SexHerald: Before we talk about the book Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior, I have to ask you about a layout you did for CHERI Magazine years ago with a bovine. Do you remember that layout?

Vanessa del Rio: Yeah, that was banned in California—the cow state or the milk state, whatever. It was just so innocent. I mean, it was just a farm girl relaxing on the farm. Actually the neighbors came over to borrow milk from that cow. That’s how they do it in the country. I’m sure they were there to watch, too, but I didn’t see what the big deal of it was. You know, they made me take those pictures off my site (VanessadelRio.com). It was nothing. I don’t even want to talk about it. Really, they make it a big thing. It was no big deal. Just put that I was milking a cow and I drank some milk so that people wouldn’t think something really weird. People make mountains out of half-molehills. Actually, that issue was when I first got exposed to Robert Crumb, who did the drawing of me in my book. I love him. It was a little pullout in that issue, and he had this little character called Mr. Snoid, and he lived in an asshole. So, I’ve been in love with Robert Crumb ever since. Then, lo and behold, he winds up making a drawing of me for my book. It went for $35,000 at an art gallery, the original. Shoot, I would’ve given a blowjob for a lot less. [Laughs]

SH: Is Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior the definitive history of Vanessa Del Rio, and how long did it take to put this book together?

del Rio: About six years. I had been—do you know Dian Hanson? She was the editor for Leg Show and Juggs. She works for Taschen Books in California. I had done an issue for her, sort of like a comeback pictorial. I became very friendly with her, and she had told me that Benedict Taschen was a big fan of mine and he wanted to do a project with me. I was like, “OK, fine.” Little by little, first thing he did was he fulfilled one of my, never in the world would I think fantasies, of being shot by Helmut Newton. He flew me down to South Beach, and that was just the start of it. So he started planting seeds. There were the pictures that he did which was in Publishers Weekly and his slogan is, “A Passion for Taschen,” and he used that picture for a few years as kind of like promo. He does art books, so he takes his time, and nothing is mass-produced really quick. He takes his time doing things, and when he feels it . . . that’s his art is making the books. Then I wound up meeting him in a restaurant in SoHo, and I brought him some really dirty pictures. I don’t know what possessed me. Dian said bring something, and they were really dirty. They were black and white, and I had this guy’s balls in mouth, I was tied up, they were grainy . . . it was hysterical. He was like, “We must make a big book.” That’s how it all happened.

Then Dian came over to my house, and I had trunks full of stuff from years ago, and she went to try to get stuff from producers and directors and companies, which is really hard to get everything and to get people to give you stuff. The thing is nobody knows who the original owners are so everybody’s hoarding stuff. They were really hard to collect. I’m flattered that people don’t want to give up my stuff, but she got a lot.

SH: How did you come with the title Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior, and why did you name the book that?

del Rio: I’m a very humorous person. That’s one of my gifts, I guess. I have a great sense of humor. And it just came to me because I started to try and write some stuff myself. Just putting down notes and what have you, kind of just looking at, “What would I want my book to be?” I never really thought of a book where you kind of repent what you’re doing and now I’m a new person, and all this violin stuff. I wanted it to be more of who I really am, and that’s very humorous. I look at life . . . I guess I step back from it and I look at it from a different perspective. All of a sudden that just popped into my head, Slightly Slutty Behavior, because I really meant it as . . . how do say when you mean one thing but you say another? Like a lot of people have already said, “C’mon Vanessa, slightly slutty behavior?” But it turns out that by today’s standards, by what there is out there today in porn, my stuff is slightly slutty. I mean they’re doing some raunchy stuff. I guess it turns out that the joke’s on me. [Laughs] It was slightly slutty.

SH: What’s your feeling on the word slut? Would you take offense if someone called you that?

del Rio: No. I mean if they’re going to throw it at me . . . but still, the whole thing is I chose my life. I chose to do what I chose to do, and I’ve embraced it. Whore, slut, prostitute, obscene and all those words are very strong words, and I chose a certain path in my life, and like with everything else I have fun with it. Like yes, I have my moments. I was raised Catholic so, of course, again, I don’t want people to think I’m a hard ass but it’s like, you can’t cry over spilt milk. I’m making money from it. There’s a book, there’s an art publisher that made a $400, $500 book on me. I’ve must’ve done something right. What are my choices? Am I going to go, “Oh my god, I’m a slut.” Bullshit, I had fun doing it. You can’t unring a bell. I had fun doing it. Sex is fun. If you want to call me a slut, call me a slut. Just capitalize it.

