MEDIUM RARE

News of Maurice Arcache’s passing did not mention the cause of death, but I’m sure it had to do with his work. If you can call it work. Maurice’s p.m.-a.m. job was attending parties, as many as two or three in one night, and writing about them. If not for posterity, then for the fun of it. Boredom was what did him in – not being able to dress up, take the car, arrive to welcoming screams of “Maurice! Maurice!” and bask in the light of being wanted by people of a certain class. Three years of a pandemic killed the party epidemic all over the islands but specially in the beautiful homes and favored venues of Metro Manila high society. If Covid-19 unleashed a storm of depression, you could say Maurice was likely a victim of ennui, not the kind that turns into madness, but the type that prisoners feel – isolation, deprived of company and conversation, the long hours of a still and silent night gnawing at your soul, knowing that half of your life has been spent in lively, lovely hours of celebration among friends and kindred spirits. It would be an understatement to describe Maurice as someone who loved his job. Fact is, he did; moreover, he lived it. Maurice did not need an invitation. Even without an invite he would still be welcome as a sought-after gatecrasher. Woe to the would-be “Palangga” who did not realize his value as a guest who would feature the night’s event in his column three weeks to three months later: that’s how crowded his calendar looked. His buddy forever, the photographer Alex Van Hagen, should one day put up an exhibit of photos of himself and Maurice in their prime, pre-Covid. Whether as a night owl or a sociable Dracula, Maurice relied on his pills – 22 down the hatch, in one gulp – that in his mind not only energized him but kept him young, rejuvenated, kept him hopping from one event to the next. Who’s going to inherit his mantle now as Manila’s society chronicler? I’m more interested in finding out who has inherited the ring he inherited from his mother, an emerald-cut diamond the “color of rain,” as they say in the national language.