A Quilt for David

In 1990 a young HIV-positive woman in Florida claimed she was a virgin and that her infection came from her gay, dying dentist. The media believed her, seven others came forward, and a monster was born. PREFACE From 2000 to 2013 I provided HIV testing, education, and counseling to people living in Florida and California. I personally tested over 9,000 people. One day, an anxious young woman came in after a dental procedure, fearful that she could have contracted HIV. I gave her my standard educational talk, using colloquial language, explaining that HIV is transmitted through five fluids: cum, pre-cum, vaginal fluid, blood, and breast milk. I told her how HIV needed a window into the body like a cut or sore. It turned out that her results were negative, which didn’t surprise me. But her fear reminded me of a story I saw when I was in the eighth grade. A young woman appeared on A Current Affair and Inside Edition. She said she was a virgin and that she got HIV from her dentist. Another woman, much older, made the same accusation. I was certified by health departments in Florida and California; I gave presentations at national conferences and was trained by some of the best educators in the country. I couldn’t imagine how HIV would be transmitted from a dentist to a patient. Even if the dentist didn’t wear gloves, passing on the virus seemed virtually impossible. HIV is a very weak virus outside of the body and dies quickly. Being exposed to HIV doesn’t always mean infection. So I wondered, how did those two women get it? Did a psychopathic dentist purposefully infect his patients? I thought of the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, victimizing his patients, blood splattering everywhere. I also wondered if those two women told the truth. I can’t count how many clients I counseled who got infected while cheating on their spouses, infected them, and then feigned ignorance about what happened. I comforted many of those spouses, bound to secrecy by HIPAA confidentiality. There was also a young man, just eighteen years old, who infected his pregnant girlfriend. His own transmission came from a rape at a detention center, which he disclosed only to me, fearing ridicule if he told anyone else. There are lots of reasons to hold onto a secret; sometimes, in keeping that secret, someone gets blamed for something they didn’t do, and a history gets written. In 2008, I started searching for the name of the dentist, Dr. David Johnson Acer, and the women who accused him of giving them HIV: Kimberly Ann Bergalis, who claimed to be a virgin, and a grandmother, Barbara Webb. I was amazed to find such a trove of tributes, articles, artwork, photos, a play, and references to books dedicated to Kimberly Bergalis. There were statues of her, a beach bearing her name, and a cover story in People maga- zine. Very little was written about David Acer, the dentist. Our knowledge of HIV transmission has progressed over the course of the epidemic, and yet the story of the dentist victimizing his patients with AIDS in 1990 seemed immutable. I found only one photo of David. I couldn’t find quotes from him or his family. Who were these people and what really happened? I wanted to find out, and I wanted to tell that story. I flew to Florida, where I went through courthouse  documents and researched at public and university libraries. I wanted to talk with David’s family, friends, coworkers, and patients. In 2012, I ran an ad in a local paper with that one photo of David, and said I was interested in talking with people who knew him. My phone rang often. Many called never having met him but wanted to give me their opinions or ask me why I was curious about a murderer. I received kinder calls from patients who reported benign memories of him being quiet and generous, giving discounts on dental work, or giving away extra theater tickets. I talked with employees who worked for him,  and  asked about the cleanliness of the office, the dentist’s disposition, and his patients. I met with neighbors, good friends, acquaintances, and eventually I found a man who had sex with David. The only words I encountered that came directly from David were in a public letter written from his hospice bed, days before his death: It is with great sorrow and some surprise that I read that I am accused of transmitting the HIV virus. I am a gentle man, and I would have never intentionally exposed anyone to this disease. I have cared for people all my life, and to infect anyone with this disease would be contrary to everything I have stood for. David sounded kind, and his office didn’t sound like a little shop of horrors. But the story about him was horrific. A high-powered lawyer, who represented college student Kimberly, was clearly aware of the potential for settlement money in the part of Florida known as The Treasure Coast. There was a $3 million malpractice insurance to be considered, and whatever could be extracted from the health insurance company that referred clients to David’s now-closed practice. Eventually, checks were written for $999,999 to Kimberly, Barbara, and another accuser Richard. These checks were followed by an undisclosed sum of money, rumored to be $1.5 million, from the insurance company. But the crusades of the Rolls-Royce driving lawyer and "I did nothing wrong" Kimberly persisted. They wanted to mandate that every HIV positive healthcare worker disclose their status to patients. Even though, aside from their allegations, there were no other reported cases of dental transmission of HIV. The stigmatizing amendment, offered by Senator Jesse Helms, mandated $10,000 fines and a ten-year minimum prison sentence for healthcare workers who failed to disclose their HIV status. Kimberly, weighing seventy pounds, traveled eighteen hours on an Amtrak train, three months after having a priest give her last rites, and spoke on the Congressional House floor. Her testimony was twenty seconds and fifty-seven words. The decision could jeopardize the livelihood of HIV positive healthcare workers, some of them accidentally infected while doing their job. The mandate did not go through. Years after Kimberly’s death, her parents only go to a dentist with a posted sign saying he’s HIV negative, they get tested before visits. While articles, essays, and books have been dedicated to the theory that David Acer is a killer, the facts don’t bear that out. The more I discovered about this story, the more it appeared that Kimberly, Barbara, and the six others who blamed  David  for their infection could have been like so many of my patients who didn’t disclose their own full stories of HIV infection. Each one of them—Richard Driskill, an unidentified man, Michael Buckley, Sherry Johnson, Lisa Shoemaker, and John Yecs, Jr.— had their own circumstances and motivations to blame outside risk factors, to blame David Acer. Those facts, details, and data were overlooked, and an unquestioned narrative became historical record. I decided to tell David’s story as a way to counter the treachery of his end of life. Poetry wasn’t just my beloved form of writing; it felt the best way to assemble the sparse information that existed without adding speculative details. The discrediting facts about the dental infection story were overridden by public emotions elicited by Kimberly’s narrative. Poetry and poetic language compel our emotions. What if, through poetry, I could offer an equally empathic and compassionate view of David? These poems also serve as a way to memorialize him and what his story tells us about humanity, homophobia, and our history. David Acer and Kimberly Bergalis died over thirty years ago. Some of the terribleness of that time may have been forgotten or unknown to readers of this book today. AZT was an AIDS drug that was fast-tracked for FDA approval, only to be determined more detrimental than helpful. Kaposi's Sarcoma or KS are disfiguring sores commonly associated with HIV infection and were therefore stigmatizing for those afflicted. For all the people involved, and all the stories that were told, I've found that there were some well-meaning journalists and also sloppy researchers, unscrupulous lawyers, invasive private detectives, and people out for money. There was hatred of gay people, repressive parents, people wanting a perfect victim, mob mentality, and collective anxiety about HIV and what it meant about you if you contracted it. What happened in that dental office and in that small town in Florida was happening everywhere. Who gets believed? Whose story do we prioritize over others? What risks do we forgive and what risks do we punish? These are urgent questions relevant to our current pandemic as well. Every detail in this book is based on fact. I decided not to use poetic license to avoid adding fiction to a story already loaded with misinformation. In the course of my research, David became real to me. In some poems I address him directly. I tried to shred previous ideas, to remove the stuffing, and rip out ill-aligned seams. I hope these patchwork poems give you an idea of that time and another way to remember David Acer. —Steven Reigns, March 2021