Aphrodite's Den sports the same look as every strip bar trying to cater itself as an upscale gentlemen's club. Chintzy Romanesque statues or busts on the outside, a miasma of pink and green lights on the inside. The strobes are accompanied by sporadic bursts from a fog machine, all there to distract attention from the ubiquitous C-section scars and the heavy makeup covering meth sores.

A fully clad waitress beckons me to a table one row back from the main stage, where some young thing grinds her bikini area against a pole. Surely, she's just here to pay her way through college.

"Would you like to start a tab?"

I hand her the Centurion card and order a scotch on the rocks.

"You've got it, Mister Kimmel," she says as she looks over the onyx card, "and would you like me to let Gemma know you're here?"

I can only assume that Gemma is Jase's usual girl. Depending on how well they know each other, that could be a potential shit storm. "Not tonight. I'm looking to meet someone new."

"Any preference?"

"Surprise me."

The drink comes back to me in three minutes. Two more go by before I see the chair next to me pull out from my periphery. Beside me sits a stunning, raven-haired girl. She's all legs and breasts, piled into fishnets atop glittery 6-inch heels. Her hand extends toward me.

"Hi, I'm Keely."

I shake her outstretched hand. "Jase."

"And how are you doing today, Jase?"

"Better now."

She tosses her head back and giggles like she hasn't heard the line a million times. "That's what I'm here for. Hopefully we can make it really memorable." Her leg slides across my own effortlessly, resting so that we are slightly entwined. My eyes are drawn to the perfect teeth that peek from her coy smile. Christ, this girl can't be but nineteen or twenty years old. What the fuck am I doing in this place?

Keely says something to me, but between my surprise and the pounding volume of the stage music, I've lost her words. "What?"

She leans in closer and puts a hand on me, letting her fingernails trace my upper arm. "Not a big talker, huh? You look a little lost for a regular. Maybe finishing that drink will help loosen you up."

I do as she says and drain the rest of my scotch.

She looks satisfied and moves in closer. "So, what do you do?"

"Little of this, little of that. Mostly party." Seems like the type of thing Jase would say.

"Living the dream." She shoots back with thinly veiled sarcasm.

I really don't want to talk about myself, so I shift the focus back to Keely. "How about you? This your only job?"

"Only job, yeah, but I'm also going to school. Psychology with a minor in philosophy."

Of fucking course.

"You want to fix people, huh?"

"I don't think that's what psychologists do. It's more like they show people the path to fix themselves."

"You ever believe that there are some people too broken to be fixed?"

"There's only a series of failures until you succeed or give up trying. That's the only real failure, when you stop trying to get better. Do you think you're broken?" Her eyebrow curls up as she analyzes me. The eyes of a hunter embedded in a soft, feminine countenance.

"What?" I say, again trying to dodge the question. "It's too loud in here."

"I know a quieter place we can go."

This is her real hunt. Everything before had been a curiosity to her, but this was always the end game. I nod silently and Keely flags down a bartender. The waitress leans in close and asks, "Would you like to put a private room on your tab?"

"And a bottle of," I searched for the most prestigious liquor I could think of, "Hennessey."

The bartender comes back with the bottle and a pair of snifters, then leads us down a corridor at the back of the club. Keely grabs her white clutch and takes my hand as we follow. The room inside features a small plush couch, a pole, and a variety of mirrors. The low light inside is amplified by tones of maroon.

After the waitress leaves, Keely uncaps the cognac and pours two fingers into each glass. My first sip hits hard, and a tiny wave of nausea runs over me. I choke it down and force another drink. This one goes down better. Keely has made her way over to the pole and swings around it lazily. She seems to have left Earth for the moment.

"You like it here?" I ask. I'm not sure why I care, but I want her back here with me.

She snaps back into reality. "Mostly, yeah. It's like getting paid to workout and dance. I enjoy people for the most part. Some of them pay just to talk. It's almost like an internship for psychology. And bonus, I love to fuck." She flashes a knockout smile, makes her way to me and leans over, her large breasts hang in front of my face, straining at her bra and fishnet.

"You seem happy," I say to her tits.

Keely sits on my lap and leans back, still smiling. "It comes and goes. Right now, yeah, I'm happy."

"How do you know"

"There's lots of different philosophies on happiness," she says, unhooking her bra as the next song starts up. A groovy track, heavy on synth and bass. "All of the ancient philosophers believed in finding happiness through living a moral life. Give up your worldly possessions. All that hippie stuff. In the end it's about self-control. Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics and Stoics."

"Better living through virtuous suffering. That's some monk shit."

Keely turns and bends over, slowly gyrating. "That's more like Epicureanism. They believed the ultimate goal was to reach a constant state of tranquility. A contentedness that was untouchable by fear or pain. Do not fear God. Do not worry about death. What is good is easy to get," she gives her ass a hard slap. "What is terrible is easy to endure."

"That a sentiment a lot of dancers share?"

"As long as we're getting paid. Fuck Plato." She straightens and climbs into my lap, riding me cowgirl style. On every undulation, she rubs against my constantly tightening chinos.

"Sounds like a guy who never had to actually endure shit." My sentence comes out in hitches as she teases me, her nipples swaying just out of reach of my mouth.

"Shit is consequential. If you trace the shit back far enough, it usually comes down to a past decision on your part. We do things because we feel like we have no choice, but what we really have is a burden of choices. Having to plan out every event in our lives with regards to optimization. A life without regret is impossible because we can always reflect on a different set of choices we could have made."

She's not wrong. I think of all the possible women I could have ended up with besides Lisa. I used to do alright. I could pull.

I look at myself in the mirror and realize I'm being the worst Jase possible.

Keely continues, "Kierkegaard thought there were three stages to life, with the second leading into the third. The ethical breeds the religious. Once we are able to recognize a deity as the best example of virtue, we want to become like that. It would explain why so many older people are so churchy."

"So, what's the first the first stage?"

"The aesthetic." She stands up and reaches down to unzip my pants. I'm more than willing to spring free from those confines. "The pursuit of intellectual enjoyment and sensuous desire." She says this with a purr as she works me with her hands. I gasp a little and she looks deep into my eyes with that smile.

"Is that how you like to live?"

"I'm twenty-one years old. I can afford to live that way." She breathes the words heavily onto my cock, making it twitch in anticipation. "It lends itself well to Hedonism. The best pleasure is sensory. Momentary. So why shouldn't we chase it as long as it's not hurting anyone else?"

"And what if it does?" My mind flashes thoughts of Lisa. Of our unborn child. Her betrayal. My unwanted child. Then it snaps back to Keely as she slowly removes her G-string.

"Are you hurting someone right now?" She asks as she lowers a hand to play with herself.

"Not right now. But a future decision might."

"That's Utilitarianism. Every decision made to determine the best outcome of any situation." She's shining slick as she starts to lower herself onto me. "To minimize pain... and maximize pleasure." She lets out a soft moan at the end as she's about to take my tip.

I can't believe this is actually about to happen. How the fuck did I end up here? My jaw clenches up as endorphins flood my body. I try to stop it from happening, but nature takes its course. "Nonononono..."

Keely lifts herself before I've even gotten in, deftly sidestepping as my load arcs straight up and back onto my pants. When my breath levels off, she wraps her arms around me and whispers, "If you want to keep chasing the moment, come and see me again." She nips my ear and lets her fingers trail off me as she leaves. The club music swells and fades with the door upon her exit.

I'm left with the traces of her touch and a stain of shame that slowly spreads across Jase's expensive chinos.