5 Meet Uncute
Meet Uncute
Calvin and I had a less than auspicious start, as far as friendships go.
The better part of a decade ago, I’d left Eldi to her own devices for the night and gone out to a bar.
Babysitters aren’t really an option, and Eldi can take care of herself anyway.
My primary concern is appearances. The last thing I need is a worried citizen calling the police, so usually I bring Manny the mannequin up from the basement and let him have the run of the Winnebago while I’m gone so, from a distance, it looks like an adult is present.
Calvin and I met in this little hole-in-the-wall, a monster-themed bar, up in Washington state wine country.
I was investigating a spate of lake-monster sightings and was trying to hear the local gossip.
I’d heard about Calvin; his podcast was really taking off, and he was getting a ton of traction and listeners.
A majority of his fan base follows him for his engaging yet stringent scientific methods.
But a segment of his fans follows him for a less pure reason.
I’m ashamed to say I’m in both camps, but I lie and tell Calvin I never listen to his show, and I follow his social media with a fake profile.
His podcast is his main thing, but he does live streams on his social pages sometimes when he works on his research, and I wasn’t lying when I said he’s hot.
He pretends he doesn’t know, but he’s always posting subtle thirst traps on his personal pages, wooing online fans with Hozier and Noah Kahan covers on his banjo.
He knows more Chappell Roan lyrics than I do.
Then he invites everyone to listen to his podcast and breaks out the nerd glasses and science talk for his Debunker video episodes.
Someone started calling him “Data Daddy,” for fuck’s sake.
I’ve seen him scoping out themed merchandise to capitalize on it.
I should really get the jump on him and start selling it myself on the sly.
But the bar in Washington was early days, and while I’d heard of him, I didn’t recognize him when he hit on me, as I’ve never been great at remembering or recognizing faces and am even worse at reading facial expressions.
And he hit on me first, for the record. I wasn’t expecting or looking for a hookup, what with Manny and Eldi waiting for me at the Winnebago, but then I’m not one to turn down casual fun, either, so it wasn’t an immediate no.
Calvin didn’t play any games, just walked right up and—with a pointed up-and-down look—said, “Have time for a beer?”
“How presumptuous of you,” I said.
“As if you weren’t checking me out from the minute I walked in.”
“That obvious, hmm?” I replied. I try to be more subtle, checking out men when I’m rolling with my he/him self like I was that evening. Not that I can’t hold my own, but there are a lot of assholes in the world to watch out for.
“Maybe, but I notice details. And we’re in a gay bar.”
“Ah,” I said, taking a second look around. “Well, you might be observant, but apparently I could do with practice.”
When he started to pull back, I quickly clarified. “Don’t worry, I’m not straight. Not entirely sure where you’d place me on the gender and sexuality spectrum.”
Calvin only shrugged like it didn’t matter, and that was when I got my first hint he was much more than a pretty face. That was when I fell the tiniest bit in love with him. That was when I began seriously plotting. Maybe I could convince Eldi and Manny to spend the night in the basement.
“Calvin St. James,” he said then, by way of introduction. My plotting screeched to a halt. I snorted my beer up my nose and knew immediately there could be no casual for the two of us.
“Reggie,” I said, trying to recover.
“Reggie,” he said with a frown, suddenly pulling back and repeating my name. I watched him look me up and down a second time in a much different way, saw the gears turning in his head.
“Regina Quinn,” he said when I remained silent. “That’s who you are, isn’t it?”
“Never Regina, just Reggie. Heard of me?” I asked, playing dumb.
He would have heard of me, but I was always careful to maintain my privacy so no one ever put my face and name together.
I preferred to be known as “that traveling investigator with the camper” rather than by any name.
My voice only ever hit the airwaves disguised; my face never appeared on screen as more than a blurred-out blob.
I hid behind my NDAs and lies and let the outlandish rumors build so if the truth ever emerged, it wouldn’t be believed anyway.
Sometimes I pretended to be just an assistant instead of myself or gave a random name.
