Porn Valley- I had a nice chat last week with Buster Good, a former garbage man, body builder-type on the set of Hustler’s Crimes of the Ass. When he was in his Twenties, Buster was a goofball kid who took drugs and slept in the backseat of cars. At 38 Buster, who’s been in the business two and a half years, has got his life in order and credits a lot of that to porn.
“I’ve always been really, really sexually active,” he says. “And I always considered myself somewhat of a pervert. I didn’t really know how comfortable I was with that but I became comfortable as the years went on and realized it was all good. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Jim Powers was a friend I grew up with. We were in the same circle. We weren’t really tight but I remember when I graduated high school I heard that Jim Powers does porn. I thought, wow. I was in awe about that. This is cool.”
At the age of 21, Buster started fantasizing about being in porn. In retrospect he wishes he had proceeded with it. But that was water over the dam. Several years later, Buster paid a visit to World Modeling. He doesn’t remember if someone gave him a tip, but he went in there and took some Polaroids.
“A girl took a picture of me,” he recalls. “I talked to Jim- at the time I didn’t have even half the tattoos that I have now- he made a comment. He was very polite but he said the tattoos might inhibit me getting work. I didn’t pursue it after that. I was, okay, whatever.”
But that didn’t stop the fact that Buster was stimulated by porn and the nastiness of women coming into the business. His porn collection was the minimal, cheap VHS tapes that you’d buy in downtime L.A., he says. A big score for him would be finding refuse tapes during one of his trash runs.
“That would be a good pay day and a goldmine,” he laughs. “That was the porn that I had and I always wanted to look at the stuff over and over and just get off on it.” According to Buster, he always struggled job-wise and had to work hard to make ends meet. He remembers always wanting to be a news cameraman.
“That looked promising for a second then everything is always falling through,” he sighs. Up until recently, Buster worked in a psych ward for eight years. Buster says I didn’t have enough batteries in my recorder to get some of those stories.
“It was fun in the beginning and very interesting,” he says. “I don’t regret doing it.” Buster goes so far to say that it was also very life-threatening.
“Very much so,” he states. “It can be nasty with the grand mal seizures and people puking at the dinner table where everyone else is eating- shitting and pissing all over the place. I can go on for hours. There were fun times, but they were 12 hour shifts. And apart from getting medical benefits, you get about $130 after taxes a day on that. Some of the nurses were non-supportive and some of them were cool. Put it this way. It’s very easy to do something unethical when you’re working a 12-hour shift, five, six days in a row. It’s easy to say something mean to somebody even if they’re mentally ill. It’s easy- if they assault you- to not just restrain but to want to give them a jab. It’s easy to do that because you’re a human being yourself. And it’s a very stressful job. I never hurt anybody but people push your buttons. And There’s people that can find spots in you that you don’t even know yourself.”
I ask Buster if he had any opportunities for sexual dalliance either with nurses or resident wackos. He always gets that question he tells me. I point out to Buster these scenarios happen all the time in porn.
“You’d see a couple of cute girls in there who ended up in there for whatever situation, walking around in their pajamas,” he laughs. “They would start flirting with you. I always kept that at a very professional level. I’ve heard of that happening in board & cares and stuff like that. One male nurse was fired once for giving a female his phone number. For me it’s very forbidden. I would never take advantage of somebody in that circumstance. To me it’ beyond wrong. Absolutely. But with a fellow co-worker- there were a couple of interns that came through there that ended up in my bedroom.”
The opportunity then struck again for Buster to get into porn when he got a hold of Jim Powers phone number.
“I called Multimedia and asked if Jim was there,” he recalls. “They said he wasn’t, would I like to leave a message. I hung up. I still had that desire, that curiosity to want to do porn.”
Then about three years ago when he attended a friend’s funeral, Buster ran into Powers.
“I didn’t say anything to Jim,” he says. “But that curiosity was very much aroused at that moment. A couple of days later I called him. I spoke with him. I said, hey Jim, remember me I was at the funeral. He said, God, you’re looking big. I remember when you were a skinny little kid back in the punk rock days. I said Jim I’ve always wanted to do porn. He said why don’t you come down and check out a set. I went down the next day- Ashley Blue was getting d.p.’d at Patti Rhodes’ house. I said where do I sign up. He told me about AIM. I went to AIM two days later and got a test.”
Buster’s first scene was blessed, according to him.
“It was in the Hollywood Hills- I was scared as hell. Out of mind. A girl comes up to me and says, hi, I’m Ava Devine. I’m going to be working with you. You’re cute. You couldn’t ask for your first scene to work with anyone better than her. Because that segues into not every girl in this business is going to want to work with you. Not every girl is into sex like she is. I was thinking about her today and I’ve worked with her a bunch of times. I haven’t see her awhile and she’s just awesome. She made it really easy for my first scene. And fun. The guy was having wood problems before my scene, before me. She was blowing him. I was sitting there watching the scene. She was blowing me while we were watching the scene before mine. It just got rid of all the knots in my stomach. That was my first scene.
