Continued…
To listen to my grandmother, meeting people online is scandalous. “Your cousin X went on one of them computers and her husband almost left her.” Good thing I don’t have a husband. My Pa wont let her have a computer. She thinks it’s because he’s jealous. I think it’s because she likes to rent chickens from Missouri.

She doesn’t buy them. She just rents them. Like through this Sally Struthers thing only they send her pictures of the birds instead of kids from Ethiopia. Instead of drawings she gets eggs. Once a month her chickens will lay her a few. She’s a sucker for anything you can get in the mail. Can you imagine her loose on the internet? Pa can. That’s why she doesn’t have a computer.

I thought I’d calm her down some before I left. “It’s not a guy, grams. It’s a girl I’m meeting,” and boy that just about did it. I’m 21 and have never – NEVER – brought a guy home. There are reasons for that. If you know my family, you know what those reasons are. But Grams doesn’t understand. She was married with children at my age and thinks I’ve gone the way-of-the-world.

She doesn’t say it but she thinks it. She worries over it. Like this. “You know, I heard a preacher say the other day that there was this new thing where women like women and their husbands let them. I did too hear it now!” She said the last bit like I didn’t believe it. Like a thing like that couldn’t possibly be true. And then, “Things like that’ll happen at the end of time.”

So anyway, the girl’s name’s Eliza and she’s from Germany. She moved to England last month. Is just settling in. Like me. Only not like me because she’s not afraid of anything and I’m afraid of everything. I met her on an expats forum back in June and I”m meeting her at The Phoenix tonight. For beer. I’ve never drank a beer in my life. And I have no idea how to get to this Phoenix place. I’ll probably have to ride a bus. Damn.

18 August 1998

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