Porn Star Interview: Dino DiMarco

BY VINCENT LAMBERT

He’s been called the “Delta Burke of porn,” but as Dino DiMarco sits before me in tight jeans, diaphanous black shirt and motorcycle boots, he looks anything but. Currently on the third leg of a 15-city tour for the film Night Walk, DiMarco has just strutted his stuff in a 20-minute dance routine at the Eros Theatre in New York. Although he’s been touring for several weeks, the dark-eyed, classically handsome star looks fit and trim. And he’s certainly eager to talk.

It’s been a long journey to the top of the porn world for 28-year-old DiMarco. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, he is the oldest of three brothers. At age 17, he moved to Manhattan, where he worked as a model for Elite. But DiMarco, who is of American Indian and Irish descent, actually failed at his original career goal: becoming a runway model. “They said I was too short and too fat,” he recalls with a laugh, “so I quit.”

When life in the big city proved overwhelming, DiMarco moved to Florida and joined the Air Force. After working as an auto mechanic for more than two years, he decided to pursue his education in the Pacific Northwest and received a degree in marine biology from the University of Oregon.

Upon graduation, DiMarco relocated to Los Angeles and started working as an extra on such shows as Baywatch, Dave’s World and Star Trek. “I spent a whole season as a bailiff on Picket Fences,” DiMarco says. “Oh yeah, it was real exciting. I got to sit in a brown uniform in the back of a courtroom for months!” He also did extra work in film, appearing in Three Wishes with Patrick Swayze and Crimson Tide. “I’m the guy who pulls out a gun to help Denzel Washington take over the sub,” he says.

But DiMarco’s stints in showbiz were strictly part time. He soon landed a job as a phlebotomist in an AIDS clinic, where he drew blood. So just how did he make the transition from doing lab work to porn work?

“Well, my roommate at the time was Coy Dekker, and he was a porn star,” DiMarco says. “When he asked if I’d be interested in working in the industry, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. So I called my mom—she’s known I was gay since I was a kid—and I said, ‘Mom, what if I did Playgirl?’ And she said, ‘That would be cool.’ And I said, ‘What if I did gay magazines?’ She said, ‘I could live with that.’ And I said, ‘What if I did a gay movie?’ And she said, ‘Well, would you be the boy or the girl?’ I said, ‘I’d be the boy.’ And she said, ‘I guess I could live with that.’ ”

But even with his mother’s seal of approval, there were still doubts. “Everyone said, ‘If you do it, you’ll never get a boyfriend,’ ” DiMarco says. “And I thought, well, I’m broke, I don’t have a boyfriend now, so I won’t have a boyfriend, but I’ll have the money. So I took the money.”

His first film was Matt Sterling’s All American, and he doesn’t recall being nervous. “I just remember it was a really long day,” he says. Several films for Catalina followed, and DiMarco’s career took off, along with any doubts about his new profession. “It’s stupid to lie about it if you’re gonna do porn,” he says. “You might as well have the balls to admit it because somebody is going to see it. I’ve had people I knew before I did porn come up to me in the grocery store and say, in a really bitchy tone, ‘Oh, we’ve seen your movies.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh really, which one? Did you like it?’ Listen, I take my clothes off and fuck people in front of other people. If they’re gonna try and embarrass me, they’re gonna have to do better than that. Besides, everyone who is important to me—my mom and my boyfriend—knows, so I don’t care.”

The boyfriend that DiMarco is referring to is his current flame, Sal. The two live together in West Hollywood, and they recently solidified their relationship with a commitment ceremony and domestic partnership papers. Although DiMarco says that his lover is the jealous type, even Sal is a fan of the movie that put this screen stud into a Christian Dior tux. “Night Walk was the hardest to make, but it’s definitely my favorite movie,” DiMarco says. “We worked really long days, sometimes from 9am to 4am. The sets were huge; it felt like the set of Batman or something. And there was rain and wind and a sports car and Art Deco furniture. It’s just a cool film.”

Although DiMarco has two new movies (Lost in Vegas for All Worlds and Idol in the Sky for Men of Odyssey) and Ronnie Larsen—writer and director of the off-Broadway hit Making Porn—is courting him for a play, he says that what he’d really like to do is return to school for a degree in animal behavior. But mostly he’s content with the quiet life he shares with Sal; their dogs, Sammy and Sky; and their six-foot Burmese python, Lucy. “People think it’s so glamorous, but my life isn’t that exciting,” DiMarco says. “Doing movies and touring and dancing is like a fantasy. But it’s really just a job like any other.”

Reprinted from HX magazine (1996)