Friend of function??

I want to use arrays (that are outside of a function) to be visible to a function. I understand that I must you global. But I was wondering is it possible to make it visible to only certain functions, similar to the 'friend' keyword in C (or C++ ?) ? The reason, is that I don't feel comfortable having globals, (I was brought up that way). Also, if you actually declare something global are there any disadvantages such as performance hits?