Unsealed Lips: All About Society Icon And Chronicler Maurice Arcache

Mary had 11 children, two from a previous marriage. Maurice grew up in Sta Ana, an affluent district in Manila at the time. His father bought a 2,500-sqm, 15-room house that stood on a 5,000-sqm lot along the scenic Pasig River.

While his mother coddled him, his relationship with his father was contentious. Despite Maurice’s high marks in school, Joseph was cold towards his son and showered his daughters, instead, with affection. Yet, when it came to parties, Joseph was uniformly strict with all the children. Mary would give Joseph a tranquiliser, hopefully to put him to sleep, so that the siblings could socialise. However, Joseph insisted that Mary take the pill, too. Their kids would leave when the couple started to feel woozy.

“My mother was the only woman in the world whom my father couldn’t fight with,” Maurice recalls. “He had many faults. He was a ladies’ man and we had to live with that. My mother would confront him, but he denied everything.”

He once spotted his father in Escolta, then a glamorous business district in Manila. Joseph was on a date with another woman in Botica Boie, the country’s first drugstore, which had an ice-cream parlour on the second floor. It was the place to watch people in those days.

Another time, following a lead from the family electrician, Mary rushed to the house of one of Joseph’s paramours, Maurice in tow. Mother and son caught Joseph listening to a concerto that the Arcache children’s piano teacher was playing. Around the living room were photographs of Joseph and the teacher, although he clearly was not taking music lessons from her. Furious, Mary threatened to leave for the United States with all the children. Joseph, usually stoic and tough, went down on his knees and begged for forgiveness.

DISCOVERIES AND CHOICES

When they were old enough, the children were sent abroad to study, enrolling in courses chosen by their father. Joseph wanted Maurice to study architecture in preparation for a career in the real-estate industry. Maurice stubbornly insisted on studying to become a diplomat.

His father sent him to college in Chicago, where their relatives lived. Maurice arrived in winter and, as soon as his plane landed, he decided he couldn’t tolerate the blistering cold. He immediately bought a return ticket and flew back to Manila. Joseph was enraged by this defiance. Mary stood between them to protect her son from getting hurt. Maurice remembers running toward the dining room, where his father threw a chair at him.

Eventually, Maurice was sent back to Chicago, where he graduated with a degree in AB Political Science, minor in Psychology from the Northwestern University. He went on to acquire a master’s degree in Political Science and International Relations at the London School of Economics.

He asked for a car and his mother bought him an MGB, a newly launched British roadster. It was shipped to Manila for a Philippine car plate, then shipped back to London. The car would eventually be left with a friend in Madrid.

His father wanted him to pursue a doctorate degree, but Maurice was weary of studying. He was far from happy working in the family real-estate business. Mary encouraged him to “escape,” intermittently, through travel.

After one of his sojourns, Maurice enthusiastically described to socialite Josine Elizalde his visit to Morocco, then terra incognita. Her husband at the time, media baron Fred Elizalde, was amused by the storytelling and invited Maurice to write for his daily paper, the Evening News. Fred advised him to write exactly the way he spoke.

In the fall of 1972 the Department of Tourism brought a culture and fashion show to an event hosted by First Lady Patricia Nixon in Washington. Maurice was invited to cover it. Martial Law was declared at the time of that trip. The majority of the Filipino contingent returned to Manila. Since the air travel was sponsored by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Maurice took the option to proceed to Amsterdam. There he stayed with Ambassador Rogelio de la Rosa and Lota Delgado, both former movie stars, and worked at the exclusive The American Club.

Maurice met his future partner, the Dutch Alex Van Hagen, at one of the Philippine Embassy parties. A teacher for children with intellectual disabilities, Van Hagen was gentle and tolerant. “I have a lot of patience with Maurice, too,” says Van Hagen. “His mother raised him a spoiled brat, and he always insisted on having his way.” Once when Van Hagen questioned Maurice about coming home late, he simply replied, with a shrug, “I didn’t check my watch. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

In 1984 Maurice came home for his mother’s funeral. The following year, his father died of prostate cancer. The death put a closure to the tumultuous relationship between father and prodigal son. Van Hagen, who was visiting from the Netherlands, decided to stay in Manila.

