Uncle Mike

James and I were close enough in age that we ended up growing up together. We were the blacksheep from the beginning, which reminds me of a lot of funny stories. James gave me my first tattoo by stabbing me with an old ink pen when I took one of his toys away from him, its stories along that kinda line that made us such great friends. When I graduated from school he hooked me up with an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop that his buddy ran, in turn I did all of his work for him. His mom still holds that against me to this day, but James didn't care, when he heard that I had gotten my first appointment he came down and watched me do it. He took a polaroid of it and snuck it into my portfolio one day. It was the ugliest tattoo that ever was done in that shop, but James insisted that I keep it in there. He said that it was a piece of history that needed to be preserved, but I think that it was cause James wanted to remind me to find the beauty in everything that I did.