SH: Would you say your personal life was as wild as anything you did on film, and how so?

del Rio: Back in the 70s, during that time, lifestyles kind of mirrored what was going on because it wasn’t like you had decided this was going to be your business, then you went home . . . at least, not for me and for a lot of people in the business. It was the lifestyle. It was the sexual revolution, it was about sex, rock and roll, disco, having fun. And then, living in the Village and living in the underbelly of New York, it just became part of what you did. So yes, it was just as wild. I guess even more so because there’s no camera up your ass. [Laughs] But then after a while you just calm down I guess, as the times go on especially when AIDS came out. So that sent everybody running. I know I quit the business because of it.

SH: No regrets at all about leaving when you did, especially when you could’ve kept performing for several more years?

del Rio: But some say that I quit right at the height of my career, and it’s like, “Yeah, well I wasn’t going to die for it.”

SH: In your performing days, you were known for doing almost anything. Was there anything you balked at doing?

del Rio: Well no, there was nothing really unusual they would ask you to do back then. Not like now I guess. You didn’t have to do anything that you didn’t want to. I don’t think I was asked to do anything that I wouldn’t do in my real life. If I didn’t want to do it in my real life, I certainly wasn’t going to do it on film.

SH: Since you’re asked all the time what your thoughts are on the industry today, what did you think about the industry before you entered it? When you entered it, was it like how you imagined it would be?

del Rio: I didn’t really think about it. I used to watch films with my first boyfriend. We used to sneak into the theater… I actually used to watch Isabel Sarli movies. These weren’t X-rated films; they were T&A tease films from the 60s and 70s. I used to go with my mother, actually, so that’s the first time I ever saw any sexual content. This was not sex, not hardcore sex or anything. It was all inferred. And she was topless and bottomless. She was my mentor. I wanted to be just like her. She was just this really, over-the-top sexual animal.

And then later on, with my first boyfriend, I used to sneak into the theater and they had these black-and-white films. This was when they first started to make them a little more on the raunchy side. They dealt more with the actual sex act. The thing is, they used to fuck under the sheets. If the sheet fell away, the guy still had his underwear on. I remember seeing this one picture that was a real turn-on. This woman filled the entire screen and she had her legs open, wearing white panties and she was gyrating. You couldn’t see anything yet that was so hot. So, it all just happened. I never really thought of what it would be like, at least not that I can remember. I remember wanting to be in movies like every kid wants to be, but I never really thought about what it would be like to be in porn.

SH: When you got into porn, what surprised you most about the business?

del Rio: How fun it was. There was a camaraderie and everybody was very friendly and open, and you would exchange numbers. If there was work, people would call you. If you were the new kid on the block people would go, “We know somebody that’s new, here’s their number.” Or, they would give you a number and say so and so is shooting. So it was very, very friendly. There was nothing sleazy or gruff about it at all. It was all a community of people that were like-minded.

SH: Growing up Catholic and attending Catholic school, what were you taught about sex? How was the subject approached in school?

del Rio: I remember there was a Father Dunn who would teach the birds and the bees, and he would be sweating. His face would get red because he was heavy, so his collar would be tight. And he would get pink because he would have to draw little penises on the board. But, we use to kind of go and sit in the back and put our fingers in our ears so we wouldn’t hear. But just the fact that they would separate the boys from the girls after third grade it was like, “You got to watch the boys.”

