Fiction by Gabriel Lampert (gabriel.nmsu@gmail.com)
Updated 24 August 2021
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I am currently working on 5 stories:
Hummingbird – 2000 words. What if you could stop time for an hour or so? What if you found out you couldn’t? Dances around sex, none in the story. Set in Philadelphia in 1959 / 1981.
Hostage – 3100 words. Filling in a chapter of Genesis that seems to be missing. Allusions to sex. Set in Egypt during Joseph’s reign as vizier.
The Year of Cold – 28,000 words. Love affair across an ethnic divide, set in the Middle East, about 10,000 years ago.
Crna Gora – 5,000 words. Love affair across ethnic divide, set in present-day San Francisco, with backstory in the destruction of Yugoslavia (1992).
Metempsychosis – 1,000 words. Encounter with a strange being. Includes sex. Ethereal.
If you’d like to be a beta tester for any of them, email me at this address:
gabriel.nmsu@gmail.com
In press: “A Nice Day,” about a man on the spectrum taking a taxi to visit a friend, will be published in March 2022 by Sin Fronteras.
Older work:
“No Room at the Inn,” 1574 words, memoir, a critical moment during my time in Israel, 1971. Read
“Options,” 4033 words, set on the road from New Mexico to San Francisco in 2009, with a 40-year flashback inside. No sex, but body parts mentioned. Please read!
“Money Shot,” 3507 words, set in 2014, on a road trip back from San Francisco to New Mexico to reclaim a heritage. Sexually explicit. Please read!
Short short stories (About 2000 words or fewer)
“In the Land of Karl,” 2300 words: How roommates, human and canine, work to keep it together in San Francisco. Read
“The Bridge,” set in geologic time, is the story of Lucy’s great-aunt as she explores her changing world, one earthquake at a time. Location: North Africa, between the Atlas Mountains and what is now the Mediterranean Sea. 1400 words. Read
“Dumb Animal,” was part of an anthology, Take Tea With Turing, launched by Edinburgh University’s School of Informatics in late 2012 as part of their celebration for Alan Turing’s Centenary. And the text of the story is here: Read. 947 words.
“Mister Dog,” 2000 words. The ghost of a dog visits his former companion. Read here
“Interruption” is set in present-day San Francisco, 330 words. Read
In “Queerbait” an attempted gay-bashing doesn’t quite work out as planned. No sex, but threats of violence. Based on a story I heard in the 1990’s. Set in Las Cruces, 1500 words. First published in Evergreen Chronicles. Read
“El Baile” — conflict resolution in a Mexican restaurant, Las Cruces, 1968. 856 words. Read
“Wait Till Your Father Comes Home” pays tribute to a father’s ingenuity. Philadelphia, 1958. 439 words. Read
Stories
“Open Map” is a gay love story: an older man and a mysterious stranger, sexual activity only sketched at. Set in San Francisco, present day. 5204 words. Read
“Two Midrashim” are commentaries on the Sodom story and the novella about Joseph and his brothers, 5500 words, in the tradition of the Jewish midrash. Read
“Dignity” is based on events in 1952 and 1978 in Carlsbad, NM. A gay firefighter who dies in the line of duty gets his headstone. Story first published in Blithe House Quarterly, Summer 2000. Sexual innuendo. 5900 words. Read
“Ricochet” is about two high-school boys in Las Cruces, present day, no sex but some four-letter words, 4497 words, happy ending. Was published in most recent issue of Jonathan. http://siblingrivalrypress.bigcartel.com/product/pre-order-jonathan-issue-10-a-journal-of-queer-male-fiction-last-all-male-issue or Read Here
In “Buenos Aires,” a teenager tries to unravel a mystery, has a mystical revelation on the nature of relationships. Set in Philadelphia, ca. 1958, 2609 words. Read
“Journey” is a gay man’s imagined dialogue with his family. Philadelphia/New Mexico, 1995, 4150 words. First published in Response; used by the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies in its course, “The Jewish American Short Story in the 20th Century.” Read
“Such a Jew” — set in Israel, 1975, no sex but innuendo, 2150 words. First published in Blithe House Quarterly. Read
“Pendulum: Four Voices” — can someone be both gay and Jewish (in 1972, in Israel)? 6960 words. Only a soupçon of sex here. This is an experimental piece, narrated by the same person but at 4 levels of intimacy, told at different times. Read
Sexually explicit work (not useful for pornography, however)
“Bad Boy Campground,” about 11,500 words, is about a gay ghost cowboy in the Chiricahua Mountains in the 1880’s and a young gay couple in the 1970’s. Ardent sexual acts but not much talk of body parts. Read
“Playing With a Full Deck” describes building a relationship between two gay men, explicit, set in Las Cruces (and Organ), say 1995, 4350 words, happy ending! First published in RFD. Read
“Paco” is about the rise and fall of a relationship between two gay men, one in the closet, explicit, set in Las Cruces, 1984, 6372 words. Read
“No te Vayas” pictures a relationship between a gay and a straight man, explicit, Albuquerque, 1977, 4273 words. Read
“Venus de Milo” is a darkly sexual story, set in Las Cruces, 1985, with flashbacks to Amsterdam and Paris, 3034 words. First published (in a very different form) in Sin Fronteras. Read
“Reptile Triptych” is an exuberant hitchhiking tour through southern New Mexico in 1974. In those days, straight men found it easy to experiment sexually and still retain their straight identity. First published in Evergreen Chronicles. Readers tell me it’s a “fast, fun read.” 11,500 words.
Because this piece is so time- and space-specific, here is a glossary: Las Cruces — in south-central New Mexico, currently with 150,000 people in the area, at the time of the story, less than 50K, but still N.M.’s second largest city. T or C — local shorthand for Truth or Consequences, small town 75 miles due north of ‘Cruces. Ruidoso — resort community in the southern N.M. mountains, about 150 m northeast of ‘Cruces. In this part of the state, climate depends mostly on altitude: higher is wetter and cooler. Freak — self-identified member of the counter-culture. Stomp — cowboy, or cowboy wannabe. Alamogordo — small town 70 miles northeast of L.C. Cloudcroft — tiny resort community near Ruidoso, but higher up, almost due east of Alamogordo. High Rolls — tiny community halfway down the slope from Cloudcroft to Alamogordo.
Part I: “The Day the Sixties were Over” Read
Part II: “Who Doesn’t Know How to Ask” Read
Part III: “Terra Incognita” Read
“Invitation to the Dance:” Opening two chapters of a long work I’ve had a hard time with. It’s a love story that begins at a BDSM play party, so we see spanking and flogging and plain old sex. 4500 words. Read
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Children of the future age / Reading this indignant page
Know that in a former time / Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
— William Blake
In a Former Time 