Excited, edgy, we start driving long before dawn, under scatterings of stars that dodge swift clouds.   In the dark, over the pillow, we had whispered:  I can’t sleep either. – So, why don’t we go right now?  We leave Eugene for Portland at 3:30 a.m.  In these early months of 2004, a joke makes the rounds: All it takes to achieve gay marriage is a long wait in the cold rain with a thousand people.  That’s how it was in San Francisco, as we saw on TV.  Now Multnomah County, Oregon.  And Linn-Benton County too.  Aren’t they suddenly letting people marry in Corvallis?  And some town in New York State, we’ve heard, where the mayor just thought it was the right thing to do.  Then there’ll be the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision.  Little outbreaks of justice, of fed-up and high-time, of love. 

A chill wind whips up the Columbia Gorge.  But because only a few couples have arrived by 5:15 a.m., we can stand under a portico by the county building.  Suited up for the long wait and the March storms rather than the occasion, we look like pre-dawn ice-hockey fans who could really use that fabled “queer eye.”  No tuxes for the dykes or wedding-white for the guys; nary a veil or slip of lace in sight.  A valiant band of Multnomah County commissioners, wanting to do the right thing, began issuing gay-lesbian wedding licenses on Wednesday, March 3, 2004; today is Friday.  Are we joyful?  Or desperate?  Seizing the day?  Or grasping at straws? 

Behind us, four couples back, I spy my former therapist with her partner and a tall young man who, under his parka hood, has a banker or real-estate-broker look to him.  Their son, taking the day off to support his gray-haired moms.  My counselor, like me, seems glad and embarrassed to meet in this street scene, mufflered and gloved, far from her calm office.  We all hug.  I’d hug everyone: the gal with red spiked hair dropped off by a plumber’s van to hold a place in line until her sweetie parks and joins her; the frail man in a wheelchair, buffered from the wind by a sturdy umbrella, flanked by companion-dog and handsome, solicitous partner; the kids with polished piercings; the rest of us, (most of us) middle-aged. 

The fact is, there’s a feeling of refugees, shivering, that huddled look.  We left with what we had on our backs, people in dire straits say.  Under my wool coat, I have on a tasteful pants suit that travels well.  But we had no time to plan wedding garb or arrange for our friends to attend a ceremony.  Will there be a ceremony after we get the license?  What’s going to happen this morning?  Talking, talking in the last two days, Dianne and I decided for sure only last night that we would jump in today and do this.  Do what? Will the whole thing be brought to a crashing halt?  Can it be for real? 

On the two-hour ride up to Portland, keeping ourselves awake, we reviewed why two 1960s-70s rebels want to get married, anyway.  Put this in context again for me, would you, sweetheart?  For decades we ourselves made all the arguments against marriage:  Women as chattel throughout history; property-based mentalities expressed in monogamy and its almost inevitable infidelities. 

And our sorts of people find manifold ways to jump the broom, celebrate our commitment: on a mountaintop, wind blowing our hair, free with Mother Nature; on a pillow, looking deep in each other’s eyes (and whatnot); anywhere, simply speaking the words; around the house, taking out the garbage uncomplainingly, rolling up the beloved’s socks, making chicken soup for fevers, hearing the whole story, and then hearing it again.  Done that; doing that.  But we want it with people around; we want it irrefutably; we want it so it sticks at (God forbid) the door of Intensive Care.  We want the protection and, frankly, the label – that is, the social recognition.  And in our case, although we’re not strictly religious, we hold it to be a sacrament -- an outward and visible sign of this unbelievably joyful mystery.  Finding and knowing and lightly holding close to the right person, after an impressive share, on both sides, of false starts.  Dianne, who grew up outside a tiny town, on a prairie ranch in Washington State, came all the way to Massachusetts and found me, who grew up in bookstores in Cambridge.  Surely that’s grace.