The Dolly thread:
It’s weird she’s in the news all the time now. Ten, twenty years ago, I’d get weird looks any time I started talking about Dolly. I’m not saying I loved her before the rest of you caught on. I’m glad y’all caught on. (But I did love her first.)

When we moved to Amarillo when I was six, she was still a big deal on country radio. At least they’d play Tennessee Homesick Blues and Save the Last Dance in between Lee fucking Greenwood.

I wasn’t a very bright kid. I assumed they had to come in to a radio station in Nashville to sing their songs. I also assumed the Judds and Dolly Parton were really good friends. Of course they would be because that’s who I liked.

And I fucked loved Dolly. Roy McGee who wore jeans in the summer told me a joke, “what do you call being trapped in a locker with Dolly Parton?”
-“a booby trap.”
I punched him for it. He was weird little fucker though so maybe mixed motives on the punch.

It was fine. I got sent home. But when the teacher called my house, she talked to my grandma’s mentally disabled cousin she cared for and he never told because he never tattled.

ANYWAY: 1984, great year to start up a solid Dolly obsession. 9 to 5 was on HBO and my grandma let us watch it all summer. She thought it was great we started calling my mom’s boyfriends “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigots.”

Then Rhinestone came out. Haven’t heard of it? It’s okay. I’m glad y’all missed it because it basically went straight to the dollar theater. And my grandma was a terrible babysitter, who’d drop us off at the dollar theater to go play bridge.

We’d sneak two of us in, pretending we got lost on the way to the bathroom or just mash one of us in with one of those 5-kid families, spend the savings on a coke to share and stay there all day watching movies. That summer, it was all Rhinestone.

I realize now there’s a typo up there where there’s a fucked instead of fucking and it feels very disrespectful to Dolly. I’m sorry.

Rhinestone, in case you missed one of the great cinematic stories of our time, is about a country singer named Jake (why? Why was anything in this movie) who makes a bet with this sleazy nightclub owner to get out of her contract.

She bets she can make anyone a country star. Which, doesn’t say much for country now that I think about it. Probably some “music of the people” sort of thing. Anyway. The nightclub dude picks Rocky Balboa who’s working as a cabbie for some reason.

(Hold on. I have to feed my dog.)

Where were we. Oh. Rhinestone. So if Jake loses the bet, she has to keep playing the shitty nightclub AND fuck the sleazeball owner. STAKES ARE HIGH. So she takes Rocky back home to the holler, fish out of NY hilarity ensues. Dolly sings a few songs. I was fucking all in.

In a strangely aware moment, I tried to convince my brother he wanted to be Dolly for Halloween. I think he went with wounded soldier guy. Loser.

When sisters went to live with our dad, grandma tried to cheer me up with a Dolly tape. I played that tape so much I can tell you the songs in order. A side:
Jolene
I'm a Drifter
My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy
In the Ghetto
She Never Met A Man
Coat of Many Colors
I Will Always Love U

B side:
Two Doors Down
Love Is Like a Butterfly
Applejack
The Bargain Store
Me And Little Andy
The Seeker
Heartbreaker

Somehow, in my 7yr old brain, Dolly became linked to my sisters. She was our thing.

I had to go without Dolly for years because we rejoined the cult and outside music wasn’t allowed. I fucking missed her like I missed my sisters. When the house watched best little whorehouse, the one approved Dolly movie, I refused to watch. I didn’t want to taint her memory.

When my sisters came to live with us, the only thing we really still had in common was Dolly. And when we stopped in amarillo on the way to Switzerland, I remember my oldest sister barricading herself in the closet to record that Dolly tape from one tape recorder to another.

Then I got back for good, sisters off my with my dad again. But my grandma was still happy to feed my Dolly obsession.

She bought me any checkout line magazine if Dolly was on it, including tabloids. She rented Steel Magbolias for me. Dropped me off at the dollar theater to see straight talk. Bought me the soundtrack.

And I decided to write Dolly a letter. I addressed it to “Dolly Parton, Nashville, TN.” I told her about my sisters and how we all loved her. Blah blah blah. I was 15 and had no concept of fame or how big the world is.

While I was waiting to hear back, I found her biography at the library. My parents shipped me off to Episcopalian summer camp with my cousin where I spend the entire two weeks reading her bio behind the kitchen cabin.

And I felt pretty dumb because I should’ve mailed the letter to Sevierville, TN.

But lo and behold, a couple days after I got home, a couple days of asking the mailman if he was absolutely sure he didn’t have anything for me, he rang the doorbell and handed me the greatest treasure I’ve ever lost, a postcard from Dolly.

It was a picture of her, and the back said “I will always love you, love, Dolly.” A normal kid might’ve been satisfied with that. And I was. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just mean that I kept writing her. She became my diary, my confidant.

I think because I’d recently stopped praying and had no one else to talk to, I kept sending her letters. Sometimes two a day. I wasn’t upset she didn’t write back. I knew she was busy.

Then two things happened. My stepdad, who was a dick, and thought my obsession with Dolly was CAUSE FOR CONCERN REGARDING LAUREN MIGHT BE A LESBO, told me the postcards were mass-stamped in her handwriting and there was no way dolly had read my letters.

And grandma dropped us off at the dollar theater to watch the Bodyguard. Now there’s the Whitney version of I will always love you in the bodyguard. But I barely noticed.

What I caught was—weird stalkers send celebrities long personal letters and get put on a list. And I was fucking terrified, for years, I mean well into my 20s that I’d made it onto some Dolly stalking list.

All this to say, please order my book, I may need the cash for a stalking defense at some point in the future. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623343/leaving-isnt-the-hardest-thing-by-lauren-hough/