Subway Advice for LeBron James

“OLDER BROTHER.” I STOPPED FOR A SECOND THE OTHER DAY WHEN THAT PHRASE SAT UP IN MY MIND. I was walking through Washington Square Park with a few slices of pizza sandwiched between paper plates on the way to meet my girlfriend for lunch as pigeons marble-clacked through the air when I thought back to a comedian named Chris Gethard asking me where I got my confidence from and one of the first answers that came to my mind was you, the explanation offering itself up in the form of saying that you were my older brother. That’s obviously not true, but it got me wondering as to why my mind thought it was true. I don’t go around invoking your name the way Obama did at the DNC, nor the way Jay, Wale, or Nikki do, but I think it’s because I found my impossible confidence wanting an impossible friend. We’re nearly the same age, too.

I didn’t realize you were an older brother at first because I was getting distracted by everyone walking around invoking your name the way they invoke words like—say—”neoliberalism,” as if the mere act of being in the zone as it’s flooded constitutes—in and of itself—an act of truth. I didn’t realize you were an older brother because people were passing fatalism and despair back and forth like it was sui generis wisdom—as if an image of a dog saying ‘This is fine’ was all one year needed. It makes me wonder how literature would have been different if Walt Whitman had stood up and said, “Look—none of this world has anything to do with me. I don’t want anything to do with it. I want nothing from no one.”

Anyway: I’m telling you all this—mind your head—because I heard you took the subway for the first time after practice the other day, and I wanted to offer up some advice. That’s why we’re here. I want you to know this the way I know this—for us to move by “the traffic lights that skim [the] swift Unfractioned idiom” of it all—and be capable of summoning said idiom up from the subconscious subterraneum of our four lungs if we ever did so choose.

Where do you want to begin? Do you want to know the best train to take if you want to head up to the snowy expanse of Central Park at night? Do you want me to tell you which stairwell will lead you quietly and safely up to the top so you can view the Shadow Giants moving through the park as their eyes flare yolk yellow like candles coming to life inside an old candle factory? Where the birds caught in their gaze seem to move slightly slower through the air? (Like the kind of thing Simon Stålenhag used to paint before he looked at his watch for—like—a minute before it all ended up coming true.)

Shall we revel in the democratic revelry of it all? Like how that kid over there has been telling his friends about how he accidentally got on The Trash Barge while drunk one Halloween is sitting next to a couple who’ve decided that they’re going to get married right now, need a witness, and are asking the person sitting next to them, who looks like they’re also a priest—but I’m pretty sure that’s Fog Hat’s “Slow Ride” coming out of his headphones?

Or what about that parent over there moving her umbrella up and down like it’s some sort of puppet so she can entertain her daughter? Or that guy near the end of the car telling his friend about how he went to a strip club last night but that all the women just rolled like anemones who knew gymnastics across the floor en-writhing-masse while one tone deaf tech bro tried to ‘make it rain’ vis-a-vis digital currency? Or the guy coming through the door who looks like he was just surfing atop the subway car because he dearly wishes he was Spider-Man? Or the woman over there with a book in each hand?

What’s that? Why you and not Jordan? Because I never felt like Jordan was interested in someone like me. I always got the impression that if you were having a conversation with him, his eyes would start to creep up over your shoulder. So why you and not Larry Bird? Because I didn’t grow up in Indiana. I mean, I know he’s ‘mine.’ I grew up in Massachusetts. And maybe time will fracture and a pass Bird sends to Russell will break through and bounce off the wall of a building hanging over Hanover Street as I crunch through the snow on the way to grab a cup of coffee in a shop that seems to bounce like a drummer’s foot that has decided of its own initiative to take a step beyond the earthly confines of a bass drum, but it hasn’t. Not yet.

It’s funny: in all these interviews you do and have done, I sometimes get the impression of a great stillness emanating from you. Like you’re waiting the cameras out. And that’s such a surreal thing to see in action sometimes, ‘cause there’s just so much to wait out: when Kyrie sent those passes floating up to you—when he nailed the winning three in Game 7—the story at the end of that immediate day was you. When you saw Tyronn Lue weeping alone on that bench in Oakland—his first year coaching, too—the cameras were swarming you. And I know you know what is and isn’t fair about how we distribute our attention. I know. By the way: why have a pack of kids who I’m pretty sure should be in school been running from stop to stop to take a photo of the two of us talking but won’t get on? Yeah. I’ll point ‘em out to you when we get to the next stop. I can’t believe they were running that fast.

All right. I guess that’s lesson number one: if you take the subway, revel in the democratic revelry. The next thing I suppose you need to know is that lines on here sometimes catch you out—unexpected closings and all that. I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of times I’ve been caught flat-footed walking over to my local subway stop or just trying to get back. I even went so far as to walk over to those giants and ask them if they could give me a lift back over but they just blinked at me.

Also: if an actor ever takes what I’m gonna write-up about our time traveling together today and uses it as an audition piece somewhere, I really hope that they audition as you. You know what I mean? I want to see an actor’s face furrow in quiet consternation as I seemingly monologue about brotherhood without ever making the explicit case as to why I’m your brother. I want the director to look down at his notes, get confused when it says the guy auditioning as you is auditioning for the role of Cosette, and then I want to see words of Yoruba, Igbo, Swahili, and others crack open from the twinned half of the text like Ishmael Reed sardines. (And then — when the second text is written—I don’t want to see a word of Yoruba, Igbo, or Swahili in it—because since when does one story tell another what to do?)

Those were great kids, weren’t they? I’m glad we got the chance to do that. Gollums of the here and now with us as the gargoyles standing in the lightning above. And we could do something like this every week, too, you know. You can’t deny that there might be something here: when everyone gave me their phones all at once so I could take a picture of them with you and I started going on about it being an expensive game of Jenga, who had the cheapest phone, and then the railroad track of a kid with freckles between his glasses handed over a friggin’ rotary phone and you took the thing out of my hand, dialed it, and started in with all that ‘Hello — is this 1-800-Dial-A-Vine?’ That was great, man. How could we not hire a guy to hand-write out credits and toss them into the air like Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues after we’ve taken care of whatever we had to take care of that day when we have this? Also: which box has the pepperoni? That one?

How am I your brother? Scoot over. For real? Well, if you’re the athlete and I’m the poet who makes things real, then why can’t I swoop in like Batman when you need something? Not ‘P.A. need something,’ but need something. Do you want your kids to have a babysitter who’s in the mood to build a treehouse but wants the trees to be talking trees that can tell stories to your kids once the work is finished and everyone is staring up at the stars? That’s me. I’m there. And, if I ever need you, I know that you are capable of flying through the air.