The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship

In this collection of interrelated essays, Bronson Lemer explores companionship through the lens of a queer veteran, focusing on the difficulty of forming true connections with others, including a ＂battle buddy＂ during basic training, the people he meets while teaching in China, and the spirit of a long-dead older sister. Lemer uses lessons from popular culture and literature--the globe-trotting exploits of fictional criminal Carmen Sandiego, the sexual exploration in Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the expatriate longing in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, just to name a few--as a means to think more broadly about the role of the outsider and how we navigate aimlessness while searching for stability and meaning.

Lemer’s distinct take on the veteran’s story boldly engages the intersection of military narratives and queer culture, including examinations into the role of thirst traps in contemporary dating culture, the fears of long-term health damage caused by military service, and the ways in which intimate relationships can lead to a loss of self. Taken together, his essays illustrate how one queer veteran managed to carve out a path that led him, however awkwardly at times, closer to the person he wanted to be.

Bronson Lemer is the author of The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq. His work has appeared in Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, the Southeast Review, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers, and other publications. A McKnight Writing Fellow, he lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.