Porn Valley- I had an opportunity to chat with Mika Tan on the set of Assassin Pictures’ Porn Stars’ Garage. Tan, who’s with L.A. Direct Models, has been in the business, surprisingly, something like eight years. She started in 1997 and was a mainstream model at one time when she started at age 12. She worked in San Diego, Hawaii and Guam.Tan tells me that she was subjected to mainstream’s casting couch and sucked cock on at least three occasions in attempts to get a part. She never got the part. Tan joined KSEX to team up with Aveena Lee on Wednesday nights in the 9 pm slot.

“I was mainstream modeling from the time I was 12,” says Tan who started nude modeling when she was at San Diego State. “Then every once in awhile we’d come to Chico State and I did some of their nude modeling there for $3 a hour.

“It was really horrible,” she laughs. “You had to sit there for so long.”

Tan has also done extra work in movies such as Renegade. “And Pringle commercials- things like that,” she adds. “They like my nice teeth- they zoomed in on my teeth. Tan said she came to California to pursue mainstream modeling but the experience was “gross” as far as she was concerned.

“I don’t know if it was my agent,” she states. “She was sending me to places and I was beginning to think and it’s probably true that there really is a casting couch. I gave at least three blowjobs trying to get parts in mainstream. God, this was so gross.”

Tan said it would follow a pattern where she’d go in for the first reading. “It would be in the office and there’d be a bunch of people,” she says. “Then they’d call me for a second reading which was fine. Then they’d call me for a third reading which was out their house. The most surprising one was with this guy John-something. I can’t remember his name. It was an older white guy and I was so surprised. He actually had a nice, big penis. He directed children’s movies. I was reading and reading. I happened to look up and he had his penis out. I’m, like, what are you going to do with that?”

“You’re doing a reading at his house and all of a sudden he whips his dick out? Tan is asked.

“Yeah then he pulls it out,” she says. “There’s a lot of sleazy characters. I said, ah. Am I sitting on the casting couch? he goes, no, not unless you want it to be. I’m like what is that supposed to mean. I go if I’m going to give you head am I going to get the part? He said it wouldn’t hurt. I’m like 19. I don’t know what I’m doing. So I give him a blowjob but I don’t hear back from him. Maybe I’m not very good. I don’t know. But I guess I’m good because people pay me for it now!”Tan said there was another time when he blew a guy from NBC.

“But he had no say- he was a writer,” she explained. “He had Asian fever. It was disgusting. I gave up on that for awhile. I got a regular job. Blah-blah-blah. Then I got married.”

Tan and her then-husband, Ray Shannon, went to Erotica L.A.

“People were like are you a model?” says Tan. No I used to be. They said you guys can get paid for doing what you do at home for free. I’m, like, really. So me and my husband started working together. But we didn’t last too long doing that. We did several movies together. Then you get to that point where you have to work with other people- we don’t want to shoot you, blah-blah-blah. He did two movies. Then I did a couple of movies separately. He had a problem with it and felt uncomfortable, so I stopped and just did girl-girl again. But it never worked out after that. We ended up getting a divorce.”

After Tan started doing girl-girl and heavy fetish [real serious stuff, she says] she got her divorce because she was pissed off.

“I found out that he was dating two other girls on the side,” she laughs. “That’s when I started doing anal and all this crazy stuff. There’s actually some scenes where I look at the camera and go, fuck you!”

Tan met Alec Knight at a fetish party. She was working the door and Knight came with one of his mainstream director friends.

“I guess they were working on the Matrix- the second one,” says Tan. “They show up at the party late, and I say just go in. It’s dead, I’m not going to charge you. I just started talking to him- that was pretty much it. I think I liked him because he had no idea of who I was. I typically don’t like to date guys who know who I am.”

I ask Tan if Alec featured the beatnik look when she first me him.

“No, he was really clean-cut,” she remembers. “But he thinks it looks edgy for porn.” Asked what it was about the cut of Alec’s jib, Tan said the fact he was a really normal guy.

“Plain vanilla,” she says. “I like normal. Because I’m freaky-deaky. I can get it anywhere here. Ah, normal guy. That’s nice.”

Tan really enjoys anal and tried it first on camera for Ed Powers. The first time she had sex was at the age of 12 with another 12 year-old boy whose father was friends with hers.

My dad and his dad were both sales reps for the same company,” Tan says. “I grew up with him since I was 7 or 8. We went on family trips together. Then we dated another four years after that. Then we broke up when we were in high school. The first time was in the back of his parents’ station wagon. The car was parked and we were sneaking around.

“Other than the fact that we didn’t know how to put the condom on…we couldn’t figure it out,” Tan says. “We spent half the time laughing and gave up.” Asked if he was a little pee-pee boy, Tan says, “He was Filipino so his dick grew out. We taught each other how to do stuff.” Although they didn’t do anal, Tan says there was a lot of other crazy things involved.

“We videotaped ourselves in high school and it got circulated around school- it was crazy,” she laughs.

Tan’s mother educated her in the birds & the bees when she first got her period.

“My mom gave me the whole break down- okay, you’re going to want to start having sex with guy. At the time, I’m, uuuugh, no way. My mom’s real liberal. And my grandmother used to own a massage parlor- I was like 5 or 6 and there’s pictures of me with a birthday cake and balloons coming from the ceiling with topless girls way in the back. To me it wasn’t a stigma. I told my mother when I was considering porn do you think I should? What do you think. She said it’s with your husband- what’s the problem? She was just worried about me getting hurt. She gets pretty pissed off if I get bruised up or banged up- like the time I tore my butt.

“It was really a hot scene, it’s so sad,” Tan explains. “It was for Mitch Spinelli. Before the scene even started Benjamin Bratt was getting in my butt. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t put enough lube in there, and it tore my butt. I didn’t think it was bad in the beginning and I continued on with the scene. It was a b-b-g-g anal. It tore a little, But by the end of the scene I was bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. I had a chronic anal fissure and they had to serw me up for seven grand. I was out for a year. During that time I was doing regular b-g stuff. I was still working but no anal. I wasn’t going to rush it. The doctors said a year.”

Tan doesn’t work that often with Knight.

“In the beginning people wouldn’t give him a chance,” she notes.

I told Mika that Alec has to one of the best male performers working today and should be recognized for it.

“He’s professional- I trained him well in the ways of the dark side,” she laughs.