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Pattsy

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  1. I'm a sucker for beat down screens. This looks quality.
  2. James Battaglia is a 26 year old third generation Italian American working full time as a taxi driver. James' parents brought him up in the heart of South LS, rife with opportunities to fall into or against the wrong crowd. James mostly took to himself, as the dwindling numbers of the Italian American community in South LS often just made him a target for bullying and ostracization. James didn't hold as much of a grudge against these people as his father did, he didn't like James playing with the local kids, but that isn't to say that James didn't have friends. In fact, his nickname came from the kids on the block, a nickname that's followed him into his adult life - a nickname he hated but now bears a connection to his oldest friends. Jimmy Tag. James supposes that "Battaglia" was too hard for a ten year old to say, the silent "G" being the culprit. Tag was faster, easier and much more efficient in warning James of a squad car approaching. When James wasn't dodging groups of older kids in alleys, or hopping fences to avoid walking through no-go zones - he was with his select few friend(s) from his block. They would tag walls, break and enter derelict buildings and on rare occasions antagonise patrolling police cruisers with rocks and empty bottles. Black and Hispanic kids that he couldn't invite to his house for dinner, or pull an all-nighter playing video games before school the next day. His mother wouldn't care. His father however told James that they'd move if he brought any of "them" around - and for a kid that only had 2 friends in the entire city, that was a social death sentence. James' mother, Angela, worked herself into an early grave in a corner store just down the road from their family home, while his father, Victor, sold most of his years away to a metal works on the south end of town. Victor ruled the home with an iron fist; a powerful image but more so a literal punishment for an often disobedient child and a protective mother. Angela passed away quite suddenly at the age of 53 from lung cancer, an incredibly young age for a son to lose his mother. James was 20 at this point and although hardened from an upbringing common to most in South LS, his heart sank for years and he never regained that innocence from his teens. Victor's worsening condition only exacerbated James' fear for his family's future, and selfishly, his fear for his own hereditary future. After all, his father did always tell him that Battaglia men rarely last to enjoy their own retirement. His father suffered a stroke just a couple of years after his wife's passing and not long after was diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer's at the age of 58, causing him to be unfit to live alone. He currently resides in an assisted living home of which he can barely afford on his own savings. Despite James' confidence in his father's behaviour being a catalyst for his mother's grave health, James chips in every month with however much of his cabby pay is required to keep him looked after. To his shame, James admits life would be simpler if his father would just die. An incredible shame that overwhelms his thoughts after the tail-end high of a night of cognac and cocaine. James continues to smoke after his mother's passing, instead putting the sole blame of her cancer to his father, and the cause of his own recklessness to his father's revelation that "Battaglia men don't last to enjoy their own retirement". Now, James just has his routine. Day in, day out. A bright yellow courier.
  3. This thread will follow the development of James "Jimmy Tag" Battaglia.
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