From The Associated Press:
Rob Poulos is a walking fragment of literature. Tattooed on his left wrist is a single word, lowercase, followed by a comma and quotation marks -- back," -- as if it was lifted from the end of a line of dialogue.
Likely it was. Poulos, himself a student of creative writing, joined a worldwide effort to help author Shelley Jackson publish a short story solely on human hide.
Appropriately titled "Skin," the 2,095-word piece of fiction is the foundation for a project that's as exclusive as it is obscure. Each person bears one word only, and Jackson insists that the full text will be distributed only to participants.
"I can't write a normal book. I'm not interested in that," Jackson said in a telephone interview while roller-skating through New York City's borough of Brooklyn.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Personally, I'm not getting some random word from a short story tattooed on my body, and certainly not on a place as visible as my wrist.
Don't you think you'd get tired of explaining what it was to everybody you meet? Plus, what if you got stuck with a word you didn't like? Like "dumb" or something. Can you imagine going through the rest of your life with the word "dumb" tattooed on your wrist?