People remember you, it’s true. People, like you, who might even remember me, along with the loudest neighbor from down the hall 3 apartments ago, your 11th grade English teacher, and the manager at your local Subway. What I’m trying to say is there’s now a manager at my local Subway who is very aware of me and my ham sandwiches. I am certain I will remember him and his ponytail forever.
Memory is a freak. Why can’t I remember riding a bike for the first time, but know I’ll never forget RuPaul saying that he discovered orange was his favorite color at the age of 34? Scientists, please advise.
It’s been a while, so to set the tone, here are a few goofy things I’ve done recently:
Proudly overpaid for a bottle of orange wine
Cried in a bookstore at 7:30pm on a Tuesday
Could not stop eating jelly beans for 6 weeks straight
Drafted an email to my therapist containing nothing but the link to an Instagram reel
Drafted an email to my therapist containing nothing but the link to a song on Spotify
Forgot allergy medicine and alcohol aren’t friends, but frenemies
Consequently became alarmingly drunk off very little (three times)
Went to a collegiate acapella performance for a group I was not in at a school I did not attend. What’s more, not my first time
Curry too spicy to eat in front of people in the restaurant
Watched a 35-minute YouTube video addressing the Taylor Swift/Matty Healy dating rumors
Curated a playlist for a fictional TV character
Asked Michael if I was “allowed” to wear a baseball cap to the movies
Googled someone I was complicatedly involved with in college (not chic) and was greeted by their wedding registry
Admitted to really liking Matchbox Twenty
What prompted me to write to you is, again, say it with me: people remember you. And it’s not delusional or romantic. You don’t get to choose who, or for what, or if it means something entirely special. You never know unless they tell you. It’s mind-bendingly awful and wonderful. It is simple and it is obvious.
The catalyst for this decidedly plain, possibly boring thought is a film I saw last week called Other People’s Children. It was extremely French in all the ways you’d expect (sexy, indoor cigarettes, confident nudity). I saw it in a very tiny screening room with exactly 4 other people. Of my newly chosen family, two people attended together. One recounted stories of hanging out with Kathleen Turner in Provincetown (he did call her a mess) and it took everything in me to mind my business. The other attempted a joke of, “I hope TALKING isn’t a PROBLEM here…” and I conjured up a hearty laugh (call me an empath). She got her wish! I’d like to believe we were all equally enraptured by the lead actress, Virginie Efira, for the entire hour and 43-minute runtime, but I’ll never know.
Efira, who plays Rachel, is so beautiful and controlled, and most importantly, she’s the spitting image of an ASMR artist who I near-worshipped for many months before deleting TikTok in an effort to rebuild my attention muscle (now I just play sudoku hard copy). We meet Rachel in the back of a high school classroom, as the students she teaches are watching a film adaptation of a book they read for class. She is distracted, texting a man from her group guitar lessons, smiling like a fool. Once you start smiling at a cellphone, it’s game over.
What quickly unfolds is the hot and heavy reality of an instant connection between her and the man from guitar class, Ali. As their relationship accelerates and deepens – and upon learning Ali has a young daughter – Rachel asks to meet Leila and quickly becomes attached. Pre-Leila, Rachel has a fulfilling life without children (the film does a great job of interspersing scenes of Rachel’s life outside of this relationship, whether it be observing religious holidays, seeing her family, or hanging out with her colleagues), but spending so much time with Ali and Leila unlocks something in her. At a series of very strange gynecology appointments (in an office that looks like someone’s cluttered house with a quirky doctor played by celebrated documentarian, Frederick Wiseman), she is reminded of the very slim opportunity she has to become pregnant herself. In knowing Leila, she gains access to so much joy, but a new pain and desire she’d otherwise avoided.
Her relationship with Ali seems relatively secure, and becomes more and more serious as the film presses on. Rachel becomes the designated parent to pick up Leila from judo class. They all go on vacation together. From time to time, Rachel is injured by little comments from the child, but all is forgiven once Leila draws a family portrait featuring both of her biological parents and Rachel. A family is being built, or rather expanded, but she knows it isn’t promised (in one scene, she expresses this, saying, “I’ll always be an extra.”). The anxiety of it disappearing consumes her because she is a normal, feeling person, but it worsens until one day, the dreaded thing happens. A self-fulfilling prophecy: one moment, devoted pseudo-stepmother, the next, a burgeoning stranger. More crushing than the breakup conversation between her and Ali is a short walk where Rachel explains this to Leila.
I’ve sped through some critical plot points and completely spoiled the ending so I can selfishly backpedal to my lingering takeaway, but hope you still might see the movie (some have compared it to The Worst Person in the World, which I’ve also talked about. I’m not exactly sure that comparison stands, beyond one identical needle-drop). At one point ahead of their split, Ali says that if he didn’t know her better, he’d call her a narcissist for her concerted effort to help a troubled student named Dylan. Throughout the film, she rallies for him – placing him in a fancy internship program under her boyfriend’s leadership (did I mention he designs cars?), buying him a winter coat, and standing up for him while the teachers discuss his promotion to the next grade. It is another example of her inexact mothering, for which Ali calls her soft. When she runs into Dylan years later at the restaurant where he is working, beaming, he tells her that he never forgot her. He says he’s meant to visit her, to let her know. It is through this coincidental profession that something heals in Rachel. It propels her from her seat at the restaurant with a smile on her face, whether it be due to the unknown, phantom possibility that she might go remembered by Ali or more wistfully, Leila, or the impact she’s had on someone else - a thankful child.
I walked home, swinging around a bag of tacos, delighted and horrified and mesmerized and pissed off about the very simple fact that people remember you. And that on the other side of the coin, some people don’t. And a bit less individualistically, most people won’t. And for the ones who do, it’s likely a small, specific distortion, but it has meaning, surely. Or it doesn’t. I don’t know anything!
Anyway, by RuPaul’s standards, Jesus didn’t live long enough to settle on a favorite color. We should all tell our best teachers what they meant to us after the fact. Children are so effortlessly cruel, but also wonderful. People remember you. Alright, enough already.
Big love,
kaylasomething
In the waning weeks of Succession, may we all take very deep breaths. Tom Wambsgans, I just know you’d love boygenius.