I never really believed it until I heard this story told to me two or so years ago.  I was with my friend, a self-made man who became rich due to wheeling and dealing with politicians and businessmen. I lost track of this man now since I became very busy with work while he still attends political work in his province and I believe in some governmental agencies.

Anyway, let’s go back to the meeting. We were inside this cigar bar in one of the iconic hotels in Makati. I don’t remember any longer why we met, except maybe it concerns one of our friends or probably a business deal. The bar is frequented not just by publicists, but all sorts and kinds of people–politicians, vice lords, government officials, prostitutes, models wearing exquisite luxury brands, businessmen and their wives and sometimes, mistresses.

I love going to this place because I can smoke my favorite cigar and sip my favorite wine. What I really want though is the time he shares some unsavory yet highly confidential things about certain politicians and government officials.  Usually, his stories concern their mistresses, their wives and girlfriends.  It is in that sense, that we enjoy our conversations together because he always spice it with such scandalous information.

One of the things I remembered back then was when he shared to me this story about a family of mistresses. Yes, mistresses. Nothing really new about this except that this family has a history of each and every female member of their clan getting involved with filthy rich, married men.

I know this is nothing scintillating since in some East Asian cultures, some people do take the business of being a mistress in a highly professional matter. Remember in Japan they are called kabuki. And this friend of mine swears that here in the Philippines, a very conservative, Catholic country, we have our version of the Kabuki and these people have been working as members of the high mile for mistresses for generations.

My friend swears that several tycoons keep mistresses as young as their early twenties, and some are half-bloods from Pampanga and Cebu. One of the oldest tycoons is rumored to be keeping a 17 year old girl at one of his posh condominiums in Bonifacion Global City near his mansion at Forbes.

Another tycoon, who belongs to the old rich, likes the opposite– he keeps a mistress who is a mother of another mistress. Everyone knows that this fifty-ish lady got her money from the industrialist and she flaunts it. She goes around social circles, acting and even appearing Imeldirific sometimes.

Her daughter meanwhile, who works as a model, is a mistress of a fifty year old senior executive of a pharmaceutical company. Her latest flavor of the year separated from his wife who is also a former model.

This daughter and mother tandem had been doing it for several decades already, but with finesse. They change partners only when their original husbands die or just got tired of them, and left them, but not without turning over titles of their houses or condominiums and their luxury cars.

My friend mentioned to me a name of a famous young star who was reportedly sold by her mother to a Chinese businessman whose name got entangled with the issue of smuggling some years back. This young star is gorgeous. Her bloodline is not at all from the proletarian class. My friend says this young star actually came from one of the most respected and most popular celebrity clans in the Philippines. The star reportedly got two million pesos for two nights with the paedofiliac of a businessman in one of the hotels in Makati.

I remembered one female celebrity who also moonlighted as a high class prostitute. Her angelic face gives nothing away from her lucid job. No one suspects her as a member of the high mile club of mistresses and prostitutes because no one would believe that a woman with that angel of a face indulges in such illicit passions.

A year or two ago, that hotel where I had these conversations disappeared from the Makati skyline, obviously the owners of the land unappreciative of the historicity of the place and it being a cultural landmark of modern Filipino architectural design. With the demise of this iconic Locsin designed hotel landmark came with it these talks of a high mile club of mistresses.