The mystique worked for me. People interested in the supernatural or plagued by something paranormal tended to be either desperate or quirky enough to willingly hire the anonymous investigator recommended on the back corners of the internet.
Sure, sometimes this meant the pay was shitty, but I racked up my money early on, and that afforded me the freedom to try to even my karmic score a little bit.
I wasted plenty of my time on hoaxers who wanted to get their fifteen minutes of fame and refused to cough up my investigation fee.
And other times, the only payment I got was the palpable relief on someone’s face after I banished whatever had been haunting them, whether real or imaginary.
Every client like that let me hold my own ghosts at bay a little longer.
I was an early listener of Calvin’s podcast. I knew already that he thought people like me were problematic, spreading conspiracy and misinformation by believing in the supernatural.
He’d called me out by name. It was one reason I had him on my radar; I didn’t need my name shouted out across the airwaves, and I knew I’d have to nip that kind of attention in the bud.
It was immensely frustrating that Calvin thought I wanted to prove to the entire world that magic is real and cryptids exist. I simply wanted to protect it all and quietly tuck it back into shadow. I only wanted to be left out of it.
“I know exactly who you are,” Calvin said. It sounded like an accusation.
“Are you sure about that?” I said, knowing he never would know anything about me. Never could know, if I wanted either of us to be safe.
He sneered, smacking his beer bottle down on the counter too hard, foam fizzing up the bottle neck. “I know you play pretend and charge people good money to believe in your fake monsters and hauntings.”
Even though I knew that I should have left it alone, and that his end goal would only further mine along, I bristled at his misconception of me.
“Because your charging them to pretend you can debunk anything with science is fine? Tell me, do you always get solid answers? Never find something you couldn’t disprove?
Do you repay your fee then? You get your money from somewhere too,” I said sweetly, sliding the napkin dispenser toward him and silently fuming.
“I suppose you’re here telling everyone the lake monsters are real and you’ll provide some blurry photos for a fee?” He jerked a handful of napkins from the dispenser and scrubbed at the counter before he took an aggressive swig of his beer.
“Yep. Caught me. Gonna download some poor-quality pictures of whale penises off the internet and say it’s the Loch Ness Monster come to Washington. I bet I could charge five hundred dollars for that.”
He choked on his beer.
We spent the rest of the evening bickering until Calvin was so annoyed with me that he left.
I told myself it was better we weren’t friends.
Especially if we ended up following any more of the same cases.
We lived in uneasy tension for months. Calvin was determined to make me his archnemesis, constantly angry at me for stealing his cases when we showed up to the same investigations more often than coincidence could account for.
I only sometimes regretted not giving him a false name, sleeping with him when I had the chance, and making him hate me even more.
The investigation when everything changed was a potential haunting in Georgia.
A sweet little lady who was convinced the spirit of her late husband was haunting their home.
Judging by the daughter’s lengthy email, he was a terrible human.
There was no ghost, only a very dead but not forgotten man. I knew that going in.
Calvin actually was the first one asked to investigate.
I sent Eldi to snatch his notepad with the case notes.
She’s had him wrapped around her finger from the get-go.
Even when he hated me, he was always polite and kind to her.
To be fair, Calvin was right when he accused me of poaching his cases.
Besides using Eldi as a spy (because no one suspects the toddler to be capable of such duplicity), I’d also stuck a tracker to his Airstream.
I wasn’t trying to be invasive, I swear.
I wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he never opened up a can of worms that I had to clean up.
Calvin isn’t a bad person. He’s idealistic to a fault, and someday he’s going to reach out a helping hand to something that will bite first and ask questions later.
So I followed him down to Georgia, and, boy, was he pissed when I pulled up in the driveway behind him.
He must have been having a bad day, because he usually kept his cool in front of others.
Not this time. His demeanor didn’t do him any favors.
Charlotte, the client, lived alone on a goat farm, of all places.
Eldi greedily stared out the window, drool already dripping down her little fangs onto her chin as she spotted a herd of at least fifty roaming beyond the fencing.
“Absolutely not. No goats. You eat one right under Calvin’s nose and he will become a major problem for us.”