I was fifteen, it was December My friend Kimmy and I were on a street in Hollywood when we should have been in school. We were being goofy kids, laughing about something, feeling happy just to be alive, despite everything, in a way only a kid can.
We were not dressed like you might imagineβI was wearing a long white T-shirt and white leggings and knockoff Kedsβbut I guess this was a corner , and a man slowed and asked how much we charged. I was terrified; I imagine she was too. Kimmy, whose mother had brought her from Mexico into California as an infant and then worked impossible hours at a manufacturing business downtown, was put into a holding cell.
It was a small precinct, and I could see her in there staring at me. It was literally the first time it occurred to me that my whiteness had benefits. Kimmy had committed a crime, whereas I had made a mistake. A white female cop brought me a can of Coke, which I sipped slowly, not looking up at Kimmy or anyone else.
Having my whole life ahead of me was far too abstract. I never saw Kimmy again. Dolly Parton often tells a humorous story of being mistaken for a sex worker when she was on her first trip to New York City with her childhood friend Judy Ogle in the late s. Always up for an adventure, Dolly and Judy decided to check out one of the porn theaters on Forty-Second Street.
She uses different words for sex workers depending on the interview. Dolly thought the sex worker was beautiful, and still does. Dolly has told this story in more interviews and talk shows than I can sensibly list here. She told this story at her well-loved turned into a book! University of Tennessee commencement address in She included this anecdote in her Hallmark Channel movie Christmas of Many Colors , in which she herself plays the woman whose style she most admired.
