I hear you might have finally awoken from the illusions of Pingu and Penguins of Madagascar. I hear you might finally be ready to listen to my story. A story about the collision of desire and abuse, power and…pebbles. About the way I careen from one intimate adventure to the next-scores of them-without so much as a night off between dalliances. About how female penguins trade sex for stones. Yes. I am a Penguin, and yes, I am a Prostitute.
Greeting cards consider female penguins serial monogamists- they define us, they limit us. Nothing can be further from the truth. My relationships in my threens overlapped with tiring theatricality: baby snatchers , humiliating confrontations and the occasional seal. Still, I pursue the oldest profession in the world. I can’t speak for other women, but in my case, it is not so black and white. I just can’t stop myself. Guess we are not as frigid as the world thinks.
I am not even starved for stones-the reason why many women allow strangers to enter the sanctity of their flippers. That is not why I share my nest with other men. I can’t say that I am always looking for a better pebble either. On countless occasions, I have traded perfect pebbles for misshapen ones – form doesn’t matter much to me as much as substance. I search for the story behind the pebble, the glacier which melted to reveal it, the path it took to tumble down to warn us of the arrival of two legged monsters. And regardless of what papers claim, I am not just seeking pebbles to build my nest.
Pebbles are a portal to a higher thrill-power. And if the upright ape wants to call the arrangements, I enter into with other male penguins into for increasing my collection, prostitution, I suppose there isn’t much difference between them and us, now, is there?
After all, which woman in the world hasn’t traded sex in return for a little shiny rock.
This similarity between ape and penguin is, however, alarming to me, more alarming than the sheet of ice that is rapidly dissolving into water under my webbed feet. Should I feel a tingle at the prospect of stealing all the un-mated penguins’ currency by sending noots on OnlyFins? Or will Nestling and Chill lose its flavor as an adrenaline rush after it becomes such a crudely repeated term on Pemble?
I shudder.
So, I leave my past behind. In my mid-6s, I marry a deliciously flabby penguin but even the sacred ritual of laying eggs for him does not change me. I grow morose. Bitter. I start jabbing him in spite. The nest we share marks a sacred line I cannot cross but I know I won’t win the war against temptation.
I need more pebbles.
A voice in my head tells me I am doing this to protect my maternal investment in my eggs. I tell myself a flood is on its way, as it often these days. I tell myself stealing is rife and that selling my body is easier than a scuffle with another female. And before I know it, I waddle off in the thickness of night for another man’s pebbles.
Don’t you dare feel pity for my prey. I hope you realise now that your favorite fat penguin who collected pebbles in Happy Feet was a whoreder.
Where was I?
Yes. Other men.
When I study the female mates of my docile prey, I do it to just be the opposite of them. Not better than her. Just her opposite. For seduction is in its essence a game of manipulation that reveals a dazzling alternative for him to spend all his rocks on. Finding the naïve male alone, I shuffle up with a deep bow and a coquettish side glance as I waddle around his castle of pebbles. He is distracted, confused as I suddenly leave without so much as a gak.
Soon enough, his indifference transmutes to curiosity, and then it changes to desire. I visit him again inside his nest, my eyes only on the crystals of rock around me. I salivate at the sculptures created by water as he takes me from behind. He barely lasts, and misfires. But I on the other hand have a pilfered pebble in my beak on my way home. The thrill of stealing it right under his beak has me sweating buckets. Or maybe it is global warming.
Later under the sheen of green fairies in the sky, the guilt about stealing him from his woman ceases to be a match against the high from the knowledge that somewhere on the other side of the iceberg-somebody could not snare a fish because he is thinking about me. Two birds with one stone.
You can judge me, call me a Rock Teaser or a Cobble Digger all you want. But I hear David Attenborough’s voice call me a revolutionary feminist, someone who takes the reins over my own sexuality in a brazen act of contractually governed pebble arrangements. I am a stone cold hoe but I don’t bow down to any Pimperor Penguin either. I am the Radhika Apte in my stories, and never the sad little Meena Kumari for my feet are truly happy.
For more on depravity amongst penguins, read this and this.
