SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE • 87other friends over who tattooed in our kitchen, when I
was there. I can even remember a few times my dad tat-
tooing people in the kitchen. These scenarios created the
perfect opportunity for a young kid. I was around the age
of 13 when I decided that I would give myself a tattoo. It
was simple and to the point “CST”, which was my friend
Alex Dove and I’s skate team, in Camden, Alabama (goog-
le it). We were also the only two skateboarders in town.
“In similar ways, that biological evolution evolves
through genetics from parent to offspring, culture can
evolve through social transmission (Mesoudi, 2011). My
father contributed, not only 50% of my DNA, he also was
one of the reasons I wanted tattoos – he was my first ex-
perience of tattoos. This social transmission of informa-
tion, which can be considered culture, is called vertical
transmission (from parent to offspring). Not everyone
is influenced by their parents, but maybe their peers
(horizontal transmission) or even people from an older
generation that are not your parents (oblique transmis-
sion). My friend Alex’s parents did not have tattoos and
he wasn’t really allowed to come to my parents’ house. I
could have influenced him at some point in our life, which
would be ‘horizontal social transmission of information
from peer to peer’ (Mesoudi, 2011; Boyd & Richardson,
1985; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981).“Others, not just my father, would influ-
ence me to get tattoos as well. I never had
the desire to tattoo and never thought for
any reason it would be my job, I just knew I
wanted tattoos. As a small child I was fascinated by them
and by the time I turned eighteen, I not only wanted to
be covered in them, but I wanted to be around tattoo cul-
ture. I wanted to be around people with tattoos. How do
you become a part of something? Well, by fully submerg-
ing oneself into it. It was something bigger than me to be
a part of. Which I feel is a very human experience. We are
all very social creatures, whether we think so or not.
“Sociability, I think played a significant role in the lon-
gevity of our species. It was not long after I made this de-
cision that the tattoo community accepted me, probably
because I had a car. I started collecting them and they
started creeping up my neck and eventually hands and
fingers in a very short time. However, it was just more
ways to prove that I belonged. After five or six years of
collecting tattoos, I fell on some hard luck with life and
was offered an apprenticeship by the guy that did most of
my tattoos. He had just opened a new shop in town and
was well respected. For the first few years of my appren-
ticeship, life could not have been any better.
“Despite the long days at the shop, we were all living the
dream. I say this now, but during the time I did not no-
tice that I was changing for the worse. I always thought
it was tattooing that made me a horrible person, but I
was wrong. I had become a different person and wantedWHEN I COULD STAY WITH MY PARENTS, SOMETIMES
THEY WOULD HAVE OTHER FRIENDS OVER WHO
TATTOOED IN OUR KITCHEN, WHEN I WAS THERE