Petr the penguin felt the arctic winds curl around his flabby haunches. As the icy threads of sub-zero chill formed a racy harness of frost about his rubbery flanks, he looked out on a sea of his fellow seabirds, each dressed nattily though having no place to go. Currently every single one was engaged in the long standing tradition common amongst penguins, cursed as they were with being thrust upon this planet with no real discernable purpose, they stood around discussing matters. The continent was currently divided into two philosophical camps; those who believe the penguin is a living tribute to formal wear and conversation, the perpetual stasis of the aristocratic dinner party, and those who believe the penguin’s real plight is to swim, eat fish, and run like the dickens from every other creature prowling the permafrost.

      The glossy white voluptuousness of Petr’s chest was lacking both in dignity and altitude today as he trudged towards the sea. He was sad you see. Today he was concerned not with the flightless fatalism of his kind, but instead he hauled around the achy longing of his crush on Anya, the penguin debutante with fine yellow splotches and wonderfully webbed feet and the ungainly shame of his indolent can. The penguin chassis was already built quite low to the ground, but Petr’s hefty rump caused him to waddle in a manner comical even by penguin standards. Every penguin male knew that the secret to the girl penguin’s heart was looking great in jeans. So he sighed and made his unsteady way to the sea launch, a scoop in the ice worn smooth by the bellies of squat, earth-bound dandies who knew that entering the inky, brackish death trap called the sea for food had better start with fun and gusto as it could very well end in being eaten by a submarine or kidnapped by mermen with flagging libidos.

     Later, Petr crept away from the chattering throngs by pretending to move to the outer rings, allowing another to take his place at the warmer center of the congregation, and waddled pell-mell towards the dark gulag of the Antarctic interior. There he met his friend Sergei, a polar bear and a misfit. The friendship between the two would have been an unforgivable scandal at home among the tuxedo set. Sergei was sitting in front of a fire picking his teeth the femur of a wildlife documentarian. The litter of parts and tools circling his furry frame betrayed Sergei’s full day of stripping filmmakers’ vehicles for parts.

     Petr rocked back on his doughy dumper and began telling Sergei about his lovesick quest for perfect haunches and the ideal girl, rattling on in his reedy honking, a rusty clarinet barking out the blues. Sergei listened and pondered and ripped the head off a terrified intern from Woods Hole, and as he chewed on his crunchy morsel and lapped at the bright orange fleece that clumped between his incisors, the frown that was seeping over his brow began to accelerate downwards like a cro-magnon landslide. Sergei muttered under his breath and punctuated each thought by poking the freezing vaporous sky with a mauled doctorate candidate. Finally he rose to his paws and lumbered towards Petr. He picked Petr up oh so delicately beneath his flippers and held him aloft. He studied him, turned him around and prodded Petr’s listless loaves with a furry digit. Finally he turned Petr back around and there they stood, Petr’s beak nearly touching Sergei’s enormous black nose. Without warning Sergei smacked Petr across the face twice and roared at him, an unusual stench of Monterey hippy and New England yankee billowed outwards and Petr’s tail, flippers, and loosely packed buttocks flailed wildly in the torrent.

     Sergei was right of course. Petr was being a sissy. Squats. Lunges. Racquetball. Calisthenics was the answer to Petr’s problem. So every day without fail Petr awoke to find his friend had supplied him with fresh limbs plucked from overly-inquisitive co-eds, and Petr began his exercise regimen using the resistance of collegiate arms and legs.

     Finally he returned to the enormous outdoor festival he called home, the pre-concert crowd, the job fair, the fraternity rush party he loved so very much. He slid into the sea before the others, waiting. Finally as the others began heading back after a long day’s swim, Petr burst from the swells, spray and foam cascading from his firm, taut, dimpled buttocks and he landed among the astonished onlookers, his heaving ass rippling and roiling like two coils of electrified anaconda bundled in black neoprene. Anya’s pelvic girdle clenched once and she fainted from desire. A gawking witness recently paroled from the Los Angeles Zoo looked at Petr and his blonde streaks fading into the more natural black of his coat and the stupendously chiseled fanny and remarked ‘Why he looks just like one of those Cali pigeons!’. Several penguins groaned and he was promptly banished. Most others didn’t get it. It was a very stupid joke. But Petr remained with his glorious trouser-muffins that lounged proudly at the base of his frame like two cougars sunning themselves. Petr strode towards Anya and gazed at her magnificent webbed feet, and her black lidless eyes and realized something: it was Sergei he loved. He ran to the interior and found Sergei. He sprinted towards him, flippers held wide, ass trembling with joy, and he kissed that bear. He kissed that polar bear long and hard.

The End.