35-year-old Steve from Scarborough in the United Kingdom always wanted to be covered in tattoos, ever since he was a small child. “I’d seen the old guys on the bus with ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ on their knuckles, and I’d always wanted to be coated,” he says, “but my mother was deadly against it.”

Steve got his first tattoo just before his 18th birthday in what he describes as “rebellious fashion.” Then, he got ink on his arms, hands, and neck. The next step would have been to get his head and face tattooed—”I never liked my reflection in the mirror too much, I always wanted to hide”—but it wasn’t until he was rushed to hospital with kidney failure that he decided life is too short and went for it.

“I wouldn’t have done my head and face otherwise, because I didn’t have a full career, plus my mum and dad,” he says. After making a recovery from being at just 3 percent kidney function, he made an appointment with the tattoo artist. “So then I got my face blasted!” He jokes. “Life’s way too short.”

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Steve is happy with the way he looks now, but he is conscious of how some people perceive him. “A lot of people do tell me that they were intimidated or they were scared,” he says. “I think it looks decent, but if it scares some people, then it’s kind of unfortunate I guess.”

Read more: Men’s Health