Etiquette for Mistresses: An Interview with Jullie Yap-Daza by Maya Tuviera
Tags: Features, Philippines, Prose, Girl Up, Girls

Artwork by Sarah Chan

It was the Presidential election season, the year now lost upon her, when a rumor was swirling around in Jullie Yap-Daza’s circle. Of all the candidates up for election, only one did not have a mistress. The running joke was funny because lesbianism was not a popular concept back in those days.

The rumor stuck with Yap-Daza all day. It was like a shadow that had its own mind, sticking to you and hounding your every step. It did not speak, it did not answer questions, only asking more. What are you going to do about me?

Yap-Daza sat at her typewriter and rolled a piece of blank paper in, all doing so with a sort of silent urgency. After sorting out her workplace and straightening everything out perfectly, she stared at the paper blankly. For a few minutes, she treated the process as if she was writing an article- perhaps one of a prediction of impending earthquakes or a political mishap itching to be exposed. Then it hit her: this was not your average story.

So she let the words come to her and she punched them onto paper, her typewriter gasping for air. At the very top of her paper, the text bold and sure, read the words Etiquette for Mistresses. She was done soon after, and the column came out in the Times Journal.

Not even 24 hours after it hit the newsstands, Yap-Daza was barraged with phone calls. The first was from Joker Arroyo, the then executive secretary of former President Cory Aquino. He began their exchange with the following remark: “Jullie, what have you done?”

Yap-Daza had the whole senate talking. People were in a state of shock. It was a bold move, especially then, a time wherein call-out culture was merely a seed unfolding, largely in part due to the tilling of women like her. Another phone call came shortly after from the head of a multinational American company, coming to tell Jullie that she had “hit the motherload”, and asking when the book, the movie, the million-dollar franchise, would be available for purchase. She only laughed at the idea, which she remembered fondly months later when she received the call: a friend, ringing with the purpose of hearing a yes and nothing but, said: “Jullie, let’s make a book.”

So Etiquette for Mistresses was born, a literary piece like no other. When asked to summarize the book, Yap-Daza says that “it is a collection of women called the mistresses of men who are not free to love them back.”

For a deeper understanding of Yap-Daza’s definition of a mistress, she says that these are the women who are in love with someone married, and most of them (if not all) think that what they’ve got with their partner is “true love”, whether or not they know why their partner wears a ring.

Asking Yap-Daza what kind of women she met and put into the book, she says that you would have to read the book to know. Whether these women did it for financial reasons, because they were bored or lonely, or because they could not shake the undeniable truth that they were undoubtedly in love with a man who did not share that same wholly consuming obsession, their unique stories all merit a place in the book.

And even though the idea of having a mistress was common during that era, it was still not something one discussed openly. People looked down on mistresses, looked to them as people who should be hiding away in the big houses the men they loved bought for them in exchange for silence. Yet Yap-Daza ushers in a new perspective- that a hefty load of these women were in love, and that was it. She says it repeatedly in the book: he will never love you back. Some of these women did not do what they did for the thrill, or the money, or the benefits. Although knowingly being a third party in a relationship is undoubtedly wrong, Yap-Daza sheds light on a select few: the ones who did it because those men triggered the ka-boom in their hearts, the ones were willing to take any risks for the 1% chance that those men might leave their wives and their lives behind for those women.

One story is inspired by Yap-Daza’s friend, who told Yap-Daza of her grandmother’s rather unholy relationship with a priest. Yap-Daza recalls that she was not given the name of the grandmother, not because she was not told but because she did not want to know, so she gave them fictitious names in the book. Upon reading the story, Yap-Daza’s friend admits that the name used was her grandmother’s real name! The example is one of many encounters, stories, and situations. All of these stories had a place in Yap-Daza’s heart, for they “wouldn’t have been there” otherwise.

Five years later, Yap-Daza recalls a rather shocking encounter with a flight attendant on her business-class trip to Los Angeles. The flight attendant knelt beside her and began to ask her questions about what she wanted for dinner, what drink she would prefer with her red meat or poultry (tea and chicken, if you’d like to know) whether or not she was interested in having dessert, and the likes.

After Yap-Daza was done with her meal and her tray table was stowed away, the flight attendant returned, sheepishly clutching Etiquette for Mistresses behind her back. She asked Yap-Daza to autograph her copy, and Yap-Daza could only laugh as she was taken by surprise. Remember that this encounter occurred 5 years after the book’s release!

After signing the book, Yap-Daza jokingly asked the flight attendant if she was “the mistress of a pilot” (in what I hope was in some manner that did not seem inappropriate), to which the flight attendant replied “No, I am the wife!”, and began to tell Yap-Daza her story.

Encounters like these changed Yap-Daza’s life in inconceivable ways. She met many more wives and many more mistresses, who told her that her book changed their lives as well. She received many letters from these women, remarking that they should have learned their lessons earlier. One of these letters is reprinted in the sequel to Etiquette for Mistresses.

Upon asking Yap-Daza what lessons she hopes readers can learn from her book, she tells me to read the cover. “What is the full title?”, she asks.

I scramble to find a copy of the book and when I do, I realize: “Etiquette for Mistresses, and what wives can learn from them”, I read aloud.

She says that this is exactly the point: she wrote this book for wives as well — for wives whose husbands felt the need or desire to acquire these mistresses. Some of these mistresses are more loving, understanding, and caring for their partners than their wives are.Of course, she also wrote the book for mistresses, imparting lessons upon them. These lessons may seem harsh on paper, but many mistresses seemed to take them to heart. After all, it did change their lives.

Even Yap-Daza agrees that the piece is slightly controversial. In many ways, it was a product of its time. While some of the lessons that were imparted were timeless, not all manage to fit into the current worldview of feminism as we know it. In an interview with ABS-CBN News, Yap-Daza says this:

“I didn’t mean to condone mistresses or to glorify them, but being an observer of society, a student of human nature like Agatha Christie, I felt that somebody had to speak and tell their stories from their point of view, without condemning, just to bring out their stories because maybe 50% of the mistresses in my book are my friends, or friends of my friends.”

She adds, “I didn’t think it was a taboo subject. I didn’t write it in a way to glorify them and put them in a saintly status.”

Reading a piece like Etiquette for Mistresses shows us how feminism has changed radically throughout the years, and how we do not always need to be the “perfect feminists” to advance towards the feminist’s movements goals. The book does not directly admonish the men in this situation. It speaks of men like they will not change, feeding from the old adage that boys will be boys. It does not ask “why are these men incapable of staying committed?” or “why aren’t these men seen as the problem?” The book was written for mistresses- and wives- in mind, but not husbands. And in spite of the fact that this is not exactly what the bigger picture of feminism now is, the book made waves in its time for being a shocker. In fact, some say that its new take on feminism and call-out culture is exactly why Etiquette for Mistresses made the impact it did- it was a kick in the gut, but it was the kick in the gut that women all over needed for them to get up, and for the lump in their throat to leave and for their voices to finally, finally be heard.