How to Talk to Girls at Parties

“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” is a coming-of-age story, evidenced partly by the narration of an adult Enn looking back on the night. The story captures teenage curiosity and innocence about heterosexual relationships. Enn is 15, an age at which many boys feel attraction to girls but don’t know how to approach them. For Enn, girls seem like aliens, and the possibility of having physical intimacy with them feels like a complicated mystery. There is a time, he notes, when “girls just sort of sprint off into the future ahead of you, and they know all about everything” (Paragraph 19).

Vic, on the other hand, “seemed to have had many girlfriends” (Paragraph 3). Enn compares himself to Vic throughout much of the story. He envies Vic’s confidence with girls. Vic tells Enn repeatedly that he just needs to talk to girls, suggesting that talking to them will lead to physical connection: “‘They’re just girls,’ said Vic. ‘They don’t come from another planet’” (Paragraph 16). Gaiman thereby foreshadows that they are about to attend a party full of girls from another planet.

When Enn encounters new girls, he first focuses on their looks. Stella is described as having “golden, wavy hair, and she was very beautiful” (Paragraph 25). Wain’s Wain “wore a low-cut silvery top, and I tried not to stare at the swell of her breasts” (Paragraph 40). The next girl he speaks with he describes as having dark, spiky hair and a gap between her front teeth. He says, “She wasn’t the prettiest girl there, but she seemed nice enough, and she was a girl anyway” (Paragraph 70). Triolet has “coppery auburn” hair that falls in “ringlets.” She has a “Grecian nose.” He notes what she’s wearing and the color of her eyes. All the while, each girl tells him who they are. They all make clear through their dialogue that they traveled there from another world, but Enn’s focus on their appearances rather than their words keeps him from understanding who they are.

Once Triolet’s words infect Enn, however, he begins to see reality. He understands the music, which before was incomprehensible. Most importantly, as he and Vic leave the house, he sees Stella as she truly is. Stella’s expression is so surprising and upsetting that Enn knows he will never forget it. He sees she is more than just a pretty girl; she is an entire universe. Enn started the story thinking of girls as pretty faces and desirable bodies but comes to understand that they are complex beings.

Enn takes Vic’s advice to “talk” to girls as a means to physical intimacy with them, but it isn’t until Vic’s additional advice to “listen” that Enn begins to change. He listens to Triolet’s words, encouraging her to tell more of her story, and he listens to her as she whispers her poem. He finally begins to understand through listening. He recognizes the music for the first time, and he sees Stella in her true form.

Vic, on the other hand, used the same tricks he always did. He didn’t take his own advice and listen. When he suddenly understands that Stella is not human, he is so rattled that, after racing away from the party, he vomits. He tells Enn that he fears he isn’t himself anymore after the experience; he’s been transformed, just like Enn has. However, whereas for Enn this transformation came through listening, Vic seems horrified that he was wrong about the girls.

In the story, words create worlds. They establish and define, but they can also be dangerous. Triolet tells Enn, “You cannot hear a poem without it changing you […] They heard it, and it colonized them” (Paragraph 108). She later says, “[W]here does contagion end and art begin?” (Paragraph 111), suggesting that while words create meaning they also limit our perceptions. Language is a useful tool to create art, like Gaiman’s short story, but it also influences how we think and perceive. We can only understand our world through the mediation of our language, and we can’t perceive what might exist beyond the boundaries of our words.