Comissioned and published by Rosie’s Disobedient Press
as part of Sleeper
2021
Included in Coronau by Owain Train McGilvary
Published by Lunchtime Gallery
2025
Dolly Parton needs no introduction. She’s one of music’s best-loved icons. Almost everyone could recite the lines to Jolene if asked, but her iconic status was not secured solely by the music with only two of her songs having made the top 40’s in the UK. That’s why she makes for such great drag.
Cassandra’s was a dingy little ‘gay’ bar on a not so busy street on the outskirts of the town. Gay in inverted commas because it didn’t label itself such in the beginning. It was known to be accepting and so the influx of homosexuals and queers deterred the other punters who instead chose to drink elsewhere.
The bar was down a small flight of stairs, hovering somewhere between the ground floor and basement. It had those small horizontal windows which looked out at exactly the same level as the pavement. The stomping feet of passers-by and the close-knit group of those huddled outside for a ciggy after the smoking ban had come in was all that was visible through the frosted glass. There was a small rainbow flag window sticker on the inside of the front door. No bigger than a bank card, it’s corners curling in on itself and colours fading after many years of service. It has always looked like that: as if someone had stuck it there in 1978 the moment the rainbow flag was popularised as a symbol of gay pride. It would be another 20 years until I frequented the bar.
The first Friday of every month was drag night and Cassandra’s had its own icon. Darren did his first performance at a contest set up by the owner of the bar, who was in fact called Steph, in order to celebrate some of the regulars who had begun to turn up in drag most weekends. Steph had a nickname, which was Cassandra, which in turn became the namesake for the bar. I don’t know the ancestry of the nickname, but my guess is that it was on account of her ability to predict any forthcoming tragedy i.e. election results, tax increases, the smoking ban and the eventual bar closure shortly after the cigarette ban.
Darren’s performance was a little ropey, but was by far the best. It included a mediocre execution of a lip-sync to one of Dolly’s lesser known hits on the first album ‘Hello, I’m Dolly’. At the time, Darren was studying for an apprenticeship in motor- mechanics at the local college which was where we met. Darren was a car enthusiast, not a boy racer. He says that cars were his first love and Dolly Parton was his second. He told me he knew he was gay way before he became a fan of Dolly Parton, due an incident in the boys toilets at school when he was about nine. Darren had been permitted to go to the toilet the middle of a maths lesson, he took down the empty corridors, rubber soles squeaking on the vinyl floor tiles. There was something illicit in leaving the classroom. Darren said when he got to the toilet a boy from two years above stood in front of the urinals masturbating. The boy had his back to the door so hadn't noticed Darren enter. All Darren could see was his hunched shoulders, one arm reaching down and the other gripping the cracked white ceramic of the urinal. After one guttural outlets of air Darren turned, cheeks red, and returned immediately to class without relieving himself. He said that then it felt like something even more illicit and exciting. The memory of this returned to him often when he himself reached puberty.
A few years later he was watching TV in the front room. There was nothing much on but Top of the Pops 2 which was showing a rerun of Dolly Parton’s 1975 performance of ‘Jolene’. The song stuck in his head, along with her look: a canary yellow dress, v-neck dipping down her chest, long blonde hair almost the same colour. It was a whole different kind of awakening. It sparked something in him before he came to know about the other songs or the personal dramas or her statements in support of her gay fans, and way before any conspiracies around Dolly’s own sexuality as well. The drag act was not only a way to be closer to her, she also let him be parts of himself that he couldn’t express in any other way. He has a similar relationship with his car too. He knew what he was doing and he did it well.
He talks about you in his sleep And there's nothing I can do to keep Fromcrying when he calls your name
Jolene
Jolene
She would get ready every Friday in a grubby little room at the back of the bar. Her blonde wig and brilliant white diamanté dress looked out of place against the discoloured decor of what was previously storage for surplus chairs. Matted carpet from years of overuse with the occasional hole from hot fag ash. Stale cigarette smoke and mildew were battling it out for the most malodorous scent in the room. The fags can of course be attributed to many years of smoking inside and the mildew from the bars position sort of below ground level. A replica Tiffany lamp with an old silk scarf draped over the top was all that lit the room. Cassandra’s was small and felt like being in someone's living room. The familiarity between the regulars contributed to that too.
