Like the other protagonists in A Visit from the Goon Squad, Lou struggles with demons and transgressions, yet he alone seems to have no concept of shame. Everyone in Lou's path--lovers, friends, and even children--suffers the consequences whenever he attempts to gain the world for himself. Rhea and Mindy, two lovers, are each objects he uses to feel powerful. Lou meets Rhea and Jocelyn for dinner, placing an arm around both of them in a "fatherly" gesture (50) but leaving Rhea to wonder where she really stands with him. Is he still only pursuing Jocelyn, or has Rhea now entered the race as well? He later speaks to Rhea alone, saying she is beautiful and that "the world is full of shitheads...and I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen" (57). Rhea knows she is simply a pawn in Lou's twisted game and that he says sweet nothings to every woman he objectifies (including Jocelyn, her best friend), but she is flattered by Lou's attention and does nothing to halt his power play. Likewise, Lou's girlfriend Mindy basks in her status, even though she herself believes the arrangement will end thanks to the couple’s "structural incompatibility" (65). While with Lou's family on a safari, she is not only his bedmate but essentially the nanny to his children, Charlie and Rolph. She never complains about this arrangement--although she does note Charlie's resentment toward her on page 64--but Mindy is not even old enough to be their mother. Mindy might wish to help heal the neglected children but, barely an adult herself, does not know where to begin.
Perhaps Rhea and Mindy tolerate Lou's unforgivable acts because each is not as directly affected as someone else in Lou's life. For Rhea, it's Jocelyn who bears the brunt of Lou's blows; for Mindy, it's Rolph. Jocelyn first meets Rolph while hitchhiking at seventeen, and she is still wandering aimlessly through life in her forties. When Lou leaves Jocelyn, he takes the parties, extravagance, and music with him: "Everything went past, without me" (86). Unlike Rhea, Jocelyn does not have the opportunity to grow up, start a family, and carry on in life, at least not without significant emotional scarring. In Rolph's case, this scarring is so severe that he takes his own life in his father's house at twenty-eight (82). I was initially shocked when I read about Rolph's suicide, but this event does seem to correlate with the way Lou continuously pushes his children aside in favor of his business conquests. Rolph must become so distrusting of others--as he does of Mindy upon his father's condemnation on page 78--that he loses all hope. Maybe Rolph sees what Lou fails to see until his final days: every action causes a reaction and affects those who love you. And no matter how much you try to justify the destruction you have caused, your loved ones, like Jocelyn, might turn against you, or, as Rolph did, against themselves.
I agree completely that Lou seriously created trauma in the lives of people around him. It is interesting in a really sad way that the people whom he leaned on the most to help himself feel good and powerful are the ones he hurt the most in the end. This shows that these were incredibly unhealthy relationships because they were one-sided.
ReplyDeleteI also find it interesting that all of Lou's issues were either directly or indirectly related to the misuse of his sexuality. He continually "dated" girls who were much younger than he was which, at least in the case of Jocelyn, was very abusive. He should have been a father figure, not a sexual partner. Then, with his children, he has a picture by his bed of many kids. It doesn't ever seem clear if they are all his by many women or if they all had the same mother, but if they were by many women, he was not creating a stable home for the children with a mother and a father. Rather, he was having many children, seemingly out of wedlock and scattered all over the place, and setting them up for a tough childhood. Lou always thought of his sexual partners as a prize showing that he had won some sort of game. This was extremely unhealthy and not conducive to a loving relationship. Therefore, he never ended up in a stable relationship which harmed both he and his partners. He was never satisfied because all he seemed to care about was sex and winning the girl.