My brief career as a smoking model

"Yeah. So I can take pictures on the way."

I had just gotten my license the previous year and never driven neither a BMW nor an open car before. So obviously I jumped at the opportunity. Dieter put a towel on my seat to prevent my Sylt design to rub off on the leather. I sat down behind the wheel and removed my heels to drive barefoot. Dieter got in and immeditately pushed the dashboard cigarette lighter and placed another cigarette between my painted lips as I was busy maneuvering his BMW out of the car park.

"So... Where are we going?" I asked, when he had lit my cigarette and resumed his photography.

"You want to get away from the crowd?" he asked from behind his Nikon.

"Absolutely."

"Let's go the the Braderup Heath at the eastern part of the island. It's huge, deserted and a very beautiful area. The heather is in full bloom now. So it's back to Wenningstedt and then turn right toward Braderup."

The heath turned out to be a wonderful place. I went barefoot on the sandy and wooden walkways across the heath and along the wadden sea where we could see the Danish coastline in the distance. Dieter kept photographing me for an hour and supplied me with cigarettes all the time so his client could see me smoking on all the pictures and on the video bits he was also recording.

The occasional hikers we met on the heath, greated us with a friendly Moin and behaved very differently from the aggressive male pigs on the promenade. For another hour we just walked around and enjoyed the sunny weather and doing small talk. I managed to go a full hour between cigarettes, as I needed a break from the smoke, but my voice was still unusually raspy as we got back to the car.

"You want to go back to Westerland now?" Dieter asked.

"I don't know. There is so much nature here. I'd rather see some more of it."

"Good. I've arranged a visit to the Hörnum lighthouse. You get a spectacular view from the top. And I could get some great shots of you up there."

"That's in the south, isn't it?"

"Yes. 20 kilometers that way," Dieter said and pointed south. "Catch!"

He threw me the car key and we headed south while Dieter kept taking pictures of me in my bodypaint suit, cigarette in mouth, and the warm wind in my hair.

When we arrived at the tall lighthouse, there was a queue to get in. But Dieter had made special arrangements so we went past a long line of people and directly up the stairs to the windy top, an impressive 48 meters above sea level.

I posed and smoked. Dieter took pictures and recorded videos. We both enjoyed the view of the wadden sea and far into the flat landscape of Nordfriesland to the east and the wilder North Sea to the west.

After the climb we sat in the grass eating ice cream and talking for half an hour, another chance to rest my lungs and throat. Then Dieter looked at his wristwatch.

"Time to get back to Westerland," he said and got up.

"Really?" I sighed.

"Yes," he said and headed for the car.

He opened the trunk and took out his khaki suit, a white shirt, a tie and a pair of shiny black leather shoes. He started to change from his shorts, T-shirt and sneakers.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"We're going to the casino," he explained.

"The casino?"

"Yes. And there's a dress code. I need a suit and a tie. They wouldn't let me in in shorts and T-shirt."

"What about me? I guess I can't go in my undies with my tits on display?" I asked.

"Just put on your heels. You'll be fine."

"So there's no dress code for women?"

"Yes. There is. Officially."

"But you think they will let me enter practically naked?"

"Yes. I've made an arrangement. The owners would like some of my pictures of an attractive bodypainted woman playing the roulette. It'll be part of their marketing."

"So the casino in Westerland is your mysterious client? They want to create an illusion to future customers that they can meet topless women in bodypaint at the casino?"

"No. The casino is not my client. I've just agreed to give them some pictures as a courtesy in exchange for... deviating slightly from the dress code."

"Oh... But you still have to wear suit and tie?"

"Yes. No exceptions for me. Only for you."

"I'm honoured. Shall I drive?"

Dieter gave me the key and sat down in the car to button his shirt, tie his tie and put on his shoes while I was at the wheel, starting to believe that I could get used to driving a vintage BMW convertible.

I found a parking spot in Westerland where we raised the roof of the BMW. I put on my heels.

On the way to the casino we passed two bearded men with pimped Harley Davidson motorbikes. Dieter convinced them to let him take some pictures of me, enjoying a cigarette while sitting on one of the bikes.

At the Spielbank, the casino, Dieter spoke briefly with the hostess at the entrance. Then we went right in. The staff were smiling without staring. They seemed informed that a photoshoot was going to take place.

