Turning your back on it is the last step.

Trust me, I know this as a Black boy from an ain’t-shit city on an ain’t-shit block.

I’ll tell you how I knew this last name was going to be my greatest obstacle aside from my zip code.

It’s 7th grade in the 90s, and I don’t care what nobody say, 7th grade in the 90s was lit even if you were a short and fat and ugly Black boy from Ocean Avenue. I have a tapered fade that’s too low on the sides. The exposed scalp has razor bumps raised in the back of a tragic bowl cut.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment and it’s my birthday during my first year at prep school. The white kids get a car service home while I only hear the crackle of my concierge if the train gets stuck between Times Square and 72nd Street.

Not to say I’m broken, but I believe, deep down, I’m not worth much if I don’t go to this school and get these grades — which by this time are starting to slip.

I print seven invites for my birthday party. My mother, through her daily miracles, reserves a cake and pizzas and Chinese food, catering size. We have ruthless palates, designed solely for sugar and fat. There are two white classmates I want to join. My friend Cal and his boy Daniel. I don’t realize the reach of my long shot, that Brooklyn is un-romantic for them, a pox on the city.

I love my borough for Heavy D blasting outta my cousin’s onyx Jeep Cherokee, for icee stands and melted crimson syrup on the knuckles, for double dutch dormant at the crosswalk. I love Brooklyn for backyard basketball and the John Starks game winners I rarely make.

They know Brooklyn for rap lyrics on crack vials and “Crime Stoppers” posters. Reward signs. Missing signs. They know Brooklyn for gangland hoodies and gas leak effigies. The incubus of crack babies. The land beyond the bridge. Trains taken over by tag names.

I should note that three of my best friends from Brooklyn attend private school with me so they ride the Q or the 2 as far as they can. Inside graffiti-candied trains, we laugh harder than I ever have before or since.

The two white friends take the invitation and one of them even comes out to the party.

When I say I’ve never felt my 1-bedroom was smaller. I wish our wall-to-wall carpets could evaporate on the spot. I wish I could vanish into the arms of a compassionate God or a cheeky devil when I bring Cal into our cramped elevator with the painted gray door and the frosted Plexiglass looking out to a blur. The fluid drains from my chin down to my heels as he enters and the walls of my flat constrict to my rib cage, sticking the matte beige finish to my hearty shame.

I wish Cal didn’t have to be there living like us, just long enough to blow out candles, argue about Shaq-Fu on Super Nintendo versus Sega, get into his mom’s Volvo, and head back to Westchester.

LeBron James is from Akron, and some say he spent his middle school years homeless. Prior to his reign, he slept on coach furniture, and wondered if the sky would cave in on him. How he managed to dispatch the self-hatred long enough to construct a hoop mansion is beyond the scope of my tired visions. I couldn’t dream my way past Brooklyn.

I’ve never been to Akron, Ohio but I know what the world does to poor cities, and I know what poor cities turn around and do to themselves. The median household income is about $51,000 yearly.

I wouldn’t like to live any place but Brooklyn because I love our ugly even though life kept forcing me to love uglies of my oppressor’s making. I’m pressed because what does it say about me that I choose to accept that? What if I had a different mother who loved the ugly more than she should, who caged herself in the red bricks and stairway shit? I could’ve been born with a wicked jump shot that rolled off the fingers and into a moon palace deluxe hoop with the star lights.

I could’ve left Brooklyn behind, believing I was better than a place, but forgetting the place has people in it.

Turning my back on it is the last step.

I’m writing directly to LeBron James, which, on its face, is foolish. For one, everybody knows LeBron don’t read.

And two, there’s a trillion dollars invested, with interest, over time, in you hating your black self, whether you're LeBron or some kid who picked up a pen in an Ocean Avenue one-bedroom to drown out the sirens.

LeBron, bro, I cannot tell you to love yourself better than you do.

I just wish you did.

I wish that — between loving those wonderful sons and that beautiful wife and that amazing daughter — you saved a spare hour to love the Black boy who felt small once, sitting there in an Akron gym. I wish you’d reach out and let him know that defiance is protection too, that resistance is protection too.

I’m not from where you're from and will never get what you got. But remember when they shot that boy dead in Ohio and you maybe saw yourself — felt yourself — in the blood range of a hot bullet? They tried to kill you. The little boy. They tried to kill you.

I’m making sure, for him and for me, that the shield over his spirit is as big as his dreams and bigger than his fears. I gave up on that childhood self a few times, and he be loud as fuck, shouting for water, lotion, hugs, and a witness. He is so loud sometimes I believe the best thing for me and him is to just shut him up. Remind him the world has nothing for us we don’t go out and take.

Instead, I let him scream, let the tears pool heavy in my chest. I let him stop my breath until I’m dizzy, leaning backwards at the bus stop, because he has something to share.

He tells me I was born with ghosts to take care of and an ancestor to make sure I live long enough to complete what they set down. That little boy self controls the night sweats. Turn your back on him and invite terrorism into your unread books and false prophets into your earpiece. He may be sensitive but he ain’t dumb.

He can’t hate where he’s from because that place made you.

You turn your back on him and poof.