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.

According to Pink News, The Bisexual Index says that the B in LGBT is often silent.

Marcus Morgan, coordinator of the Bisexual Index told Pink News:

“Coming out as bisexual is harder for many people – because of these sort of attitudes towards the validity of bisexuality, the lack of information for bisexuals and the assumptions that get made, it’s like the closet door faces uphill.”

National Coming Out Day is October 12.

The badges can be downloaded here.

Last Monday, David and I went to Musical Mondays at Splash in New York.

(for other non-New Yorkers like me, Musical Mondays is a simple construct. A gay bar, a ton of screens, a nonstop playlist of clips from musicals and guys like me who love musical theatre.)

It was, on his part, a masterstroke of an idea. I’m an old-school show queen (even though I hate that moniker), and the three-hour parade of clips from Tony Award broadcasts, concerts and move musicals hit my musical theatre sweet spot, the place in that little corner of my heart that sprouts feather boas and sequins at the sound of Kander and Ebb vamp.

It was fun. We had a few beers, we laughed, we sang along to the tunes we loved (“And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going.” Jennifer Holliday. Tony Awards telecast. Guilty.) and we particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm of one young guy at a table near us.

He was maybe 22, thin and adorable in a Spider Man t-shirt, and he knew every word of every song from every show they played. Sure, you’d expect the kid to know stuff from Wicked, but when he rocked every word and even aped Streisand’s gestures for “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from the Funny Girl film, we both couldn’t help but laughing in amazement.

“It must be genetic,” David said. “He must have been born with all those songs in him.”

Lucky him. I had to spend hours listening to every cast recording I could get my little hot hands on, renting every movie musical under the sun – even Mame, yep, suffered through that, and I even sat the whole film of A Little Night Music – just to get my fairly commendable grasp on the musical theatre canon.

Not that I’m bitter.

What I loved about that kid was his utter completeness, and that’s really the only way to describe it. He was so complete, unafraid of every song aching to burst from his heart, and he didn’t care if it was a showtune, he didn’t care if that made him a “silly queer” or a “faggot” or whatever epithet you could throw at him, he reveled in the song because the song was something he loved, something he embraced, something that made him… him.

National Coming Out Day is just a few days away, and that kid got me thinking about what it means to own who you are and how important it is for those of us who can, without repercussion, come out, be public, speak our truth in a way that matters.

So often, coming out stories are painted in painful strokes, they’re cautionary tales, they’re rife with rejection, argument, abandonment, isolation. Especially where I’m from, in the South, in less forgiving places than New York City, coming out is a Goliath, an Everest, a source of fear, anxiety.

I didn’t have that story. My coming out was, well, wonderful. At every turn, at every pronouncement, I was greeted with acceptance, support, love. My father only had one question for me when I told him I was gay.

“Does this make you happy? Because if it makes you happy, then we support you. Because your happiness is all that matters.”

I feel that I’ve spent every day since paying forward that gift, being out in the classroom, being out at work, writing and producing shows about the gay experience in my little Louisiana town and now writing here, writing this: paying forward the gift of being loved unconditionally for who I am.

It’s our duty, when we can, to sing that song. To let it flood out of us when we’ve been blessed with the gift of knowing the words.

Because we are the difference between that kid singing showtunes at Splash on Musical Mondays and a kid contemplating suicide in his Mississippi bedroom because he’s afraid of what his family will say when they find out he’s gay. Our public lives are a testament to the joy of coming out, of opening yourself to the truth, of feeling at home in your own skin, of being complete.

So speak your truth. You never know who’s listening.

National Coming Out Day is Oct. 11, and it will be marked worldwide with a series of events — demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, lobbying pushes.

National Coming Out Day, not coincidentally, falls on the day of the National Equality March, when GLBT activists will come out, come out to the National Mall to demand “equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.”

But the majority of GLBT people in the United States will not be marching on Washington. A majority of GLBTs will not be coming out to America from the Capitol, but coming out in smaller ways, more subtle ways — and possibly not even recognizing the significance of their actions.

Even those of us who have been out for decades still come out on a daily basis to acquaintances or long-lost friends, to distant relatives or new co-workers, to new neighbors and sometimes strangers.

Just the other day, I came out 16 times.

The first pronouncement of my sexual orientation was an awkward reply to my new gynecologist, who had wanted to know the answer to, “Are you engaging in intercourse?”

“Um, well, not the straight kind,” I clumsily answered.

He just made a note on his scratch pad and nodded matter-of-factly like, yeah, OK, a member of the low-maintenance club.

But I came out to him, and study after study shows that these interactions, however, small, have an impact.

Later that day, back home from the doc, I set about to accomplish the agonizing task of trying to get a stable Internet connection after installing the buggy new Snow Leopard operating system on my MacBook.

I made 15 telephone calls to the technical support division of my Internet service provider, and each technician asked me the standard, “What is your relationship to the account holder?”

The account is in my partner’s name, and I could have saved time by pretending to be her, but I once pretended to be her when renting “Spice World” and she got irked.

So I came out to each and every technician as I answered, “She’s my partner” and “She’s my girlfriend.”

Sometimes the technicians repeated the statement for verification. Sometimes they responded with an “OK” and sometimes “Thank you.” At no time did I get attitude, though the technicians did get touchy when they failed to resolve my computer challenges.

Did the technicians think twice about my answers? I can’t say, but at least they had to think once about them, and doesn’t that illustrate the power of GLBTs coming out, living out and celebrating National Coming Out Day?

Many of us have had big coming-out moments — the talk with the parents, the full-disclosure to best friends, the this-isn’t-working confession to the boyfriend or girlfriend, the first “I’m gay and I’m proud” march in a pride parade.

Such moments, we might even say occasions, are profound, meaningful, likely life-changing happenings, but the small outings have such impact too, the small outings are the ones in which we say, “Yep, I’m gay” or “He’s my guy” or “I like a girl.”

Looking ahead to National Coming Out Day, I see that I have a record to break: I’m going for a personal best and planning to come out to 17 people that day, though I’m hoping it won’t be to 16 cable company customer service representatives and another doctor.

So, what’s your record? And can you break it?

From the release:

Equality Across America, the new grassroots network calling for Federal action to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, has moved forward with plans for a massive national day of action on Sunday, October 11, 2009. Major national LGBT organizations including the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) have endorsed the march as have local and state grassroots organizations like Join the Impact Chicago, One Struggle One Fight and Freedom Democrats of Miami-Dade.

March organizers are also working on actions in all 50 states and calling on all who support our community to call their legislative leaders to press for change. But, more troublingly:

The exact route of march is still being negotiated with the DC authorities.

The march is only two months away. The route isn’t set yet?

I love big gay gatherings, marches, celebrations, protests. I love the energy that rises from them, the sense of committment to our cause, the feeling that we are not alone. But this march still feels rather ad-hoc to me. And I worry that thousands of people may show up without finding toilet facilities, or security, or organization.

And that would look very bad.

Then again, overproduction of marches, with attendant parties, corporate sponsorships and VIP tents sometimes make gay gatherings feel less like a grassroots, political enterprise and more like a commercial one.

Either way, my partner Jenny and I are going. And I met a bunch of women at Mich Fest who are going, too.

But how about you? Will you go? Do you think it’s a good idea? A terrible one? And what are the possible outcomes?