This being 2004, smoking was naturally not only allowed, but rather a social norm in a German casino. After buying some chips we we went straight to the roulette table were I squeezed in between two cigar-smoking gentlemen in their sixties in elegant suits. I butted out my cigarette in the ashtray in front of me and was handed another by Dieter who lit it before going to fetch me a drink.

"That's quite a dress you got there," the guy to my left remarked.

I looked at his grinning, bearded face and recognized one of the main detectives in our endless TV crime series Tatort. I remembered neither the actor's nor the character's name. But then, he didn't know my name either.

"Thank you!" I answered. "I just got it today. It's a local design. It's called Sylt."

"That's original!" the aging TV detective said. "The artist really knows how to emphasize the important stuff."

He nodded towards my white tits with their red nipples. I didn't find a good comeback for that. Luckily Dieter was back with a bottle of champagne and a tall glass for me. He poured from the bottle and I lifted my glas just like the two gentlemen on each side of me. We toasted:

"To fortune!"

The charming TV detective gave me some advice and I played the roulette for a while, dutifully laughing at the actor's jokes in front of Dieter's clicking camera. Unfortunately it only took two cigarettes' lengths before I'd lost my stash of chips. During that time the well-known actor invited me for a private visit to his house in Kampen and offered to show me around in the Westerland nightlife. I managed to sneak away without making any commitments:

"Sorry, I'm here on an assignment," I shrugged and nodded in Dieter's direction.

Dieter gave me another cigarette and lit it for me. We walked around to some of the casino's other activities before Dieter decided it was time to go back to the promenade and the beach to catch some of the soft evening light.

The crowds on the promenade had grown, as had the alcohol consumption and the pushiness of the testosterone-driven males of ages 15 to 50. For a while I walked around on my heels, posed with strangers, handed out cheek-pecks and smoked another three cigarettes.

Light-headed from the nicotine, the champagne, the sun and my general exhaustion I managed to twist my right ankle as my heel got stuck between two boards on a wooden gangway. I fell and screamed in pain, shocking the men who were around me admiring my physical assets, and immediately felt my foot swell up. There was no need to unbuckle the sandal as the strap was torn and the expensive pair of high heels ruined.

I took off the other sandal and Dieter helped me back to my feet while he shooed away the crowd. To my left foot that is. I couldn't put weight om my right without an intense pain.

"Let's get you over there," Dieter said and nodded in the direction of a cocktail bar on the beach close by. He half supported, half carried me away from the scene of the accident. I smelled and felt his sweat. Still wearing his suit, he was way too warmly dressed for the beach.

At the bar he sat me down on a chair and put my still bigger right foot on another.

"What do you want from the bar?" he asked. "I think we're done for today."

"You bet!" I said, grimacing in pain and pointing at my ankle.

I looked at cocktail menu:

"I'll have a Sex on the Beach!"

"Very appropriate!" Dieter commented with a grin. "I'll order our drinks and then I'll ask the life guard over there if he has some kind of bandage for you foot."

"Thank you, Dieter. That's so sweet of you."

"No problem."

The waitress arrived with our drinks just as Dieter was returning with an elastic bandage for my ankle. Dieter was having a large Flensburger draught beer and with beer foam around his mouth he fastened the bandage around my ankle with a safety pin.

He sat back and took another gulp from his beer mug and smiled at me:

"Sara, I know we just said that we were done for today... But this light... As it is right now... You look great in it. Can I just take a few pictures of you here?"

I laughed:

"Okay. I'll try to smile through the pain. And I guess I have to smoke another cigarette?"

Dieter put the lighter and two packs of Camel on the table in front of me, one that was nearly empty and one that was still unopened. I took the last cigarette from the first pack and lit it while Dieter started working his Nikon in the evening light.

I know you shouldn't drink on an empty stomach. Except for the ice cream at the lighthouse I hadn't eaten since breakfast. After a long day in the heat I drank the cocktails like lemonade and soon gave up counting. The more I drank, the more I needed to smoke and vice versa.

My memory from that evening was a blur later. I remember going through some of the pictures in Dieter's Nikon and quizzing him, to no avail, about that mysterious client who paid large sums of money for pictures and videos of me smoking cigarettes.

