Former sex worker remembers Vesterbro sex trade by its smells

Many years after selling sexual services on Copenhagen’s Vesterbro, Kaya Sommer remembers the smells more clearly than the faces of her customers, DR reports.

As a young woman, Sommer was part of the drug scene on Vesterbro, where she met Marika Vengberg. The two became close friends, moved in together and later left the environment. In the fourth and final episode of DR’s podcast about Reden, a drop-in and counselling centre for women who use drugs and sell sexual services, they revisit places where they spent part of their lives.

From the exit of Copenhagen Central Station towards Istedgade, Sommer can see the storage lockers where she kept all her belongings so they would not be stolen and so she could leave quickly. She also changed her clothes there.

She chose one of the lockers at the back, where nobody could see her.

“Then you are standing there completely naked. You do not want that to be free,” she says in the podcast.

Sommer used to stand outside the Non-Stop bar on Istedgade to find customers, while Vengberg often stood beside her to look after her. Vengberg was not a sex worker herself.

Sommer says the place still triggers her. Women could put 100 kroner in the bar and take men into back rooms, where they sold various sexual services. The rooms had no windows or lighting.

“You did not really know who you were having sex with or being intimate with. It was quite uncomfortable,” Sommer says.

Sommer sold sex partly because of her drug use. It happened at venues such as Non-Stop, in customers’ flats and in cars.

She says she often closed her eyes because she could not bear having to remember the men’s faces afterwards.

Today, she mainly remembers smells.

“A sour penis. Sweat, dirty hands,” she says.

Her customers included businessmen, men who were using drugs themselves and many taxi drivers. She also recalls a man who tried to rape her in Sydhavnen after locking the car doors.

“You can only try to relax, be as accommodating as possible and try to talk your way out of it,” she says.

Sommer and Vengberg used Reden for several years and often slept together in its bunk beds. Kamilla Winther, who works at the centre, remembered both women when they returned for the podcast and was pleased to see that they were doing well.

Winther says staff can fear that women who suddenly stop coming to Reden have died. Many of the women who use the centre also have broken relationships with their families, including their children, and dream of restoring contact.

Reden is different today from when Vengberg began using it in 2011. At that time, many women took drugs in the sleeping area, where needles could be found between the beds, Winther says.

The centre also had a noticeboard where women warned one another about men who had treated them badly. Sommer remembers a note warning women about a man who had behaved in a highly abusive way or raped a woman, including his number plate.

Winther says sex selling is now much more individualised.