The Goddess Abides: A Novel

by Pearl S. Buck

“It didn’t matter how many experiences I had or with whom. They all ended the same way—in a sort of disgust with the woman and with myself. I couldn’t understand why. She—whichever she happened to be—was always irresistibly attractive until I’d slept with her—maybe not at once but inevitably, and then it would be over. I’d stop seeing her then. I suppose I knew subconsciously that there was no real relationship there—a blind demand of the body, meaningless so far as communication went, like eating when you’re hungry. Anyway, slowly, I grew beyond the meaningless stage. I simply stopped. I saw that I was destroying something in myself. I was destroying the capacity to communicate on any other level than sex. As soon as I’d got to like a girl—or a woman—and that might happen instantaneously, I thought of her physically. What confuses me more is that I think of you in the same way except it is entirely different with you—it’s on every level at once.”