Ever the party animal, Maurice went out every night with Van Hagen toting a camera. He covered the socials for Jullie Yap Daza’s People magazine. The column was a success and Daza invited him to write for the now defunct Times Journal. Van Hagen became his photographer, the only one privileged to sit with VIP guests.

Maurice has since written about the night life and social scene in the Philippine Star and, currently, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Tatler Philippines.

If he were to write his memoirs, what would he focus on? “What I’ve seen, what I’ve heard…and my own life,” he says.

SCANDAL SHEET

He has witnessed follies and foibles of the high and mighty and kept mum about their identities, till now.

Once on a private island in the Visayas he witnessed a high profile husband snooping on his wife who was apparently cheating on him. “We eavesdropped [on the altercation], laughing our heads off. ”

Once, on a visiting Argentinean ship, he was surprised to find five society icons, known for propriety, coming out of the cabins with coiffure and clothes dishevelled. They were in the company of handsome officers. “Never judge a book by its cover,” Maurice maintains.

He also likes to wax nostalgic about black-tie parties. In the early 1960s, Julia Pilcher, daughter of the British ambassador, would rent the Motorco, a double-decker slow bus that traversed the scenic Roxas Boulevard, as an after-dinner party place.

“There would be a band and everybody would sing with it,” recounts Maurice. We would go from end to end of the route, doing several rounds until it was sunrise at Manila Bay. We’d have champagne and return to the embassy residence for breakfast.”

Instead of getting stuck in the past, Maurice says it’s best to move forward. “In our time, we had an allowance and were home by 2 am. Today, people carry credit cards and party till morning, as in Ibiza,” he says. “Times have changed; I’m enjoying life in a different way.”

As for the wildest thing he has indulged in, Maurice cites hedonism, when he lived in the West. “Orgies to death—they just happen when you’re drunk or drugged up. At first you get chummy. Then you see someone about to enter a room. He gives you a signal and you follow. Next thing you know, it’s like a scene from Sodom and Gomorrha,” says Maurice, referring to the two cities in the Bible whose names are equated with brazen self-gratification and anal sex. “We did things you’d see only in porn flicks,” he adds.

Not surprisingly, he found the Philippine scene tamer. “You get into a corner and see the bushes moving,” he observes.

In a luau at a country club, one of the guests and her date slowly moved away from the throng. Maurice and a small group followed them to the tree-lined garden. “All of a sudden, a branch in front of us was shaking like mad. It wasn’t a bird; there was the couple making out like Tarzan and Jane.” The next day, Maurice asked “Jane” why they had to go up the tree. She said they were wary of snakes.

Even in his mature years, the gender-bending Maurice still gets indecent proposals. A young French couple invited him and a female companion for some uninhibited pleasure. Only a few years ago, Maurice shocked friends by admitting to a dalliance with a German swimsuit model. “We had a wang-wang affair in Boracay, under the coconut trees, hoping the coconuts wouldn’t fall on us,” he says.

Married men hit on him, for something he could offer that their wives wouldn’t. He describes his sexual preference: “Whatever turns me on.”

He laughs off questions about a notorious blog that insinuated his indiscretions. “That’s trash,” he says. “Why go down to that level?”

Maurice continues to live life to the fullest. “I’ve always had my way—defying my father, the orgies. Everyone I have broken up with, man or woman, remains my friends. After all, we had a good time together. I’ve always been a positive person. All the negatives have been swept away. Whatever you’ve done, good or bad, should not bring regrets. ‘I shouldn’t have done this. Why did I do that?’ There’s no time to mope. Move on!”

This story was originally titled Maurice Unsealed, published in the September 2014 issue of Tatler Philippines. Some information and photos were also from Maurice Arcache: Unsealed Lips from the July 2008 issue.