It was bound to happen — only a matter of time before someone thought to exploit kink culture and the BDSM underground as a source of comedy, and in Permanent Obscurity, Richard Perez manages to do this. Even with the dark subtitle of this book (and the mention of porn and death), even as everything goes to hell in a handbasket with these two women, you expect to hear a laughtrack. In some ways, Dolores and Serena, the primary characters of this story, are like Lucy and Ethel from the old I Love Lucy show. Imagine Lucy as a 22 year old, pot-smoking, downtown dwelling wannabe artist and you have the narrator, the overly dramatic Dolores, who spins this tale from prison where she and her “ex-best friend,” Serena, have been incarcerated for kinky shenanigans gone ridiculously overboard.

Here’s how Dolores tells it: the two meet as refugee downtowners. Serena is a performer in a band and Dolores is a photographer. Both are typical young people with a creative edge who do their best to dodge the normal or straight 9-to-5 life and opt to live by their wits, which in the so-called “real world” is asking for trouble. After a disastrous exhibit of her photographs, Dolores tries to go straight with a temp job (at MTV, of all places); while Serena, the more adventurous of the two, is taking out Craigslist ads as a dominatrix. It’s when they meet a kinky magazine publisher that a seed is planted; Serena has an opportunity to allow her dominatrix personality to take center stage while Dolores gets to photograph her. Along the way, the girls overindulge in partying, spiraling off into debt to dealers who soon start popping up like angry mushrooms. The opportunity to pay back some of the debt arises as Serena’s fetish modeling career starts to bloom. She’s already made a few kinky movies, and the idea of making one herself, of being “in full control,” seems to follow naturally. The relationship between Dolores and Serena — their constant bickering, and banter (incredibly foul-mouthed as it is) — is what makes for some great situation comedy, finally leading up to their first real production. And, even when things go wrong then — seriously wrong — it all seems to go from dark to screwball comedy in a heartbeat. Watch Lucy and Ethel get high and botch their own dominatrix movie, watch Lucy and Ethel try to dump the sad sack evidence. The author, Richard Perez, exploits every situation leading up to the event — then every situation leading out of it — milking every opportunity for farce or slapstick. From dropping a corpse down a steep flight of stairs and watching it go thump-thump-thump-thump-BOOM!, to dropping a loaded Smith & Wesson, 38. Caliber revolver at every critical opportunity. These two are not Thelma & Louise, but fumbling, stumbling sitcom comediennes. The only real casualties of the book are the male characters who become comedy fodder in the presence of these tabloid-style “dangerous” women.

Book Review of Permanent Obscurity: Or A Cautionary Tale of Two Girls & Their Misadventures with Drugs, Pornography and Death by Dolores Santana (as told to Richard Perez)