Die Superjacht

The last photo of me was just taken and in this back courtyard studio of the photographer, it immediately became lively again. These jobs were extremely stressful, brought hardly any money and yet I had to accept them. After school as a young teenager, I met an agent at a disco with a friend. He gave both of us a business card and hoped for our call. My friend threw his card away that night and made fun of it. At the time, several somewhat older men were hanging around in discos with this scam. It almost never worked.

My card sat almost a year in my wallet without me noticing it. Instead, I continued my life as I had developed after school. I started an apprenticeship as a modist and learned the first techniques in a relatively small and unimportant company. As a little girl in my parents' house, I loved re-dressing my dolls and putting them in new clothes. This continued further, and although there was basically a low tide in my wallet, I spent almost every free minute in the department store trying on the latest fashion in front of the mirror.

I couldn't afford the clothes, but in the narrow changing rooms in front of the high mirrors, only my sense of style counted. At home, I sat at sewing patterns, saved up a few pieces of fabric and sewed them together by hand. This developed into my real career aspiration. As a modist, you design new clothes or hats, draw your own patterns and lovingly create new clothing. In my imagination, I saw myself as a big fashion designer who presented her new creations on the runways of the world.

Unfortunately, my vision was extremely far from reality. I sat in a small dusty room with my boss, had to have each individual pattern signed off by him twice and three times, and wasn't allowed to choose the fabrics myself. He then bought them from the customers who thought they were his designs. However, these were all my designs, and I received neither praise from the customers nor an appropriate payment. Instead, there was always pressure and lack of time, which I didn't like at all. At some point, I found the business card again.

After weeks in which I had only stared at it, I finally dared to pick up the phone and call. This led to a first meeting with the agent in a public café. There we got to know each other a little better, and he presented me with the individual possibilities that were available to me. According to him, there were three different ways I could earn money. However, only one of them had anything to do with fashion. There was the possibility for me to work as a model and earn money with my photos. Now I had to watch my weight and diet, but didn't have to work by the hour.

For this reason, my income each month was extremely different. Once there were more than enough assignments and I earned more than enough, on the other hand, there were also months in which hardly any assignments appeared on my card. Then I had to be very careful with household expenses to pay all my bills. In the last few weeks, however, almost nothing came out at all. It wasn't that easy to earn money as a model. On my business card, I made some changes over time.

I started exclusively as a model for evening wear and casual clothing. Gradually, underwear and even partial nudity were added. Erotic and pornographic photos, however, I rejected. Although you earned the most money with them, I simply couldn't do that to my parents. Moreover, I always felt too ashamed when on some pictures my chest was visible. I found my small very dark nipples unattractive and didn't want to present myself to the public in such a way. Fortunately, the photographers mostly paid attention to the play of light and shadow and you couldn't see much.

In recent times, however, I got almost no assignments anymore, which really messed up my finances. I could barely pay my rent with the savings of my parents. Whenever it wasn't enough, they gave me some more, and when things went better, I naturally paid them back their expenses. Right now, it didn't even cover all fixed costs. I spoke to my boss and asked for significantly more jobs that I could take on. Unfortunately, she couldn't offer me more. Unless I would perhaps commit myself to erotic photos to improve my income a bit.

I refused this despite a long period of consideration. As a simple model for clothing, underwear or swimwear, there should actually be enough earnings possible. As a last chance, she mentioned another agent who occasionally had her hands in questionable businesses. What kind it was, she couldn't answer, but there were more than enough rumors about the nature of such businesses in our profession. Most often, it involved the drug scene, making models available for special jobs in the sex trade. Occasionally, however, there were also proper stepping stones for normal models.

If I took a job from her, I should pay attention to whether it was jobs in Europe and countries where there wasn't particularly corrupt police. The majority of the Eastern Bloc countries fell out right away, as well as Turkey and Romania didn't fare well. Before I agreed and asked any questions, I should have another conversation with my agent. So far, I had avoided taking this chance. But my financial situation was now so off-balance that it simply couldn't be otherwise.

At home on my old couch in front of the small TV, which showed some game show without sound, I pondered my finances in the evening. Together with the payment from today's photoshoot, it barely covered two-thirds of the next rent. A glance at the calendar on the yellowed wall gave me the rest. There was only about a week left and on my card there were exactly two assignments. This would not be enough to cover the remaining rent. I also already owed my parents almost 3000 euros. That's all that could be done.

To put it differently, I was up to my neck in water. If you weren't playing in the top league of models, it was quite hard to earn money. But for me, it would certainly not reach the top league. I was already 24 years old and didn't look like Heidi Klum. For me, it was just enough to be a Heidi Klumpfoot. And by the way, my name wasn't Heidi at all, but my parents called me Nora. Either some lucrative assignments would come up in the next few days or I really had to approach the other agent for a job.

Since my gym membership had not been paid for ages and I couldn't even get into the changing room anymore, running training in the side streets had to suffice. Right after waking up, I put on my sportswear and went out into the cool morning air. At a moderate pace, I warmed up my muscles a bit and then did my stretching exercises on the still empty parking lot of a supermarket. Only then did I speed up a little and ran until my thighs burned. But through all this, I constantly thought about the missing payment.

