Aristocrats of the Soul
Three Nights at Sovereign House
This is the first in a series of scene reports chronicling my experiences in the milieu known as Dimes Square. Some events have been altered for brevity and clarity but are as close to the Truth as I can make them.
Ever since I was young, I have been drawn to all things aristocratic. So strong the allure, I felt I must have been an aristocrat in a past life, or at least a member of the gentry. Perhaps I was a rather elegant courtesan, the mistress of some great and important person. How else to account for my supercilious attitude and excessively refined tastes? Some might call this obsession middle-brow, and I fear they may be right. After all, I am the child of anxious middle-class professionals raised in the suburbs of Manhattan. So when I hear of a new venue called Sovereign House located in the chicest part of town, my elitist tendencies are piqued.
Sovereign House is funded by billionaire Peter Thiel and is the brainchild of Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) father of the so-called Dark Enlightenment and has been accused of being a hotbed of reactionary thought. Its location in the neighborhood known as Dimes Square is no coincidence, as it is the locus of the scene called at various times the “dirtbag left” and the “dissident right.” The name Dimes Square conjures up associations with the historic London residences of the English upper classes: Belgrave, St. James, and Grosvenor Squares. When one enters this neighborhood, we may very well be entering a portal, a time machine, a reterritorializer. We become the main character in a play by Oscar Wilde or an Edith Wharton novel.
We approach 185 East Broadway with fear and trepidation. The usual scenesters are clustered outside its front entrance smoking cigarettes. But instead of ascending the front stairs of a once-grand brownstone to the parlor floor or piano nobile (the “best floor”), we descend steep cast iron steps into the area once inhabited by the help. Inside, we are greeted by surly bartenders and a coterie of young gentlemen who insist on talking to you about their special interest, but instead of video games, their interest is Ernst Jünger. It is appropriate that Sovereign House is in a basement as most of its regulars appear to have come from their mother’s. Royalty recognizes royalty, and as a member of the spiritual aristocracy, I can tell you Buckingham Palace it ain’t. Low ceilinged and poorly decorated, this space would have housed the kitchen and servant’s quarters of the wealthy family who once lived above.
As this is my Sovereign House debut, I am wearing a regal outfit. I’m here for a reading with Cracks in Postmodernity, a podcast hosted by Stephen G. Adubato, a philosophy professor. While I’ve only listened to a few episodes, I remember one in particular about the philosophy of smoking being one of the best I’ve ever heard. The reading goes smoothly and my outfit is well-received, despite Adubato’s reference to “gender goblins” a term apparently still used in 2023. I resemble something like a Spanish infanta of the Renaissance or Baroque periods. It is better to be overdressed than underdressed, especially when one is a gender goblin.
Later in the evening, I have an unpleasant encounter with a young man. This person works for Urbit, the tech company founded by Yarvin, and he seems to take issue with me for being trans. He pompously refers to himself as an aristocrat and I dismiss him as being merely petit bourgeois. After playfully peeking at his phone and asking him what he is looking at, he punches me in the arm, hard. When I complained of this treatment, he said “Don’t worry, he can take it.” After being intentionally misgendered, poked, prodded, bullied, and generally masculinized, I felt obliged to slap him across the face like a femme fatale in a film noir. At Sovereign House, it’s a man’s world and a girl has to be able to fend for herself.
Interestingly, Dasha Nekrasova, co-host of the infamous Red Scare podcast and queen of the Dimes Square scene, slapped Mike Crumplar, writer and chronicler of this milieu, on the sidewalk outside Sovereign House in June. Just a few months later, I find myself slapping this Urbit person in the same location. As a woman of trans experience who loyally listens to Red Scare, I couldn’t help but wonder: was I subconsciously recreating scenarios I had heard about? Am I turning into Dasha? Is this my destiny? Just exactly how mentally ill am I? The answer to this last question requires a medical professional but the other diagnoses are vaguer and more open to interpretation.
In my vexation with this young man, I told the person who runs Sovereign House, Nick Allen, to “eff off” when he bid me goodnight. After being assaulted by a vagrant, my therapist says I have PTSD, and I find I have less control over my emotions. As a trans person, I have been physically assaulted, harassed, called slurs, spat at and a host of other indignities. It sometimes feels like I am at war with the world. Regardless, I hope my rudeness does not bar me from attending future events and I extend my sincerest apologies to Mr. Allen.
