Robert Sinclair / Malvin St Claire

This is actually Quentin Crisp. I have no pictures of Robert Sinclair but there's a strong enough resemblance for this photo to give you a bit of an idea of what Robert looked like forty-odd years ago. Robert came to work at Chevalier Associates while I was there and we became friends. I had my little mailroom and, like the others that worked there, Robert popped in and out a hundred times a day with printing or mailing jobs. Although I chatted everyone up, with Robert it was a little different. He was one of the smartest and most "cultured" people I'd met and our conversations were always fascinating to say the least. When I think back and picture him it amazes me to realize that for the longest time I had no idea he was homosexual. He had the big hair, dandy suits, flower in the lapel, and the cologne. His style was utterly gay . . . not as flamboyant as Quentin Crisp, but close. Still, it didn't sink in for the longest time, which is really odd because I was fascinated by queer culture. I'd read City of Night with deep interest, for example. A big part of the fascination was the outlaw nature of it all. I identified majorly with all outlaw, outcast, weird, and unusal non-participants in the mainstream culture for which I had only contempt. Robert grew up in the Maritimes and was driven out by Maritime society, including his own family. He was an exile. I felt like an exile. We became great friends. When I left Chevalier we'd meet for beer once in a while and I loved visiting him because he had the most interesting books and music, art, etc. I'd never, that I can remember, heard non-Western music before. He wasn't much of a jazz fan but he played Indian ragas and Balinese gamelan records for me which left me gasping for breath. He introduced me to writers I'd never heard of and in fact sometimes copied out passages of books and gave them to me. Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans is an example I never forgot. At my place I introduced him to William Burroughs. He picked up my copy of Naked Lunch and read the entire thing there and then, in front my very eyes which made a big dent in my brain because I've always been a slow reader. Robert was the first and for many many years the only person I dared show my writing to and . . . who knows . . . if it hadn't been for his insightful comments and encouragement maybe I wouldn't have kept at it. (I would have.) I just didn't have the confidence to go public. But there was something about our friendship that was completely liberating for me. For example, in matters of sex I bullshitted my male friends and put up a cool front with female friends but, shit, here was a guy who actually fucked other guys . . . why would I have shame or secrets of any kind with him? So baring my sexually insecure soul to Robert was a great relief. And he likewise confessed his strange and private activities and lusts. Robert was involved with an obscure spiritual practice called Subud. It's founder and leader, an Indonesian fellow known as Bapak, would give new names to their members, so Robert Sinclair became Malvin St. Claire. (I introduced my friend Martin Narvey to Malvin. Malvin introduced Martin to Subud and Martin became Valentine Navrolansky, or Narvolansky . . . something like that.) What happened to either of them will remain an unsolved mystery, I suspect. I hit the road and never saw or heard anything about them again and probably never will.