Subject: Submission: Going Once, A Review
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 09:58:16 -0500

A Submission From

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592 words

	"WE LOVED THINGS"

	Going Once: A Memoir of Art, Society, and Charity by Robert Woolley.  Simon
& Schuster.  223 pages.  $23.00.

							Hal Gordon
							4853 Cordell Ave. #920
							Bethesda, MD  20814

	Want a bird house designed by a prominent architect?  A bit part in a Mike
Nichols movie?  Elton John to set your lyrics to music?  Robert Woolley, the
"Fantasy Auctioneer" of Sotheby Parke Bernet can arrange it all for you if
you'd care to bid the paltry sum of $11,000 or so. 

	Woolley, who views his life as "one great serendipity", got his start when
an undergraduate chum recommended him for a job at one of New York's
swankiest antique shops, A La Vielle Russie.  Dusting Faberge eggs and other
czarist knick-knacks soon made him an authority on period objects.  It also
made him, by his own admission, a little bit of a snob and more than a little
bit of a huckster.  Whenever well-heeled customers blanched at the price tag
of an item they could well afford, Woolley would purr: "Well, nothing in this
shop is expensive.  We just happen to have a lot of things that cost a lot of
money."

	From there, it was a short step to Sotheby's and fame as an auctioneer.  For
the next quarter-century, he moved in a glittering world of wealth,
privilege, and art.  His sale of the Andy Warhol collection fetched $25
million, and he did well by the Rockefeller family and other
socially-prominent acquisitors.  He also "married up" to Jeffrey Childs, the
scion of a wealthy Connecticut family, with whom he shared a passion for
collecting antiques.  "We loved things", says Woolley.

    	After an extended courtship, the two gay men ended up sharing a posh
Central Park apartment, complete with an aviary  stocked with exotic birds.
 Even the worms were gourmet; the doting couple had twenty thousand mailed to
them every two weeks from a company in Ohio.  It was a pretty, pampered
existence, and Wooley gossips casually about their encounters with Britain's
Princess Margaret and royalty of other kinds.

	Predictably, fate came down on the contented pair like the final descent of
the auctioneer's gavel.  Jeffrey, who had already lost a leg to a war wound
sustained in Vietnam,  developed AIDS.  In one of the most poignant passages
of the book, Woolley recounts how, in July of 1987, a millionaire's private
plane whisked him from La Guardia to Southampton, Long Island to conduct an
auction for the Parrish Art Museum.

  	It should have been a triumphant evening for him.  There he was, tuxedoed
and commanding, mischievously goading tycoons Al Taubman and William Paley
into bidding against each other.  Yet through it all he wanted only to race
back to the bedside of his dying lover.

	To his credit, Woolley was active in raising huge sums for AIDS causes
before he was personally affected by the disease.  But when his lover died,
and he tested positive himself, he redoubled his efforts.  Ironically, he
became infected because he used lambskin condoms.  These are the most
expensive condoms money can buy, and are effective against pregnancy.  But,
as Woolley learned too late, they are too porous to prevent the transmission
of the AIDS virus.  In the end, having the best of everything proved a mixed
blessing.

	Woolley declares that nothing is more distracting than falling in love with
a beautiful object, and nothing is more beguiling than bidding for it against
others who love it too.  This is a book for accumulators, art lovers, and
people who, like Andy Warhol, "have a black belt in shopping."  But there's a
human story here as well for any gay man attempting to cope with life and
love in the age of AIDS.
_____________________________
Hal Gordon is a freelance writer residing in Bethesday, Maryland.