At some point we had take-out pizzas brought to the cocktail bar and after eating we continued drinking.

I vaguely remember a discussion about my possible fee for posing naked, with no paint that is, on the promenade in Westerland. If I remember correctly, Dieter asked me to name a price. I don't remember naming one. But I'm sure I'd regret it if I knew I had.

I remember being wrapped in a Cinzano fleece blanket when the bar closed at midnight or whenever. I still had the blanket around me as we stumbled back toward the promenade trying to support each other. So maybe Dieter bought the blanket. Maybe I simply stole it.

We had enough common sense to be aware that we were both too wasted to drive the BMW back to the house in Wenningstedt. I remember sitting in the back of a taxi with the blanket around me.

Then I must have blacked out.

Thursday, July 15^th, 2004. Wenningstedt, Sylt.

It was 6:30 in the morning when I woke up with Dieter's hand on my left tit. We were in his bed, spooning, sweatty and uncovered in the warm bed that was shone upon by the morning sun.

I desperately needed to pee and in spite of the fact that I severely hurt in both ends, head and right ankle, I managed to slowly remove Dieter's heavy left arm from my body and get out of bed. I limped to the downstairs bathroom and sat down the toilet. A sudden urge to throw up came over me and I turned around to fix that.

I drank some water and returned to Dieter's bedroom to inspect the mess. My paint had rubbed off massively on the sheet and on Dieter who slept in his underpants. My inspection of the sheet and my own panties revealed no signs of penetration or ejaculation, which was nice. But still I feel bad about ending up in bed with this much older guy with whom I thought I had a strictly professionel relation.

I carefully went into the kitchen-dining area. Next to the Cinzano fleece blanket on the floor I spotted a burgundy coloured passport. Thinking that I had lost mine I picked it up. Only to find Dieter's picture inside it.

Except this passport belonged to one Daniel Hartwig.

In my hungover state of mind I slowly realized that this much older guy had lied to me about his name. He had also paid me large sums of money for chain-smoking cigarettes and parading my naked, painted tits in front of crowds of human testosterone bombs on a hot summer's day. He had taken hundreds, or probably thousands, of pictures of me for a purpose he refused to disclose. Finally he had gotten me drunk and dragged me into bed when I was unable to resist.

I limped up the stairs to my room on the first floor, hoping that the creaking sound from the wooden steps wouldn't wake up Dieter, or rather Daniel. I assured myself that my 6000 € were in place, put on a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans and threw the rest of my stuff into my bag. I went downstairs as silently as possible.

My handbag was on the table next to the opened carton of Camel Blue cigarettes. I knew I wasn't a smoker. On the other hand Dieter, or whatever this guys name was, had bought them for me and had no use for them. And actually I could do with a cigarette right then.

I picked one from an opened pack, lit it and pocketed the lighter and the pack. The half full carton went into my bag.

Then I limped out of the house on my bare left and bandaged right foot, noticing the smeared remains of my Sylt bodypaint design all over me in a hallway mirror. For a moment I hesitated, considering the possibility of taking a shower to get rid of the paint. But I really couldn't face a confrontation with Dieter/Daniel. So I closed the door quietly behind me and slowly walked across the dunes to the beach. There was a weak, easterly breeze and no waves. I tore my towel in two, stripped naked and went into the morning-cold water where I scrubbed off the paint as best I could.

A glow of paint remained when I had dried myself with the dry part of my towel. I got dressed and sat on the beach for a while before I limped toward the main road to Westerland. I hitched a ride with a local plumber who took me to the railway station from where a direct train to Hamburg was departing 20 minutes later. I was on it.

A couple of days later, back in Hamburg, my annoyance with Daniel/Dieter turned into curiousity as to what exactly I had been a part of. I still didn't know who the mysterious client was who had paid me so handsomely for walking around in the sun getting photographed.

I tried to call the number on the business card he'd given me. But an automated voice just told me that the number was not in use. I went to the address in the inner city that was printed on the card. But there was no trace of a Dieter Hamann or a Daniel Hartwig on that adress or apparently anywhere else in Hamburg or Germany. I did find a number of Daniel Hartwigs. But they all turned out not to be the guy I had spent time with on Sylt.