“The tattoo-thing came back where it was like some people were saying you have too many tattoos,” Buster continues. “But now I’m at the point where I have enough work where sometimes I don’t want to work as much as I do. At first that [the tattoo issue] got me a little bit down, like, oh, I’m not going to make it at this. Here we go again- something that looks promising is just going to fall in the toilet. It’s allowed me to have fun and has allowed me to pay my bills comfortably and not have to stress as much. It’s taken 2 1/2 years to get to this point but I’ve had to hustle a lot and make a lot of connections.
“Brian Surewood also helped me out,” Good notes. “I grew up with him, also. He gave me some contacts- not everyone’s going to want to share their contacts with you. But I remember the people who do and I try to return the favor for some of the other guys who need them. I try to do that.”
His biggest “downfall” in the business, says Buster, is having to work with a girl who doesn’t like sex.
“I can understand if she’s tired or not feeling good- I’m not talking about that. For me, one thing that really helps me keep my wood is that I like to kiss. I’m not looking to make out. We’re not looking at a love story but if a girl tells me, hey, I really don’t like to kiss, it makes me feel like she’s really not interested in me at all. And it’s hard to get through that.”
I tell Buster I’ve met female performers who regard kissing like the plague.
“There’s some girls who say it’s for my husband,” says Buster. “At the same I can stick my dick in her ass and put it in her mouth. You’re not going to give me a fucking kiss or two to get my dick hard so we can finish this scene and you can go home? That doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve got other girls like Nicki Hunter. When I first met Nicki, I guess she got into the business the same time I did. I would watch Nicki do scenes before mine. She would finish her scene, maybe with three guys, and she would still come over give me a hug and blow me a little bit, just because she’s into sex. That’s a girl that I love to work with- a woman like that. Kami Andrews is another one. She works a lot but when she works with you she makes you feel special. And she really, truly in fact enjoys the sex. Those are the girls- and there’s not many of those women now.
“There’s so many coming in, very young. The young ones are very beautiful but at the same time they’re coming in where they never knew what it was like to sleep in the back of a car, being homeless or what not. They don’t know how hard it is to struggle and pay bills. Now all of a sudden they’re getting all this money and they have this sense of entitlement and they really don’t want to fuck you.
“Then, sometimes, you meet some girls you’re looking forward to work with because you know they’re always cool.”
Buster shows me a picture ID back when he was using the name John Hinckley. “I was very much under the influence of narcotics in that picture,” he laughs. “I was on heroin, whatever. I’ve been sober now for 17 years. I got sober when I was 21 years old. I’m proof that you can be sober and have a real good time, still.”
What got Buster straight is the fact that he was homeless at the age of 21.
“I got $52,000 from a motorcycle accident that I was in, drunk- that the lady cut me off,” he recalls. “She made a left hand turn in front of me and did some pretty heavy damage to my knee. A year later I had $52,000, and a year later after that I was broke and living in the back of an abandoned car with nothing. That money was a godsend- it exacerbated my disease of drug addiction and alcoholism and allowed me to get to the point where, hey, dude, you’re going to die. That’s what happened. That money saved my life. Then the working out came along with that, slowly, over the years. I started to take better care of myself. I don’t preach to other people, but I’m always there for them if they need someone to talk to about their drug or alcohol problems. It’s prolonged a lot of lives because they weren’t able to indulge in the way that I got to, that took me to the place that I did. My life still has its ups and down like everyone else’s.
“In the porn business there’s people I really like to be around,” Buster goes on to say. “And there’s people that I don’t care to be around. Just like anything.”
Buster was sexually active in high school but declared himself a lost soul. That’s because he was drugged out and didn’t know how to approach women.
“I was pretty out of it,” he relates. “Yeah, I got laid quite a bit. But a lot of times I was too out of it to even do anything.” He remembers his first time being in the back of a Ford Escort in Agoura.
“Off Chesbro Rd.,” he laughs. “I remember it. Her name was Jody. I was 16 and he was 16. Years later I tried to fuck her sister and I wasn’t successful. It works in porn, yeah.”
For now Buster’s not seeing anyone special.
“I can get laid whenever I want, and sometimes that’s a downfall,” he reasons. “Because if you’re fucking off camera and have work on camera it can screw you up. I’ll meet a girl in the gym who’s very good looking and I’ve never lied to a girl just to fuck her. I’ve always been up front. I consider myself a pretty honest person and sometimes that hinders me a little bit. I’ll tell a girl what I do. If we become friends, I’ll let them know. They’re normally pretty cool with it. But I’m not looking to be in a relationship right now, anyhow. Normally it works out pretty good. I consider myself lucky because there’s guys that just can’t get laid for the life of them. I get laid and get paid for it.
“But it’s different off camera,” Buster adds. “When you’re off camera normally the girl you’re with- there’s more emotion involved with it. You don’t have a problem kissing and you don’t have to open up to the camera so you can just bury your face wherever you want and not have to worry if anyone can see it or not. So it’s definitely more enjoyable off camera. “But there’s been very enjoyable on camera experiences where you’re like what do you mean you want me to pop now? I can go on forever. Other times, it’s like, oh my God, you’re panicked. I hope I can make it through the scene!”