WWW- William Cohen [pictured] is best known for serving his country as a congressman, senator and Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense – but he also once served an exotic stripper known as “Jamaica Ginger.”

In his autobiography, “Love in Black and White,” coming out in February, Cohen recalls his days as a cum laude student, basketball star and talented bongo-drum player with a penchant for mischief at Bowdoin College. One night, he and his roommate, Charlie Wing, slipped off to see the “girlie shows” at a country fair in a nearby town and, “I suggested to Charlie that we might spice things up by playing the drums for one of the bump-and-grind routines . . . It was an offer that [Jamaica Ginger] did not refuse.”

But the lark turned embarrassing. “As Ginger began to bump her way across the stage to our drumbeat . . . I looked out into the gathering crowd and realized . . . [that] gathering at the foot of the stage were several Bowdoin professors and their wives. They stared up at us . . . in disbelief. I knew that they were lamenting this sad turn of events.”

Cohen not only pounded the drums, he could pound a face when need be – like when an alumnus from his frat cursed him out for hiring a rockabilly band for a party. “I turned around as if to walk away from my tormentor, spun around while screaming, ‘[Bleep]hole? You’re the [bleep]hole!’ and unleashed the biggest roundhouse right of my life. My fist landed solidly on the bridge of his nose, slicing it open. He went down . . . blood flowing profusely. I had no intention of letting him up and proceeded to pound him while he was still dazed.” The brawl turned into a frat free-for-all that nearly got him kicked out of school.

Cohen, who raised eyebrows in 1996 by wedding Janet Langhart, an African-American author and BET commentator, also says his wife’s mother vehemently opposed interracial romance.

“You shouldn’t go out of your own race. White boys only want one thing from us,” she told Langhart. “They think that we’re loose. A self-respecting black woman’s not likely to want to be seen with one of them unless she’s slinking off in the shadows.”