When I met George Creel
by Nicholas Miller
I only had one opportunity to meet Mr. Creel. From what I’ve heard, that counts as one more than a great many people from Any Four Words, with the possible exception of The Editor. It was back when many of the regulars were attempting to create some sort of society, as if we could form our own little French salon, Russian coffeehouse, or American bar, where we’d reinforce each other’s opinions like an agreeable gang of schoolchildren.
Somehow we thought it would help if we all got MySpace pages and blogs and tried to keep up an online presence outside the site itself, and we thought it would help if we got to know each other and exchanged ideas in a productive, creative environment like somebody’s attic or something. It didn’t take us long to realize that we really didn’t want to maintain MySpace pages, we really didn’t want to form an artificial clique, and we really didn’t like each other to begin with. My meeting with George Creel was further confirmation that we could never be something we weren’t.
I had tried to meet Mr. Creel in a bar or restaurant or park or some other public place, but he insisted in our online correspondence that he could not leave his basement apartment, because the community was turning Hispanic and he didn’t trust his neighbors anymore. “Everything I need,” he wrote, “I have sent to me.” So I decided to oblige an old man and spent a good deal of time wandering streets where crowds of teenagers looked at me funny until finally I came across the address that I had scrawled on a random scrap of paper before I’d left.
Mr. Creel opened the door wearing ragged slacks and a stained button-down shirt which hadn’t been tucked in. He wasn’t wearing shoes, which seemed odd to me, not only because his slacks seemed to demand shoes, but also because it was cold outside and there were various uncomfortable objects lying on every space of floor in the apartment. It was an old man’s apartment, but it would be better to say it was the kind of apartment that I would have if I were ever unfortunate enough to become an old man. Notebooks were strewn all over the place. Some had a worn, puffed-up look, as if every page had been written on and carefully perused at a later date. Others were just covered in dust, collected at some point long ago so that Mr. Creel would never have to be afraid of running out of paper. Next to the notepads, surrounding the notepads and pointing at them from a thousand directions, pens of every variety lined the floor, probably long dried out after they’d been thrown across the room in boredom or frustration. In one corner, a solitary laptop sat on an inordinately clean desk. I knew that he mostly wrote nonfiction, and I wondered how he did his research without any books, but I didn’t want to see his bedroom and was afraid of the possibility that this man had a kitchen. I was glad when I was asked to sit on the one chair in the room, the chair next to the laptop, as Mr. Creel fetched a lawn chair from some closet or another. He placed it on the other side of the room, so as to be as far away from me as possible. He asked me if I wanted something to drink. I declined.
He asked me why I was here, and I told him I wasn’t sure. We both made a valiant effort to maintain a reasonable conversation, but we really only managed to ask each other what we’d read on the website. “Did you read the Kennedy one?” “Yeah.” “What did you think?” “It was too long. I didn’t finish it. Did you read the science fiction ones?” “Yeah.” “What did you think?” “They were shit.” “Yeah. What does the Editor think he’s doing?” “I don’t know . . . Did you ever read any of mine?” “. . . Yeah.” “What did you think?” “I thought that what you wrote was written with a great deal of care.” “Thank you. I thought the same thing about yours.” “Thank you.” Our conversation drifted into the personal details of each other’s lives, but for the sake of discretion, I’m not going to tell you exactly what was said. I don’t want anyone knowing how I live, and as far as Mr. Creel goes, even though the man is dead, he still might hear me and I do not want to hurt him.
It was for the most part a disagreeable two hours. It would be kind of me to say that Mr. Creel was perhaps a shell of some former vibrant self, but it seems more as if Mr. Creel had always been a shell of what he used to be, even before he was born. In that sense, I myself am a shell of what I might be, and Any Four Words is a shell of what a reputable website should represent. It is no wonder then that the two of us gravitated to this site for what appeared at the time to be no discernible reason. When it came time for the funeral, I did not go. I didn’t want to see where I was going to end up. I can only hope that Mr. Creel is happy where he is (or is not), and that Any Four Words will learn something from his death. I’ve heard that the site is going on hiatus as a result of the man’s death, and although that is perhaps the measliest tribute any man could get, it is what Mr. Creel deserves. Maybe I’ll be back when the site collects itself. Maybe I won’t. Whatever the case, George Creel is gone. As he goes, so do we all. Or, at the very least, so do I.