DEATH & DOLLY PARTON
by Daniel Webb
I think most people agree, death is real shitty. And the longer you live, the more death you see, a bleak reminder that you’d better keep living or else you’re gonna die. Death surrounds us, especially now thanks to the internet where you can watch people dying every day, unsolicited and typically without warning, for free! Like and subscribe!
None of us can escape death unless you’re one of those satanic lizardly billionaires, the evil kind that somehow never die. Evil people never die when they should. I mean, I’m not happy Dick Cheney is dead, but I am glad I can finally stop fantasizing about it. My favorite online reaction to Dolly’s passing is that the wrong old people are dying. I’m sure when the wrong 80-year-old dies it really devastates someone’s Kalshi portfolio. Life isn’t fair.
But losing Dolly Parton seems soulfully unfair, for us and for her.
When you lose pillars in your family, or icons like Dolly Parton, it really wallops the system. It’s a sobering nod to the raw, inescapable precipice we’re all living on. And this isn’t news to me, by the age of 30 I’d been to more than 30 funerals, at least that’s when I stopped counting. Funerals can really be fun if you lean into them, especially the food and the fashions. Those are the only reasons I show up to a memorial service anymore, to eat for free and to be a bitch about what other people are wearing.
The death of Dolly Parton was a shocking mile marker, a stark witness to the passage of time.
By the time I was born in 1982, Dolly was already goated, an icon, an enigmatic caricature conjured by one name alone. Dolly was like the Queen of England or Angelyne, a singular reference lasting generations. For decades, if you mentioned the Queen, Aretha, or Dolly, from grandma to grandson, everyone knew exactly who you were talking about. Dolly arrived as a one-name mythos, her boobs and wigs well-woven into the lore.
Everyone has a different path to finding god, and by god I do mean Dolly Parton.
My Dolly-gay-awakening was her movie Straight Talk, where Dolly plays Flat River dance instructor turned big city radio-love-doctor-superstar. “Just like me!” I thought. Even as a 10-year-old, I knew if I worked hard enough, I could be a perky blonde with a great rack who monetizes her talent for talking endlessly. I was hooked forever.
I saw Dolly Parton live in concert only once, in beautiful Austin, Texas.
Living in Austin, you see country megastars by default, Willie Nelson, Hal Ketchum, Lyle Lovett, and the legendary Loretta Lynn. I still have a clump of Loretta Lynn’s used tissues that I snatched after her show, which I’m obviously saving for the day when Jurassic-Park-like technology becomes a scientific reality. Cha-ching!
But seeing Dolly in concert felt extra special.
I went to the Dolly show with my queerish chosen family. Our foursome had everything, sequins and animal prints, cowboy hats and glue-on mustaches. My friend Kerri wore a bump-it in her hair to mark the occasion. I was in full drag, a garish Dolly interpretation in a bubblegum-pink empire dress, full beard, and an ass-length platinum blonde wig. I opted for cowboy boots instead of heels in case I had to run for my life. While a Dolly concert was certainly a safe space, we were still in Texas, where being a man in a dress can be harmful to your health. Once assembled, we looked less like Dolly fans and more like the cast of Married with Children.
The concert was in a basketball arena, I was one of 17,000 tiny heads in a sea of Jolenes screaming for our queen. It was a Dolly Christmas Concert, a mix of her hits with some Christmas classics, a show for everyone but mostly a show for queer neurodivergents who fetishize Christmas decor.
I was mistakenly led to the wrong seat by an octogenarian usherette, but I had too many beers in my hands to wriggle my ticket out of my purse to doublecheck, so I just sat my ass down in the wrong seat, which was smack in the middle of a group of denim-clad Lesbian Christians. You can easily spot Lesbian Christians by their giant silver James Avery crucifix necklaces resting low on their dutifully tucked-in shirts. When I, a 6-foot-4 bearded man in a bubblegum-pink empire dress and Temu Paris Hilton wig plonked myself amongst the Lesbian Christians, their leader turned to me, side-eyed my flat-ironed synthetic hair and sneered, “I certainly wouldn’t have worn straight hair to a Dolly show.”
A beautiful read, in true Texas form, dominating yet polite, succinct and laced with shade. She wasn’t wrong.
I sank a little in my seat and inhaled my many beers.
The lights dimmed. I can remember the energy in the room when Dolly Parton walked onstage, seeing thousands of fans jump to their feet, an explosion of screaming smiles. It was like going to somebody’s birthday party and actually wanting to be there, when you genuinely want to celebrate someone other than yourself. I know I just lost some of you.