I’ve got my issues with the Catholic thing. It’s all about sin and the easy out is they’ve got confession. You can do whatever the fuck you want as long as you confess it. So, it’s very hypocritical. I guess in the Catholic community—I’m not going to say Spanish or Italian or whatever—just in the Catholic community I think that they have a guilt about their sexuality, which the Catholic Church really drills into you. You can either buy into it or not. As I started to drift away from being in Catholic school and going through all of that religious stuff, I started to come to my own conclusion and what felt good to me and what felt right. You make up your own mind. You’re independent and you think for yourself. [The Catholic Church] views sex as something that’s dirty yet they still do it. And then they turn around and they confess. It’s conflicted. You’re either going to shit or get off the pot. That’s my take on it.

SH: So you’re not religious, are you spiritual?

del Rio: You know what, there’s a difference. Let’s jump to what I believe. Yes, there was a Christ and that I believe that what he taught was love and how to respect each other and do unto others . . . but all the crap that they teach you in Catholic school, I don’t buy any of that. Basically they would say that if you . . . they had sins that were either misdemeanors or felonies. If you get a hard-on and there’s nothing between you, then that’s a mortal sin. They liken sex to murder. If you’re just kissing, and it’s a peck on the cheek or a peck on the lips, then it’s a venial sin. That’s a misdemeanor. I take issue with the history of Catholicism and how they have tried to brainwash you, because people in power throughout the years have changed certain things in order to suit how they would dole out this power that they had. So, it’s just between me and Jesus Christ. Anything in the middle can just get out. That’s how I feel about it.

People are still, it’s as though religion has a hold on them. Their guilt has a hold on them. Even to this day, I feel certain things but I know where it’s coming from. So I can easily dismiss it and not say, “Oh my god, what a bad girl I was!” No.

SH: What did you want to be when you were younger?

del Rio: Well actually, there was a time when they almost got me and I wanted to be a nun… If I were [a] nun, I would’ve been going after the priests. Forget it. Then I wanted to be, this crossed my head real fast, I wanted to be a cop. I wanted to be a movie star. And in my very early teens, I did want to be like Isabel Sarli and I decided I wanted to be a whore. So yes, I did think I wanted to be like that woman who affected men in a sexual way so voraciously, even though in some of her films she was kind of helpless but it was just her sexuality, which oozed out of her, and men would just do stupid things to get her attention. She just oozed it.

SH: But you did end up becoming a sex symbol so that goal came true.

del Rio: Yes. It’s funny, I made a few goals for myself that I accomplished. There was a time when I wanted to be a bodybuilder. I had seen a picture of Rachel McClish, a bodybuilder from the late 70s, early 80s when women’s bodybuilding was a big thing. And Rachel McClish was gorgeous. I saw a picture of her in a magazine and I went, “Whoa, look at that!” I had never seen anything like it. Anything prior to that, women bodybuilders looked like wrestlers with tits. They were very mannish. They didn’t wear makeup and they just had that real butch kind of thing. She was just very feminine. I got into bodybuilding for about eight years. Anything you really put your mind to you can do.

SH: What do you miss about the golden age of porn, the 70s? Anything at all that you miss about those days?

del Rio: I guess the freedom that was from that era, and not necessarily porn but just that era. Like I said, I lived and I worked, and one just went into the other. I didn’t go home to a husband with children and did porn just to feed the babies or just to pay the rent, or anything like that. It was a lifestyle. Those were really nice years to have lived because it didn’t mean death.

SH: You once said, “Porn is the only business where women are in control.” Can you explain: how are women in control in porn?

del Rio: Well if you’re in control of yourself—and this is specific to the woman—if you know how to handle your life, if you’re in control, you don’t want to do something that you don’t want to do. And as far as money went back in those days, forget it. There was no such thing as residuals. You really didn’t get paid what you were really worth. But, it was a lifestyle. You weren’t really thinking of this in career money choices. It was just the era. But women are in control. If it wasn’t for pussy, there wouldn’t be porn other than gay porn. Women get paid more than the men. And I think the men do the harder job, quote unquote, pun intended. [Laughs] Women can fake it but men can’t and they get paid less. Then you have women like Candida Royalle who have taken the bull by the horn, so to speak. She’s in control of her own company and in control of what she shoots, and she has a huge following.

