Deep Throat

I'm sure the topic of Mark Felt has already been exhausted by the blogosphere, but here's my two cents, which are surprisingly unpolitical (at least I find it surprising).

Does anyone else feel a kind of letdown at knowing who Deep Throat was? I mean, it's a good story, and I have no problem with learning that it was Mark Felt, not that I ever heard of Mark Felt before Tuesday. Still, whether you want to cite Carly Simon or Jacques Lacan, there's no question that the state of uncertainty, anticipation, desire, whatever you want to call it, has a certain pleasure that knowledge cannot equal.

I mean, to go really trivial, isn't the moment at the Academy Awards when they show the five tensely smiling candidates for Best Actress, and you say to your sister on the phone, "I bet it's going to be Gwyneth," a lot more fun than actually watching Gwyneth up there on the stage weeping in her pink dress? Or, to go romantic, isn't the moment just before the first kiss, when you know it is going to happen, but it isn't happening yet, one of the best things ever? So, yeah, you can sign me up for the "Mark Felt is a hero" team, but the romantic, narrative-loving, existential side of me misses the mystery.

The other thing Mark Felt made me think about was 1974. I remember things before 1974. I remember the hall in the apartment we moved from when I was 2 1/2. I remember the light on the brick sidewalk when my father brought me home to meet my new baby sister (I wasn't yet 3). I remember the cottage we went to in the summer until I was 5, and I have a fair number of memories from nursery school and lots from my early years in elementary school.

I think my first political memory is from 1972, when I was absolutely sure that McGovern would beat Nixon, because my parents and all their friends were voting for him. For some reason I remember the Watergate break-in too, though I wonder if my memory of that came after the fact.

But 1974, when I turned 10, was the year that I truly became aware of the outside world. Indeed, 1974 was the first year I was aware of as a year:I remember forgetting to write 1974 instead of 1973, though I don't remember writing 1973 the year before. Patty Hearst was kidnapped in 1974, and I was completely obsessed with her, so I read the newspaper every day, which means I also read about Watergate every day, though I'm not sure I really understood it. I remember Maureen Dean's ponytail and and John Dean's earnestness and Martha Mitchell's nuttiness.

I remember the night Nixon resigned as clear as day. We were at the house we rented each summer, after we stopped going to the cottage. It was right on a lake, and there was a big house at one end of the lot and a little boathouse at the other. In between there were trees and a barbecue and a hammock and sometimes a tepee and a big pine-needly space where we played. There were always a lot of people around, friends of ours visiting for a few days and friends of the owner's who stayed in the boathouse.

I don't remember who was there that night--I think maybe my friend Natalie's family--but there were a lot of people. We were out by the barbecue and it was dark and someone brought a radio out and we stood or sat or squatted in a circle around it, all listening to the resignation speech, quietly, in the dark, by the lake, and I remember thinking that this was really, really important.