Friend comes to Ireland

My friend Elise and I were writing and sending letters out to each other and each of her letters was sprayed with her perfume which was pretty strong that I had to hold the letter away from me. It was that strong.  I always was surprised to get a letter from Elise because she really is not a writing person.  She prefers to make that connection verbally.  So she was telling me that she was going to start sending me tapes of her voice, which was a good idea and probably would be a lot quicker so I tried that, trying to fill both sides up.  It was definitely quicker than writing word by word especially when you just don't feel like writing.

It was around 1993 and my mother and her boyfriend (now husband) were going to come over to Derry.  So I was discussing Elise why doesn't she come on over for the holiday since she wasn't working and she wanted to come over to see me as well as what Derry was like.  She didn't have enough money only half the money of the fare. I remember having left over money in my bank back in New York.  I told my mother if she could close my account and use that money for the other half of Elise's ticket.

Before Elise came, I told aunt Maggy and her husband about Elise and her problem with her leg which was short than the other and one of her shoes has an extra sole on it to level her feet.

So Elise finally arrived and stayed with my aunt Maggy which was where I was staying at. After the first week and a half of Elise's stay, they noticed that Elise wanted to do this and do that. They knew I didn't have the money for going to places and they confronted me to make sure that Elise wasn't taking me for a ride so to speak because I didn't have the money to continuously go places.  She should be lucky that I paid half of her fare to get to Northern Ireland.

I have to laugh right now.  One day we were all eating dinner and Elise was asking for a steak knife. I looked at her knife and kind of giggled. I told her it was a steak knife and she wouldn't believe me so she asked Maggy if there was a steak knife. Maggy told her that "was" a steak knife. Elise kind of felt stupid and said  "Oh".

For some reason Elise all of a sudden started talking to me about children, meaning our children to be.  She also mentioned that she didn't want any of the children baptized. My mouth dropped.  Excuse me?  It was starting to become uncomfortable for me by her saying that.  So I said Whoa back up.

If there are children to be in this relationship (which deep down I seriously down because I had to talk to her about something) then I would prefer all my children to be baptized.  She kept arguing with me about its against her religion of getting baptized (because she is Jewish), so I kept throwing it back at her that it is against my religion of children not getting baptized. But she didn't know about my secret and I didn't tell her until the last day.

So it was Elise's last day, and I had to tell her something that could be shocking to her. That was the time I came out to her but wanted to remain friends. She was a bit confused and a little disturbed when she heard
that.  I told her take it or leave it.  I wasn't changing for anybody because they didn't want me to be the way I want to be.  So she accepted it.  "I was guessing at the time"