SH: Back in the 70s, when only men called the shots in porn, were there any powerful women behind the camera that called the shots as well?

del Rio: Not that many that I know of. There was one, Doris Wishman, but I think I only did one film for her. There weren’t, it was more male-dominated. But again, as it became more mainstream, when we started the business in the 70s, and started becoming the named stars like the Candida’s, the Seka’s, the Marylin’s, Samantha Fox, it wasn’t a career choice. You did it and it was something that came across your path, and you did need to make money but you still were open-minded and a free thinker. Then after, when the ball got rolling and then video came in, it became more of a career choice because there were more clubs to dance in. The sexuality started to become more commercialized and more out in the open. So women were actually thinking, “Hey, I think I’m going to be a porn star.” Back in our day we didn’t think that. We just stumbled on it.

SH: Did you ever feel used or exploited as a performer?

del Rio: No, not really. If I did, I was in on it. See I don’t really view life, and I look back on it and go, “Geez, I was used.” It’s useless. I’m sure I was exploited. I could’ve made a lot more money but I don’t look at it like being exploited and crying over it afterwards. I had a good time doing it.

SH: Today, as a woman, how do you personally feel about being very desirable to many men?

del Rio: Well, goal accomplished. [Laughs] It sometimes can be a little . . . you figure that now you’ve reached this status in this business, this icon or whatever. Then when you meet men, are they really into meeting me as a challenge Vanessa, or are they really into wanting to get to know me. But I think that is with anyone that is in the public eye, but more problematic I would think for someone in the sex business. Then you feel like you have to live up to . . . it’s like you’re both kind of on-guard. It’s like who does he want, Vanessa del Rio, and what does he think? So, there’s a lot in between.

I’ve gone to swing clubs with my boyfriend, and if I’m recognized all of a sudden I feel like now they’re gonna expect me to hang from the rafters. And I just want to be me and mingle among the people and be regular because that’s what I feel. I feel like I’m just a regular person. Porn was something I did. It was something that I enjoyed doing but I don’t take it that serious that I have to be Vanessa del Rio. It’s a dilemma but it’s also a choice that I made.

SH: Is there anything about today’s porn you don’t like?

del Rio: I don’t like the shock value that they’re going for. The difference between my day and today is that everybody’s trying to outdo each other. Now I’ve seen pictures of women with toilet seats over their heads, and their makeup smeared. A lot of the stuff is really degrading. It’s past the line. I mean, if they thought it was degrading back when I did it, and a lot of opinions were like that, now it’s horrendous. Now they’ve got vomit fetishes, they got the bukkakes. I mean, no woman wants to have 10 guys cum on her face, I’m sorry fellas. It’s just not so. They do it for shock value. Fucking 300 guys, 400 guys, even if it’s 10 guys fucking her 100 times apiece, it’s still dick after a while. No matter how you color it, after a while it’s like, “C’mon, put some ice on my pussy, it hurts.” So I don’t think a woman would want to be fucked by 300 guys. Five, six or seven, yeah. It’s intimate. Once you get into the hundreds, it’s not happening for me. But I think the stuff now is not about turning somebody on. It’s about shocking.

SH: Anything you’d do differently if you could live your life over again or would you do everything exactly the same way?

del Rio: Well, if I had to do it over I think I would have tried doing something in mainstream movies. It’s really fun doing that. Performing in one way or another, whether it’s Broadway or the movies, regular movies I mean. Live performing is the best. But just being an entertainer. I’m kind of a voyeuristic exhibitionist if that makes sense.

SH: Is there anything at all you miss about performing?

del Rio: I think the live stuff because the energy is almost like you can touch it. You’re in it. With films you do it, and there’s a certain energy while you’re performing that. But live, when you get the immediate feedback, and to be able to control the audience like that and see their response when they would look, and they would like it when you did it slow, instead of just a pussy in the face. That I liked a lot. It was very gratifying. It was very electric. Any live performer will tell you that.

SH: What words would you use to describe your life?

del Rio: Adventurous, daring I suppose in some ways, fun. Loose, fancy-free, free-spirited.

SH: You entered porn at 22. If you could talk to the 22-year-old Vanessa del Rio, what would you say to her?

del Rio: You can control more than you think you can. A lot more!