I mean what are the odds. Here's Ed "Mr. Dirty Debutantes" Powers bribing some cab driver by the name of Jose to take him to a hot dance club. Powers wants " bonita cheekas" he tells Jose. The phonetic spelling being used here. Powers, a former cop for the Brooklyn Housing Authority, is looking for some good-looking dames. Not the cash-and-carry variety putas, but some real party goers. Powers knows how to speak the lingo - sufficiently enough to carry on an authentic south-of-the-border conversation with Jose about a club called Coco Bongo. Best place in town, Jose tells us. After all, cab drivers should know. Powers and I are carrying on an intellectual conversation about the relative merits of Amazonian women with thighs capable of cracking Volkswagens, when Powers spots a representative power house of the brunette genre. The brunette's high heel wedgies, melon ass and a thin red dress add several percentage points to the already-stifling humidity index. Powers has Jose pull over to the curb of Coco Bongo. I didn't realize Powers was into Amazons.
"That's just what you're talking about," says Powers predicting remarkable things for the evening as if the brunette's some kind of good luck omen. Powers is about to make a socially orchestrated move when the brunette's girlfriend beats him to it. As curbside repartee reveals, the girlfriend turns out to have been Powers' roommate 15 years ago. [Small fucking world.]
The former roommate's name is Victoria, and the brunette's name is Brigitte. As if this information is going to do either Powers or myself any bit of good this evening, seeing as how Victoria and Brigitte are celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary. According to Victoria.
Powers, nonetheless, sees some kind of "synergy" or "synthesis" in all this since he keeps using the two words. I wait for the Y2K references, and, sure enough, Powers hauls them out, too. He tells me a story about himself, Victoria and Madonna, when, all too coincidentally, "Like a Virgin" blares on the club's system which is reprising every disco oldie known to man. "See, I told you!" says Powers. Now he's bringing Madonna into the thing.
Powers and I hang around for a couple of hours, the club going through more schizo transitions than some porn stars we know. Powers hands out picture postcards of himself - the ones depicting him as famous art figures. After the stroke of midnight, this place becomes a regular Mardi Gras with female patrons performing writhing voodoo-like incantations with their bodies. Brigitte gets on top of a table and starts flashing her panties. Which serves as some kind of cue to Powers who begins gyrating now to the techno music that's just come on. Powers resembles a whirling dervish, what with his flowing ponytail and the long black coat with the priest collar he's got on. Everyone else in their Hawaiian getups is looking like Tom Selleck from Magnum P.I. Powers passes for an Armenian priest.
We leave after Powers becomes aware of the hour. Or try to leave. The club's complex geography makes quick exits impossible. Powers forgot to reset his watch to Cancun time, and the jet lag from an Asian trip suddenly starts hitting him. He's still on the synergy angle when we get back to the Ritz-Carlton hotel where the First Annual AVN Porn Conference is being held.
We're ready to call it a night when into the elevator walks a Mexicali blond named Anna. Powers starts whipping out the postcards. I get off at the sixth floor, and Powers is still handing out more postcards to Anna.
I meet Powers the next day for breakfast. "Well, what happened?" I ask. "It was a two-condom night," he smiles. Evidently, from the 6th floor to the 8th floor where he was staying, Powers found enough synergy to whip out his famed pick-up techniques - among other things.
Powers starts up a new company called PIE and has is first DVD coming out.
