A Quilt for David by Steven Reigns
The hidden history of a vulnerable gay man whose life and death was turned into tabloid fodder.
In a small conservative Florida town in the 1990s, eight patients alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David's gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news.
With a poet's eulogistic and psychological intensity, Steven Reigns recovers the life and death of this man who also stands in for so many lives destroyed not only by HIV, but a diseased society that used stigma against the most vulnerable. It's impossible not to make connections between this story and how the twenty-first century pandemic has also been defined by medical misinformation and cultural bias.
Inspired by years of investigative research into the lives of David and those who denounced him, Reigns has stitched together a hauntingly poetic narrative that retraces an American history, questioning the fervor of his accusers, and recuperating a gay life previously shrouded in secrecy and shame.
“For those who've forgotten or never heard of David Acer, the gay dentist accused of infecting Kimberley Bergalis and other patients, A Quilt For David is a searing recreation of that horrible chapter in the early stages of AIDS. Told in short, occasionally haiku-like entries, Reigns has done what literature should: put the reader into the mind, the suffering, of another human being. Stripped down to its essentials, this retelling of one man's terrible suffering is also a portrait of those who used him as a scapegoat because, given the times, they could.”
—Andrew Holleran, author of Dancer From Dance and Grief
"One of the most important roles a poet can assume is that of emotional historian. Reigns certainly understands that notion in this necessary and genre-bending book which powerfully blends poetry, non-fiction, and reportage to reexamine the maligned story of David Acer and arrive at a truer truth with compelling honesty and the utmost compassion for all."
—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love a Country
"This writing is energetic, alive, and uncensored. Steven Reigns has studied poetry and deeply researched a moment in history. A Quilt for David breaks traditional structure and cracks open what we thought we knew of the past. Through poetry and prose we glean a deep understanding into a life misunderstood and mischaracterized. Reigns goes to the mat to find out what really happened, and with his expert pacing we're right there with him."
—Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones and Three Simple Lines
"A stunning homage to people with AIDS, A Quilt for David is a wrenching investigation into the experience of 'the innocent victim': white straight women and closeted white men who had to retain an inhumane level of capitulation to patriarchy in order to be eligible for compassion. By unearthing the Kimberly Bergalis case from its tomb of ash, Steven Reigns reminds us how easy the path of false accusation remains, in this case at the expense of gay men with AIDS subjected to diabolical cruelties and exploitation. He reveals again how hypocrisy coheres communities by relying on cliches of femininity, bias, and repressive loyalties."
—Sarah Schulman, author of CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair
“Steven Reigns lifts David Acer thirty years after his death to show the naked cost of violent, unexamined public opinion around the catastrophe of AIDS. This poetry masterfully documents the tangle of hatred and lies haunting a generation of survivors. I am often grateful for what poems give to me, most especially the ones in this book."
—CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration
“Like so many of us born into the Age of AIDS, who saw the epidemic from childhood and grew up in a world forever changed by loss, Reigns is searching for the stories of our ancestors. This work is a glorious attempt to regain one of those stories; to ask what we do in the name of fear, and who is deemed worthy of our compassion. A brave, and harrowing recalculation of humanity in an inhuman time.”
—Justin Elizabeth Sayre, author of From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium
A Quilt for David is a work that hybridizes politics, queer social history, AIDS, and the latent puritanism of this country into a page turner that, despite a 30-year gap, feels fully, sickeningly contemporary. This book doesn't only echo our current political moment, it dissects it as it’s being born.”
—Jonathan D. Katz, activist, art historian, educator, and writer
“I found this an incredibly moving book. Reigns deals in hard truths, revisioning one man’s life and death, and our collective queer history.”
—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
"Much too long, suffering has been part of our collective queer legacy. We weather the storm of insult to character and seemingly irreconcilable injustice in tandem with the hope that the arc of time will bend towards justice; our time is now. A Quilt for David is a posthumous journal of vindication.”
—Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends
"With compassion and perspicacity, A Quilt for David unflinchingly investigates a sordid episode in homophobic history. The result is at once enraging, enlightening, shocking, and heartbreaking. Even people who don't read poetry or history will find it compelling."
—Alvin Orloff, Dog Eared Books, San Francisco
Publisher City Lights Publishers
Format Paperback
Pages 132
ISBN-10 0872868818
ISBN-13 9780872868816