subject: Craigslist ads, Drugs, and Depravity: Permanent Obscurity by Richard Perez [print this page] Craigslist ads, Drugs, and Depravity: Permanent Obscurity by Richard Perez
If dark comedy with a sordid edge is your cup of tea, then you might want to check out Permanent Obscurity: Or A Cautionary Tale of Two Girls & Their Misadventures with Drugs, Pornography and Death by Richard Perez. Truly a wickedly funny and unconventional novel, it mostly tells the story of two bungling nitwits trying to get their act together while launching their fetish film career. The book is about a lot more, actually, a story of what it might be like to be young and lost in America (although the story is set during the dark Bush Years). Dolores, the main character, like many young people is deep in debt from student loans, largely unemployable, and an unacknowledged weed addict. Both she and Serena, her best friend, seem to bounce around like pinballs in this roller coaster of a novel, broken into three "episodes" or parts.
It's Serena who's the leader in this book, with Dolores telling the story, and mostly the book is about their bickering, babbling "odd-girls out" relationship -- from wanting to make an impression in the arts to making due with pornography or fetish work. The subplot threads entwining with the central theme reference boyfriends: Raymond for Dolores, "Baby" for Serena. But these boyfriends are just peripheral, and it's the central relationship of these two women that holds this book together; the give-and-take friction between them is engaging, even if you don't really feel sympathy for them in the beginning.
Part One introduces us these young ladies and their sordid Downtown world of casual street drugs and "female domination" Craigslist ads. Both of these women are reckless, but since Dolores is telling the story, she seems the most normal. Serena, on the other hand, is the femme fatale of this "noir" comedy and she seems to harm everyone she comes in contact with. It's Serena who takes out the ads on Craigslist, trolling for hapless masochists who might contribute to her way of life, which largely revolves around "yeyo" or coke. A failed singer in a string of bands, she's constantly scheming for ways to gain control of her floundering career without having to go the 9-to-5 route. Dolores, a photographer of some promise, seems equally lost, unable to gain a toehold in her field, and so she settles for temp jobs and smoking weed until she can figure things out.
Part Two, called "Strange Hungers," plunges the two ladies headlong down the rabbit hole, following Serena's disastrous attempt to make a "femdom" movie with gangsters, and Dolores being terminated from her job. The two scheme and bicker and literally arm themselves for the ordeal they're about to face: making a perverted movie to pay back drug dealers who are quickly closing in. Insecurity abounds and neither Dolores nor Serena know what they're doing, so they place yet another ad on Craigslist for a writer who might provide a properly perverted and filmable scenario. The writer character, Dick, as it turns out, provides not only the script for their femdom movie, but the meaning behind the entire novel's title.
Part Three: "No Man's Land" -- by far the best part of the book -- follows the fallout of the disastrous porno shoot, as Dolores and Serena flee into New Jersey to dispose of some unfortunate evidence (I can't be specific without giving away a few surprises). For this, Serena's part-time boyfriend, Baby, appears as the getaway driver, replaying an earlier role he filled in the book. From here things just get progressively worse for the characters, and it includes drug dealers and shootouts and, climatically, a high-speed police chase.
Since this is a "cautionary tale," both women are caught finally and must do penance for their antisocial behavior. The ending finds our narrator, Dolores, all alone contemplating her place in the world and showing remorse and true empathy for the first time: "And, at night, I think of all the loneliness and sadness in the world and shake my head and even cry." (p.448)
Permanent Obscurity: Or A Cautionary Tale of Two Girls & Their Misadventures with Drugs, Pornography and Death by Richard Perez.
