as Everlast, the former singer of the hip-hop group House of Pain, which had a big hit in the early ’90s with a song called “Jump Around.” As a solo artist, he was pretty successful too, having hit number 1 with his song “What It’s Like” in 1998, just a few years before I met him on the set of his music video for “I Can’t Move” from his second solo album.

My agent called me one day with an opportunity to audition for his music video, and I knew a little bit about Everlast, who I called by his real name, Erik. But to me, it was just another job and just another good opportunity to do my thing, make some money, and have a bit of fun. Meeting him was such a cliched Hollywood moment. Here I am the “hot girl in the video,” and the star asked me to come to his trailer. So in my sheer black dress, with no panties on, I went waltzing into his trailer and was greeted with a big cloud of marijuana smoke and Erik standing there with three of his homeys, whom he immediately dismissed. I’m thinking, “Oh, no, is he going to pounce on me?”

“Hey, how’s it going?” asked Erik while rolling a joint.

I was instantly attracted to him. The shaved head, tattoos, and tough-guy manner… I dug it.

“Do you want to smoke?”

“No, that’s OK.” I didn’t smoke much during this time of my life.

“Well, uh, see you on set,” he said. He was kind of cold, but it was intriguing for me. A challenge, I thought.

At the end of the shoot, he asked me for my number, which made me as giddy as a schoolgirl. I hadn’t been dating much in the past few years because I just wasn’t into having a boyfriend. I was into fucking, and something in Erik made me excited for a new adventure.

Our first date was a movie date at his house. Ladies, don’t ever let a guy take you on a date to his house: (a) It’s cheap, (b) It shows disrespect (What? He didn’t want to be seen with me in public?), (c) It usually means all he wants from you is sex, and (d) It’s just plain lame. We deserve dinners and romance, don’t we? I should’ve known how lame Erik would end up being by that very first date. But I was young and naive and just happy to have met a guy who could potentially be a boyfriend, which is something that had been lacking in my life.

I went to his house in Reseda, California, for that date, and it was really uncomfortable at first. We sat on opposite sides of his couch as we watched a Lakers game, which had me bored out of my mind. We both seemed really nervous. After a few awkward moments, he took a thick, fuzzy fur blanket and wrapped me in it and then wrapped himself in it. I was cold and shivering, partly because it was winter and pretty chilly in his house and partly because I was a little nervous. Either way, he warmed me up fast. And unbeknownst to me at the time, we started a pattern that would be the basis of our relationship: I come to his house. We sit on his couch. We watch TV. We have sex. I go home, utterly unsatisfied.

For two years, I’d follow that pattern. The sex was never mind-blowing. You can tell if sex is going to be good by how much effort a guy puts into you when you’re not under the sheets. Erik put zero effort into dating me, taking me out, or making me feel special or beautiful, and that selfishness extended into the bedroom. He was very selfish, but I just went along because it was nice to have someone new around. I had been really lonely, and it was a time when I was feeling really low.

Along the way during those two years, he’d say things to me like, “You know, you’re lucky to be with me. Who’s going to want to date a porn chick?” Well, he was dating a porn chick, so what the fuck? He was clearly torn over dating me. On the one hand, he’s saying no one should date a porn chick. On the other hand, he’s asking me to autograph my Penthouse cover. What was that? And the worst part about it was that he asked me to sign the Penthouse right after we had sex. Two words: tacky and creepy. He was attracted to what I did for a living but repelled by it at the same time. And it felt like he punished me for being who I was.

I just remember thinking, “Well, it’s bad enough that he doesn’t love me for me. But it’s worse that he seems to actually hate me for me.” I wasn’t really sure what to do with that, so I just let it slide for a while. But deep down, I felt hurt, humiliated, and depressed that the guy I had been with for about two years was treating me so badly, and I was letting him. It was also sad that he lived with his mother, but his mother never spoke to me and we never interacted. Erik obviously kept it that way on purpose.

During this time I had very low self-esteem and was drinking heavily, and Erik’s comments just dragged me down further. A low point in the relationship came on my birthday. In general, 2002 was a banner year for me. I landed both Playboy and Penthouse. I was one of the hosts of Playboy TV’s Night Calls 411 Live and I was enjoying the press and promotion of the two simultaneous covers. Everyone was celebrating me around me, but deep down I was very depressed and felt so alone. Being with Erik made me even lonelier than being by myself because he wasn’t there for me, supporting me, loving me, or respecting me.