After my running training, I stood under the cold shower to save at least some money for heating energy and then went to the office of my company. Maybe there were still one or two new assignments to make my payday a little more substantial. But on my card, nothing was noted anymore. I asked the secretary if there would be any new assignments for the last week of the month. She looked at me with sad eyes and said, "Many colleagues have already asked today. All that came in was a small porn production. You can't expect much more this month, Nora. I'm really sorry for you. If something comes up, I'll call you immediately, but I fear what's noted now will remain."

Jasmine, the secretary, had known our worries for years. She was always the first to know about new assignments for us models. There weren't many of them and she could well imagine the problems we had. She received a normal salary, while we were paid according to our assignments. Of course, part of that money went to the agency. I really had no other choice but to ask the dubious businesswoman for an assignment. If that didn't work out, I would have to beg at the authorities with my broken apprenticeship as a modist.

With a heavy heart and tears in my eyes, I set off for the address of her office. No one knew exactly where she got her assignments from. She had no models under contract herself. All her assignments were filled by desperate models, of which there had been too many recently. The entire industry wasn't really spending much money anymore. Most of what was sought were either porn actresses or models for highly erotic photos. But even these jobs were quite sought after and accordingly almost immediately assigned. Naturally, I didn't qualify for that.

The taste of the clientele seemed to have changed. Almost all assignments concerned colored models. Best of all with very dark skin. There were now thousands of well-paid assignments and plenty of offers from all areas. We white young women were more or less ignored. In every magazine, you could actually only find mixed pictures. A few white and most black models in a somewhat older age group. They wanted to cater to the current trend of diversity. I actually didn't mind if the advertising became a little more colorful, but in this competitive market, we would fade away.

The office of the agent Eugene Beutlan was located right in the city center in an office complex with endless window facades. The whole building looked more like a high-prestige bank and the rents for the individual offices must have been astronomical. Since her foundation, she had occupied one of these offices and yet she didn't keep any models herself for all her assignments. Maybe that was also her business secret. In the entrance hall, it smelled almost like a massage parlor. It was missing only the loungers. Although the secretary wasn't really a masseuse. She looked more like she had come out of a cheap porn film.

The high-piled long black hair over the face painted in bright red tones full of pillows matched more a somewhat older porn movie. Her rough but somehow squeaky voice reinforced this suspicion. She only gave a brief look at my business card, compared the pictures on it with me and then asked her boss if she expected a Nora Gelberholt. Naturally, she didn't expect me. She didn't even know that I existed and yet I stood in the entrance hall of her office looking for a job to end my financial hardship.

That was then my entry card. Behind the large glass desk sat a somewhat older heavier woman with reddish-brown hair and hardly any makeup. What her secretary had too much of in bright red, she lacked for some reason. Not even lipstick had she applied. She looked at me briefly, studied the entries on my business card and asked me to sit down in front of her desk. First of all, I noticed her French accent. That explained a part of her unusual name on the name plate. There it said Eugene Beutlan in black letters on a transparent plastic piece.

Interested, she asked, "Why are you here, Nora?"

"I'm looking for assignments for myself. My month hasn't been very good so far and I need some extra income."

Eugene nodded thoughtfully while I spoke. "I see. You're not the first, Nora. The demand for women like you on the German market is currently zero. Even in my home country France, it's somehow dead horse right now. What job do you imagine?"

I thought about it briefly. Actually, it didn't matter to me what kind of job it was. The main thing was that it brought me enough money for the month. "Actually, it doesn't matter. What's important is that it's well paid and brings me enough in."

She typed on her keyboard and searched with her eyes on the screen for an offer. Meanwhile she asked, "Do you have a valid passport and no fear of flying?"

"I have a passport, but I've never flown except to my nose."

"I can offer you a job for swimwear in Italy. It will be really well paid. However, it takes place at the Mediterranean where it's not particularly warm right now, and the photographer seems not exactly kosher. At least I heard some stories about him in the last months. Allegedly he took some models to his room. Would that be something for you?"

Italy. Swimwear and then also the Mediterranean. That seemed like a really good assignment. The overbearing photographer didn't really scare me off. I could already take care of myself quite well, but if it was a nice Italian? A few tender hours I could imagine very well. Overbearing photographers exist everywhere. The question was only whether I would have to pay for the flight as well. But Beutlan reassured me. The flight ticket and hotel stay were paid by the client. The final decision then brought the payment for a week in Italy. That would almost clean up my financial situation.

After deducting the commission fee from Beutlan, I would be left with almost 4000 euros. Of course, I still had to pay taxes on it, but the amount alone made me sit up. So much was never called in my other jobs. At the end, only a few hundred euros remained on the credit side. If then the tax also took half, the meager yield would be halved again. Even if from my payment after taxes only half remained, I could at least pay back my parents 500 or a little more. Joyfully, I said yes and immediately signed the corresponding offer at Beutlan's office.