The men’s toilets were a cruising spot. There would be the odd unsuspecting first timer who would appear from the toilets looking flustered, much to the amusement of his friends who had previously been accustomed. There were never many dykes that came, just the odd one or two. The way Darren explained it to me once was ‘my car is to me, what your cocks are to you’ and by that he meant my dildos. That was the closest equivalent he could think of, the way I would obsess over their colours, shapes, textures and materials. How they felt to handle I suppose. I used to uncouple each from the metal o-ring on the harness and line them up side by side on a cabinet in my bedroom. A trophy wall as he once called it.
One of the things that defined Cassandra’s as a bar was that it served cocktails. There were only three on the menu but each was a different colour of luminescent. Friday would be the only night of the week Darren would drink. A stubby glass of vodka-and-lime-no-ice was the order. He would usually get a lift home with one of the regulars whose hand would miss the gear stick to find Darren’s knee at least once during the 15 minute journey. Friday was for having a drink, Saturday was for cleaning the car and Sunday was for showing it off. A ritual of sorts which allowed Darren to transcend from one realm into the next.
The car enthusiasts would meet up in the carpark of the local supermarket, the overflow which was rarely used apart from as a place for teenagers to race stolen trollies and the occasional dogging spot. I discovered this when I was one of the teenagers racing trollies, in that purgatory stage of adolescence where there is nowhere to go. After some number of swigs from a plastic bottle of cider shared between three, I propelled myself across the expanse of tarmac and I crashed my trolly into a parked car inside which there were people having sex. The whole scene was embarrassing for both parties, we’d both assumed the car park was our patch. When the car enthusiasts would descended they would all park in a circle, facing in, full beams and engines on. The frequent revving of which could be heard for a 1/4 mile radius. Lowered sills and blacked out windows. A two-toned paint job polished to perfection. Flaunting neon lights of total pleasure. Drivers would take it in turn to enter the circle to show off their body work and the size of their exhaust. From the privacy of the car Darren’s favourite joke to make was ‘nice pipe’.
On the back of Darren’s car were two stickers. The one on the rear windscreen declared ‘This girl loves drag racing’ in a rounded script that kicked and flicked. And the one on the bumper read ‘If you’re going to ride my ass at least pull my hair’. He never said very much, but he wasn’t ashamed either.
Iunderstand when you’re not feeling well
If there’s something on your mind I always can tell
I’m there when you need me and you’re there when I need you Love is worth living when you love like we do
If there’s something on your mind I always can tell
I’m there when you need me and you’re there when I need you Love is worth living when you love like we do
He made sure he kept up with the latest modifications and for those lacking the cash there were cheap tricks used to achieve them. For a while the trend was tinting the rear lights which was a case of having to replace the cover. Soon someone had figured out that you could achieve a similar effect by stretching a pair of black nylon tights over the existing plastic. Most boys would had their mum pick them up a pair with the weekly big shop to save from themselves from embarrassment. Darren just picked up a pair when he was replacing his flesh tone tights for a performance that Friday night.
At work he’d wear stiff leather boots with steel toe-caps and the same old dirty blue overalls which concealed his smooth hairless limbs. He was quiet and that was how he got on. He’d had to move from his last job because he got too much nuisance from the other mechanics. His current place don’t much mind and if anybody dared say anything Andy the manager, whose brother was gay, would have them stacking tyres for the rest of the week.
One time we’d popped in the shops leaving his car parked outside and came back out to find someone had keyed the word ‘bender’ into the passenger side door. The only thing he ever said about it was ‘its just a scratch’ but I know he spent the whole of the next day buffing it out because the next time he came to pick me up it was gone.
You’llfind her dressed to standard uniform
Cause she must dress in comfort for the job she must perform She has so many faces, she wears so many names
She goes so many places and she does so many things Cause she’s a working girl
Cause she must dress in comfort for the job she must perform She has so many faces, she wears so many names
She goes so many places and she does so many things Cause she’s a working girl
The week that Darren passed his apprenticeship coincided with Friday hosted its regular drag. It had taken 3 years but he was now fully qualified and in that time had perfected his act too. I remember seeing Darren disappear off into the dank little room, and when it was time, reemerge as Dolly Parton. He was now a low-key headline act and had expanded his repertoire. Darren/Dolly greeted the audience in smooth Tennessee drawl an octave higher than his usual tones which was received with hollering and wolf whistles. He had upgrading the outfits and a particular favourite of mine was a diamanté studded leather jumpsuit, reminiscent of the one worn by Dolly herself on a 1989 episode of Saturday Night Live, which I know he had watched online when dial up internet was a thing. The outfit was tight and black, it gripped his narrow hips and small waist. It had a tie front which drew the eye up an astounding imitation of Dolly’s ample bosom. The lapels and shoulders covered in studs. I loved the butchness of it. He loved the glamour.