I got back to the Bethesda Fountain on Saturday, the day before I ended my New York vacation. This time, though, I wasn’t with my friend David.

This time, I was on a date.

Apparently Edward Albee was thinking of this particular date when he wrote this line in “The Zoo Story”: “Sometimes a person has to go a long way out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.”

Marc, my date, wasn’t a New Yorker. He lives in Louisiana as well, in New Orleans, just two hours down the interstate from me. We were both visiting New York (Funny, no? You travel up the East Coast and end up getting moony over a guy who lives a car ride from you every other week of your life. Go figure.), and a Thursday lunch date and evening hang-out had made a second date something of a necessity, and that second date, which began early with breakfast at a nice little place at Union Square, had drifted by mid-afternoon to Central Park and the Bethesda Fountain.

The fountain was my idea.

For me, it was a Grand Symbolic Gesture – the arrival of something new springing up on the heels of something broken, being marked at a place that commemorates healing and rejuvenation, and as Grand Symbolic Gestures go in my life, this one was cut down to size by the impossible to control: rain.

Lots of rain.

Marc and I were stuck under the Terrace for almost an hour, listening to the rain (and a really great family band with a killer way around vocal harmonies), talking, getting to know each other. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon, minus the soggy shirts and hoodies.

Do I like Marc? Very much. Have I already mapped out an extensive future that includes Marc, a dog or two, maybe an adopted kid and arguments over who should be taking out the trash? Sure, it’s an inevitability with me, I have a tendency to follow a moment through all its possible conclusions, tracing a finger along the line this possibility makes across the map that is my life, seeing what destinations this road could take me to. And Marc smacks of possibility, in the best of all possible ways.

And isn’t that what we’re fighting for? Not marriage so much (although yes, we are fighting for marriage, we’re fighting for the paper and the rights and the name and the institution) but we’re really, when it comes down to it, fighting for possibility, for our lives to include, from the moment we’re born, the possibility of marriage as one of the many possibilities we can dream forward.

And not just marriage. The possibility of a welcoming house of faith. The possibility of a job we won’t lose because we’re gay. The possibility of a family we can create with our partner. Not being the victim of violence. Not being rejected by our parents. Not being bullied in school. An endless list of possibilities that we’ve somehow lived without.

When that is missing, when the hope is missing, the road that branches, the choice that can be made, our lives are lessened. And when possibility springs up in one place – when a interesting guy sitting next to you under the Terrace near the Bethesda Fountain leans over and kisses you on the cheek unexpectedly and laughs this distinctive chuckle that sounds one part mischief, one part contentedness – you suddenly want that possibility everywhere else. It fuels the fight.

Tomorrow, I’m driving to New Orleans to spend the day with Marc. I’m walking this road of possibility and seeing where it takes me. I’ll be thinking about the folks in Washington as the National Equality March, because regardless of what you think of the March, there’s going to be a lot of hopefulness there, people aching to find a little possibility to hang on to, and I hope they find it. And I’ll be thinking about everyone who finally owns who they are on National Coming Out Day (be brave, be steadfast, it’s not easy but it’s worth it!)

And I’ll be thinking about my friends Stan and Bruce, who after being together for 19 and a half years, went to Connecticut this weekend and got married. (God bless your union, may you have 20 more years, 40 more, infinite blessings and joys!)

Maybe I’m at the start of my 19 and a half years. Maybe not. Either way, I am filled with what’s possible, and it’s a wonderful feeling. The Angel Bethesda touched a foot on the Earth and a healing fountain sprang up. Marc kissed me on the cheek while waiting out the rain, and the wounds I’d been nursing were healed a bit as well.

The world is a wide open space. It’s ours. Let’s shape the most beautiful place we can.