I come to find out the young man I slapped lives in the West Village. Moving to the West Village does not automatically make one an aristocrat. Whether in 1870 or today, there are certain codes of behavior one should abide by. Not being a bully is one. Having the decency to apologize is another. If a gentleman had found he offended someone he would apologize by instinct and mean it or pretend to. And this instinct is what I mean by an Aristocrat of the Soul. Some people are superior not by virtue of their birth or wealth but by their character. And no amount of bitcoin, or stock portfolio, or swank address, or reservation at the chicest restaurant can change the fact that some people are spiritual worms. Their head is always in the dirt whichever stratum they inhabit.
Some people are superior not by virtue of their birth or wealth but by their character.
If these crypto bros want to LARP as patrons of the arts, they should learn from their predecessors. The nouveau riche of old knew they lacked the manners and taste of their betters. To overcome these insufficiencies, new money like the Vanderbilts hired Louis Comfort Tiffany, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the Herter Brothers to decorate their houses. Whether in art, literature, fashion, or interior design, Style is Substance. It says the quiet part out loud.
If Sovereign House wants to be taken seriously it needs to acquire an aesthetic, and quickly. Hire a gay interior decorator to channel Versailles and spruce up the joint. Like everything else in Dimes Square, Sovereign House promises so much and delivers so little. If these people are as superior as the name Sovereign House implies, then why does everything look so ugly?
Style is Substance. It says the quiet part out loud.
The following week I’m back for the launch of the Mars Review of Books. After my disgrace, I am dressed to kill in a black silk Chinese dress, a risk as I am not of Asian extraction. But of all places, Sovereign House is the last place I’d expect to be cancelled in for cultural appropriation. Or at least so I thought. During the course of the evening, a man who appeared to be of East Asian descent takes offense at my outfit, asking me if I’m “mixed.” I don’t feel comfortable answering this question but tell him to “have a pleasant evening” in the passive aggressive tone I am accustomed to using in my new feminine role. The highlight of the evening is Ellie, everyone’s favorite reader. She compliments my outfit to say I am “slaying.” Royalty recognizes royalty.
The next night is another reading for Safety Propaganda magazine, with Pariah the Doll and Peter Vack. I’ve followed Pariah (Salomé) for some time and admire her beauty, style, and wit. She does not disappoint in person. Peter Vack is handsome and brooding. I have little to say about the readings in question. Crumplar accurately describes the art generated by this scene as “a bunch of bourgeois theater kids in the imperial core trying to humiliate/fuck/kill each other with the art they make.” Guilty as charged. Read/watch my poem/film Femcel 9/11 for proof of my own emotional terrorism.
Tonight, I am a good girl on her best behavior and wearing a conservative outfit. Literary It Girl Sierra Armor is reading an excerpt from her upcoming novel. But while she is reading, the crowd must be shushed several times, and by Alex Bienstock of all people. Society is in a sorry state when that master of chaos is the preserver of order. No one seems to know how to act anymore, the standards of decorum are so lax, and the tech bros are doubtless too busy discussing the latest shitcoin.
Sierra’s friends Chloé and Emilia Howe are out to show their support. These three beautiful young women comprise what may be called the very best of Dimes Square Society. I refer to them as The Three Graces because they elevate the tone of any room they grace with their presence.
Royalty recognizes royalty.
I run into Chloé outside and make it a point to shake her hand. Her demeanor inspires courtliness. We feel sorry for these ladies of distinction in such shabby rooms when women of their caliber used to inhabit more genteel surroundings. They belong on the piano nobile in rooms with fourteen-foot-high ceilings, marble mantles, crystal chandeliers, and furniture of the finest mahogany and rosewood. Oh, how The West has fallen. The only attempt at elegance is two Ionic columns between the entry hall and main area, “pilfered from Becketts”, that other reactionary salon. On her way out, Chloé makes it a point to shake my hand. It is up to the Ladies, the aristocrats of the soul, to ensure that decorum is maintained.
Martyr Complex is an artist. She lives in New York City.