Licence plate information is no public record in Germany so I couldn't find him based on the plate of the BMW. The police would be able to. But I had no reason to go to the police. Daniel Hartwig had lied to me. But that was no crime.

I stopped running all the way around the Außenalster. Instead I would run to the bench where I had first met Dieter/Daniel and smoke a cigarette or two, waiting for him to materialize. When he didn't, I would just go the short way home and not do the full run around the lake.

Two weeks after getting home I had finished smoking the rest of the cigarettes from the carton. I realized I had become a regular smoker and started buying my own, faithful to the brand Dieter/Daniel had chosen for me. Ever since then I haven't been able to kick the habit that has cost me a sum of money far exceeding the 6000 € I made as a smoking model on Sylt.

I worked for a year and then got into nursing school. Though there was no trace of the photographer, the photographs started to appear on the internet. A fellow student at nursing school showed me a collection of pictures on a website specializing in bodypainting.

"Isn't that you?" she asked.

I had to admit it was. Luckily she found bodypainting cool and was all positive about it.

Now and then I checked the website of the casino in Westerland. But I never found any of the pictures there. Maybe Dieter/Daniel didn't keep his part of the agreement and deliver the pictures? Perhaps they decided that topless women in bodypaint would attract the wrong kind of customers? Anyway they wouldn't have been able to use the pictures after 2008 when smoking at roulette tables was outlawed.

Later I learned that some of the pictures appeared on homepages with pictures of women who smoke. It took me some time to find out that such websites exist. But actually there's a lot of them, catering to men who get a sexual kick out of watching women who sensually suck smoke out of cigarettes and exhale it into the camera lense.

Without knowing it for sure, I guess a number of men around the world must have looked at pictures of me while rubbing their dicks, taking care not to ejaculate onto their computer screen and keyboard. Due to the strictly personal nature of smoking fetishism as an inclination or a hobby, nobody ever spoke to me about my pictures on the smoking fetish sites. Whereas it happened once in a while that a friend or a colleague mentioned having found me on a site focused on the more socially accepted phenomenon bodypaint.

So I don't know if any of my male -- or female for that matter -- friends or acquaintances have jerked off watching pictures (or the videos I occasionally found when I started looking) of the 19-year-old Sara Cremers posing in a short dress or in panties and bodypaint while chain-smoking.

If they have, they haven't told me. And maybe it's better that way. The conversation could become akward if someone brought it up.

Wednesday, August 14^th, 2019. Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany.

Daniel Hartwig was nowhere to be found when I got back inside the cancer center. I managed to check the different waiting areas within the next couple of hours but I couldn't dedicate myself a hundred percent to the search as I had patients to attend.

When I got off my shift at half past three, I figured that Daniel Hartwig must have left. But out of curiousity I went past the car park as I left the building. And to my surprise the yellow BMW convertible was still there.

My ex was picking up our daughter from kindergarten that day so I had all the time in the world and decided to sit down on a bench with a good view of Daniel Hartwig's car. I lit a cigarette and began checking e-mails, Facebook and Instagram on my phone.

At four he still hadn't returned to the car and I started getting impatient. Having spent 30 minutes waiting already I decided to give it some time. After all I did have a couple of questions for Daniel Hartwig. I called a friend and was 15 minutes into a lively conversation with her when I spotted Daniel Hartwig. He was walking slowly across the car park, apparently immersed in his own thoughts.

I got up from the bench and told my friend that I'd call her back. Slowly I walked toward the BMW. Daniel Hartwig didn't seem to notice me. I was behind him at a distance of about five meters when I said his name out loud:

"Daniel Hartwig!"

That got him out of his bubble. He turned, looked at me and said:

"Sara!"

"You remember me?"

"Of course. I think of you every day. I still have your pictures. And you're still beautiful, Sara."

"I have some questions for you. I tried to call you. I went to the fake address on you business card. Why did you lie to me? And what were the pictures for? Who was your client? And why did they want thousands of photos of me walking around smoking cigarettes? And how did your pictures of me end up on websites where they serve as wanking material for men who get a kick out of watching women smoke?" I fired away angrily and finally paused to take a hit from the cigarette between my fingers.