IN THE TANGLED HISTORY of the horror and panic of the AIDS years, the story of Florida dentist David Acer, who was accused in the early 1990s of infecting several patients with HIV, continues to haunt us. Not since Randy Shilts popularized the now debunked “Patient Zero” theory in his book And the Band Played On had the U.S. media worked itself into such a lather of judgment and scapegoating over a named gay individual. The pitchforks and torches were raised high. At a time like today, when people are being shot in supermarkets for asking someone to wear a mask, we know all too well what this pandemic fever feels like.
Steven Reigns, the first designated Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, has written a remarkable book of poems that explores this complicated and sad story, A Quilt for David (City Lights Publishers). No stranger to tending the memory, reputation, and indeed the graves of important gay figures, Reigns’ psychologically deft and charged poems sketch a sympathetic portrait of a gay man caught in the terror net during the worst of the AIDS years. Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, said this of A Quilt for David:
“One of the most important roles a poet can assume is that of emotional histo-rian. Reigns certainly understands that notion in this necessary and genre-bending book.”
Reigns’ book has made me see how often poetry has searched for some kind of “poetic justice” as it interrogates and engages with history and injustice. Oscar Wilde finally delivers his verdict in The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl pleads the case for Carl Solomon and a generation. Stephen Vincent Benét’s John Brown’s Body puts the Civil War in grim perspective, and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen indicts American racism. This is pretty powerful company to keep, and I wanted to dig into it with poet Steven Reigns.
Tim Miller: I’m struck how passionately your book advocates for David Acer, and in a way that gives him his day in court that he never had. Does the idea of poetic justice resonate for you? Steven Reigns: I love hearing that because David died when there was only one accuser, Kimberly Bergalis. The others came later. They filed lawsuits against his malpractice insurance and their own health insurance company that referred them. Both companies saw a long, expensive legal battle and settled out of court. So, A Quilt for David might be his only day in court. I’m not sure this book embodies poetic justice, because there’s no ending or update that has virtue being rewarded. My drive to write it was fueled by my sense of justice and indignation about the unfairness. TM: What drew you to take up the brief for this complicated and sensationalized chapter in AIDS history? SR: The story of this virgin getting HIV from her dentist became fact instead of folklore. I have strong feelings about marginalization, misunderstanding, and miscasting. I started researching the situation out of curiosity. Everything I read was saturated in homophobia and AIDS-phobia. It became clear that things were not fair and balanced. What happened to David Acer could happen to any of us. LGBTQ people’s low status in society makes us susceptible to abuses of power, and this was especially so in the early ’90s. The case deserved reconsideration. However, the record is riddled with misinformation. I didn’t want to add to this and chose not to take poetic license. Every detail and fact in the book is documented somewhere, through readings or my own research. I wanted to tell the story without fictionalizing it. TM: You could have told the story in a nonfiction narrative book. What drew you to approach this subject in a volume of poems? SR: Poetry is the language of our emotions. When looking back, I feel as if the facts were always there in this case, and that emotions had taken precedence. It was as if Kimberly Bergalis’ accusations went unquestioned. What if, through poetry, I could help to elicit more empathy for David? Both Kimberly and David have died, and yet she was on the cover of People, has a beach named after her, and a public statue, and he has books devoted to the theory that he was a serial killer. TM: It is all a terribly sad story with conflicting narratives and competing sorrows. In the writing, did you also find empathy for Kimberly? SR: Everything about the situation is heartbreaking. Everyone felt pressured, scared, judged—the failing of their body and their slipping mortality. Kimberly was not in an easy situation. I already had empathy for her and then read Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse. Schulman explains the dynamic of fearing community abandonment when sharing details that might not make one the “perfect victim.” There was an HIV transmission study in which people reported when they believed they were infected. Researchers discovered that though there were numerous opportunities for transmission, people focused on one situation because it offered them something emotionally. Kimberly ultimately spoke on the House floor advocating for a mandate that HIV-positive healthcare workers disclose their status to patients. This would have jeopardized the livelihood of many HIV-positive people and was unwarranted. There were eight accusers who blamed David Acer for their HIV infection. Of the nine (including David), only two are still living. These deaths were before the cocktail, which led to some lifting of HIV shame. Life was not easy for any one of these people, nor for their families. TM: It was truly such an awful time. The AIDS panic was so scary, and people—and media—wanted “innocent victims” in opposition to “Patient Zero” super-villains. Your book brings so much compassion to Acer and dares to imagine his human complexity. As a gay man, what kind of connection did you feel with him? SR: Everything I read about him or heard from people who knew him was so humanizing. David Acer was concerned about being out and ostracized in his small town and would travel to Fort Lauderdale and Miami on the weekends to socialize openly. I moved to Florida three years after Acer died and unknowingly went to the same bars that Acer would frequent. A straight dentist wrote a 300-page book citing David’s secrecy as indicating a “double life” and surmised that he was a serial killer. This twisting of character traits could happen to any of us when there isn’t an understanding of history and the pressure one felt to suppress their gayness. Florida is its own ecosystem environmentally and socially. So, it was especially meaningful to have Florida writer and G&LR regular Andrew Holleran praise the book. TM: Your title invokes the AIDS Quilt and the panel that Acer never got. Even Roy Cohn got a panel. That seems to me to be a central job description for a poet: to be able to find the right words at the gravesite. What would you hope this Quilt you have crafted can tell a reader? SR: Cohn’s quilter did a great job encapsulating his complexity with the words “Bully. Coward. Victim.” I’m not sure what spare words I’d use to describe David Acer. I am sure that his life is worthy of the fabric, thread, and time for a panel. It saddened me to learn that one was never made for him. During that painful time, and even today, his family chose silence. This means there weren’t dissenting voices for the narrative that high-power attorneys were spinning. I hope the factual and emotional book I’ve written helps people to see more fully what happened at that time. After Richard A. McKay’s book Patient Zero, and now the recent documentary, the public is finally understanding the fallacy of Gaëtan Dugas as “patient zero.” I look forward to that being true for David Acer as well. I hope that we in the LGBT community will stop accidentally sharing erroneous information about our own people and perpetuating the villainization. Tim Miller is a performer and the author of A Body in the O.