July 25, 2002, was my twenty-sixth birthday. I called up Erik and said, “Hey, it’s my birthday! What are we doing?”

And he said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m going out with the boys.”

“You’re not taking me out?” I asked.

“Why would I fucking take you out? You can do whatever the fuck you want to do,” Erik said.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction, but I was, and I cried and cried and cried.

I called my best friend, Alexis Winston, who was a Penthouse Pet and dating a millionaire named Larry, and told her how sad and depressed I was and she came up with a plan. “Forget about Erik. I’m going to take you on Larry’s private jet and we’re going to get away.” So I packed my bag, got dolled up, and flew up to central California with Alexis and her man, who had a big birthday cake waiting for me. I was so jealous of her relationship. When I got to Larry’s mansion all I could think was, “Wow. He’s going to marry her and she gets to live in this thirty-room house with the man of her dreams and here I am dating shitty, selfish asshole Erik. What am I doing wrong?”

Erik did such a number on my self-esteem that I started to cry myself to sleep at night thinking, “What man is ever going to marry a porn star? Maybe Erik’s right. Who is going to want to bring me home to their parents?” Seeing Alexis so happy with her man and all of these girls in the industry around me dating guys who lavished love and gifts on them made me really think about what I wanted in life. I wanted to marry a good man. And if porn was going to get in the way of that, I though, then maybe I shouldn’t do porn anymore.

Around this time we were shooting Island Fever 2 for Digital Playground in a rain forest in Hawaii. Perfect, a tropical setting, my favorite. It ended up being my worst filming experience ever. I was working with a Canadian porn actor named Erik Everhard, whom I worked with before on a Penthouse photo shoot with Suze, on the movie White Panty Chronicles and many other things over the years. I remember him being a genuinely nice guy when I first worked with him.

I was in cowgirl position on top of him, and all of a sudden something in him snapped. He started fucking me violently, so hard that I bled everywhere. He actually tore my vagina. It was embarrassing and violating. I didn’t even realize I was bleeding; I just knew that he was pounding the shit out of me and it hurt. I was so tired of working at this point that I just shut off my emotions, turned that “switch” on, and went through with my job. The director saw the blood and stopped the scene. He had to take me off the set. I wasn’t able to work for the rest of the movie. I had other scenes planned but was only able to shoot this one scene. It was a horrible experience. He didn’t even apologize. No one there even comforted me. There’s no comforting in porn, I guess.

I went back to my room that day and thought, “Wow. Is McDonald’s hiring?” It left such a bitter taste in my mouth. This was not what I signed up for. For a split second, I thought, “I don’t want to do movies anymore. I just don’t want to do it.” I loved having sex, but this episode left me feeling violated and used. However, I felt like I was in too deep and I couldn’t quit even if I wanted to. It’s who I was, and I didn’t want to lose all that I had built up over the years. I didn’t want to lose my fans. I didn’t want to lose my livelihood. And my “boyfriend” Erik had me convinced that I was just some stupid porn chick who couldn’t do anything else. What was I going to do if I quit? So, I didn’t. Not yet.

I started sinking lower and hitting the bottle extra hard. Up until this point, I drank with a party-girl attitude. It was celebratory drinking because life was indeed going pretty damn well. But eventually I was drinking myself to bed every night and needing booze to get through Night Calls. I was lonely and I wanted a good man to be with. I never regretted what I did for a living because it was always my choice, my way, my fantasies lived out. But the outside factors were starting to take their toll on me.

My lowest moment during what was supposed to be this “stellar year” for me came on the set of Night Calls one random evening. I had downed a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and could barely stand. I don’t remember much from the night, but I do remember that R&B singer Brian McKnight was in the studio audience watching the show. We’d often have celebrities pop by to watch us tape and I always had fun interacting with them, but not that night.

“Are you OK?” Crystal Knight, my cohost, asked repeatedly. Crystal really looked out for me. She could tell by the glazed-over look in my eyes that something was way wrong.

“No. I’m not OK. I don’t think I can do the show,” I told her.

“You can do the show. I’ll carry you. Don’t worry. I’ll do all the work,” she assured me. She had my back. She knew I’d get fired if I couldn’t do the show because I was too drunk.

I was making it through the shoot, but my condition didn’t go entirely unnoticed. My producer Jamie kept saying in my earpiece, “Stick! What’s wrong with you? Wake up!” My eyes had been rolling back into my head. I couldn’t believe how wasted I was.