Dolly was a dazzling singing bullet, skipping and sparkling all over the stage, her twangy angelic voice shooting across the stadium like a sweet ringing bell. She played many bejeweled instruments, each one flickering a thousand points of light around us, Dolly was a mirrorball reflecting an eternal musical love.
My grandparents loved Dolly Parton. They loved old country western music and were dedicated watchers of the Grand Ole Opry. My grandparents were sugar sweet, loving old folk that still smelled like cigarettes decades after they’d quit smoking, the kind of people that had two flavors of ice cream in their freezer at all times. They were a safe haven of television and naps, and cereal for dinner. Losing my grandparents was hard. Losing immortals can physically break your heart. I felt my grandparents in that moment, standing with thousands of people singing in an arena covered with zillions of dancing prisms, all shining from one very special sparkling person.
Once I was lucky enough to take a VIP tour of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s vault. We saw Stevie Nicks’ cape, Mama Cass’ muumuu, and Elvis’ army uniform, all within sniffing distance, my dead grandmother would’ve died all over again. Then the tour guide held up Dolly Parton’s miniature rhinestone Dolly-sized saxophone, I gasped. It had glittering diamonds flashing all over it, and when I leaned in for a closer look, I could still see and smell Dolly’s pink sparkle lipstick shimmering on the mouthpiece. I took an uncomfortably long breath, treasuring the rosy wax aroma.
Since this was a Christmas concert, Dolly had a lot of Jesus-talk with multiple moments of prayer, the Lesbian Christians being the fastest to clasp their hands and lower their heads. I bowed my head in fake prayer every time Dolly told us to, mostly for fear of another searing dig from the leader of the LCs.
A Dolly Parton show was the gayest thing I’ve ever seen, prayer breaks included. Her whole audience showed up in some form of Dolly-drag, but what looked great on Dolly could look tragic on others. Some of the disco era Dollys in blonde afros were serving Ursula the Sea Witch rather than country singing sensation. I never knew blonde wigs came in that many shapes and sizes until I went to a Dolly concert. It should be studied how much Dolly’s touring roadshow impacted the local wig economies.
Dolly sang us a hundred hits and then there was an intermission. You couldn’t imagine she had any more songs, but sure enough after surviving the men's room in my pink empire dress and locating my correct seat with my friends, Dolly was already back onstage dishing out more Ozarkian charm. She was 70 and radiating, I was 30-something and exhausted. Full drag in cowboy boots is far less comfortable when you’re 6-foot-4, loaded with beers, and smashed into a stadium seat. But it didn’t matter, I was in Dolly’s house.
Dolly in concert was everything we needed, she was church, she was country, she was goddamn Santa Claus. She was a cultural mishmash of rhinestoned unity, an all-are-welcome revival where Lesbian Christians and an atheist bearded drag queen gargoyle could sit together and fake pray in harmony. It even snowed on the stage, or maybe I was just drunk.
From my seat in the rafters, Dolly Parton was the littlest, brightest diamond, ping-ponging from one side of the stage to the other, her sweet voice both tiny and mighty all at once, her every move reflecting a million Swarovski prisms that bounced around the arena like faeries. She was a literal angel among us, a peaceful gleaming panacea for the rough world that enveloped us. I don’t know if I felt god that night, but I definitely felt gay. I wish it could’ve lasted forever.
Daniel Webb is an internationally banned writer, comedian, musician, and queer.
You think some things will last forever, like your parents, The Simpsons, or democracy, they’ll always be around ‘cause they’ve always been around. There are lots of things I wish were everlasting: puppies, ice cream, rainbows, sex. Well not sex let’s be honest, at some point everybody’s knees need a breather. But there are people and moments in this life that we take for granted, and I think most of us assumed Dolly Parton would live forever.
I thought I was immortal too, until I turned 44 and was brought to my knees by a popcorn kernel lodged into my gums. A pile of splintered and bloody toothpicks later, while googling nearby free-clinics for a dentist who performs kernel extraction, I was struck by the cold reality that one day, I was going to die. I’ve always known this and been slightly obsessed about it, my hero is cartoonist Charles Addams, most of my clothes are black, my favorite movies are Death Becomes Her, The Nightmare Before Christmas, & Clue, all of which involve death and seem to infer death is wacky and even fun.