It was then that I realized how fucked-up I was getting, and how I was about to fuck up my career and life if I didn’t get myself together. I was drinking myself to sleep every night, having bad hang-overs, feeling like crap, acting cranky to people around me, and starting to fuck up at work—the one thing that I loved. After that bad night on the Night Calls set, I vowed to take some time off from drinking, but it wasn’t easy or immediate.

There was also the money issue. Here I was the most famous porn star in the world, and I was still living in a small condo and driving a leased Infiniti that I would later find out was in my manager’s name, not mine. I just wasn’t making the money I thought I should be making. I was making about $20,000 a month between all of my gigs, and that sounds like a lot, but in the porn industry it isn’t. It’s a lot of money in comparison to a civilian lifestyle, but not for an entertainer. Most actresses make a lot more than just a quarter of a million a year. And the number-one porn star in the world is only making $240,000? Bankers make more than that! People thought I would be driving a Rolls-Royce, and I wasn’t. I started seeing girls in the industry making a ton more money, wearing fancier designer clothes, and driving more expensive luxury cars. I had none of that, and I didn’t understand why.

I just wasn’t reaping the benefits of working as hard as I did. I always had money to pay my bills, but not as much as I should have. Erik was the one who started me getting suspicious of my situation. He said, “You know, your manager is driving a brand-new Mercedes and a brand-new Denali and she dresses really well and lives in this huge mansion and is always taking vacations. And you rent this condo. Your manager shouldn’t be making more than you do.” That was a big wake-up call for me.

One day, I called my manager Samantha and I told her, “Listen, I want to have lunch and there’s some things I want to get off my chest.” She agreed that it was time for a serious talk. She clearly had things to get off her chest too.

I’ll admit it. I was becoming difficult to work with and was growing angry toward her and Digital Playground. I was showing up to work on time and never looking like a hag or anything, but I was bitchy and becoming difficult and demanding. I’d be like, “Fuck you all. I fucking hate you. I need a drink. I’m not going on until you bring me a fucking Coke. I don’t want this makeup artist, I want that one.” And on and on I’d go. I turned into a full-blown diva.

It wasn’t just about the money. We were growing apart, and I wanted more out of life. I wanted a fuller life—a real relationship with a good guy, a social life, and, yeah, a nicer house and nicer car. It was always work, work, work, work, work. I was overworked, underpaid, stressed out, and exhausted. There was always a store signing or an appearance or a shoot or an interview. The schedule was too much. I was Digital Playground’s only contract girl between 1999 and 2002. I was the face of Digital Playground, so all of the promotion fell on my tired shoulders. It was “Tera, we need you in Minneapolis. Tera, we need you in Europe.”

I appreciated the work for a while, of course, but it was taking its toll on me, and I wasn’t taking care of myself. It was a battle with my manager and production company, but it was also a battle with myself. I was drinking heavily to mask my true feelings, which were loneliness, pain, depression, and sadness. And underneath it all was this hunger for love and a deep connection with someone. I just wanted to be loved and have someone to love, and at the time I didn’t know if staying in porn and working at the pace I was working at would get me to that goal.

At the end of Night Calls on Wednesday nights, there’d be a social gathering at a bar or on the set to celebrate. Instead of participating, I would drink alone in my dressing room, get in my car, drive home drunk, and then drink more at home by myself. I was becoming very antisocial and experiencing a lot of highs and lows.

On the days I was feeling high, I’d shop like crazy, spend what money I had, and fuck my neighbor, a grip on a shoot, or sometimes even Erik. And on the days I was low, I’d sleep for twelve hours, not answer the phone, watch MTV2 for hours on end, drink my Jack and Coke or wine coolers or gin and tonic, and pass out.

At our lunch meeting I basically told my manager Sam, “Look, I’ve been acting the way I’m acting because I’m not happy and I want a break.” She agreed that I needed a break. I was clearly miserable with my life, my relationship, and my work, and I was drinking way too much. It was obvious that I needed some time off to get my shit together. And I started to not enjoy the sex as much as I used to. It became harder to orgasm, because I was just unhappy in my contract and stressed out. And that’s no fun. That’s why I got into porn in the first place.

My plan was this: Take a hiatus from porn. Get sober. Figure out why I didn’t have a lot of money and where my money was going. And let the fog I was in lift a bit to get some clarity. I had no idea what I was going to do beyond that, but I knew I wanted to have a more normal life. I knew I needed to work on my self-esteem and work on myself, but I just didn’t know how.