Luke Rolfes: We are here today with Bronson Lemer, who has a brand-new memoir out from University of Wisconsin Press entitled The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship. These essays focus mostly on Lemer’s life post-military service, how he strives at first for an itinerant existence in search of himself, his identity, and personal fulfillment. And then, later on in his journey, he finds a sense of something close to permanence. Thanks for spending some time with us, Bronson!
Bronson Lemer: Thank you so much for having me, Luke!
LR: Your first book, The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq, focuses on being a gay soldier under the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Can you talk about the genesis of The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship? Did you intentionally set out to write more of a “post-service” book?
BL: I did not intentionally intend for this to be a “post-service” book. At first, I just wanted to write about this wayward feeling I kept having whenever I started a new relationship or moved somewhere new or found myself trying to navigate a new place. I knew right away that there was something about this feeling that I wanted to probe and investigate, so I started writing down some of the experiences where I felt lost or untethered or just disconnected from other people, places, and ideas. It was only later, once I had a bunch of these essays drafted, that I discovered that there was this narrative thread running through them and many of them were getting at how this wayward feeling manifests itself, especially for veterans and others trying to reintegrate.
LR: What were you reading, watching, or listening to during the writing of this book? Do you have any art, movies, books, albums you think of as companion pieces to this memoir?
BL: I realized early on that the voice of these essays was openly queer. So, I found myself drawn to narrative nonfiction that had some element of queerness to it, either the author identified as queer, or they were making some commentary on queer culture and queer ideas. I was very much inspired by the queer essays by Alexander Chee, Sabrina Imbler, Michael Arceneaux, Evan James, Samanatha Irby, and others. Expressing this queerness didn’t come easy in my first book, so learning from these other queer voices helped me express what I wanted to say with these essays.
LR: The essays in The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship don’t appear in true chronological order. As well, the individual essays are often narrative, yet they are able to jump through time via a specific topical vehicle, such as Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, the idea of making a home, or why you would mistake someone’s gender identity. Can you articulate your craft thoughts on organization? As a creative nonfiction writer, do you privilege topic over linearity?
BL: In my first book, I very much privileged linearity over topic. I knew the frame for that story, so it was easier to stick to a roughly chronological structure. For this book, I didn’t want that kind of restriction. I wanted these essays to breath a bit more and I wanted to focus on the topic or idea and not worry about where it fell on the timeline.
LR: To my reading, you seem inspired by place in many of these essays---on a ship at sea over the Mariana Trench, a town in rural China, the farmlands of North Dakota, an airbase in Iraq. Do you think of these essays as “place” essays?
BL: Place is pretty important in this book. One of the themes is how we form connections, and I found that one way I do that is through understanding a place. This probably has something to do with my background in journalism, where place can be particularly important, but also the fact that I have a difficult time forming relationships with people, so my way in is often through understanding the place I find myself in. This idea was especially important in these essays, which cover a time-period where I didn’t particularly feel grounded in one place or another.
LR: I’m curious: Some of these essays specifically reference your military service. Others do not. Is it difficult to write an essay outside the context of your service, or does your status as a veteran always factor in, even if only a small way, to your reflection on these experiences?
BL: I keep telling myself that I’m done with writing about my military experience, but what I’m realizing is that I will never be done with that experience. My service was such a pivotal experience for me, and it was wrapped up in my acknowledgement of my queerness, so I feel like it will always color my writing in some way.
LR: Are there many veteran texts focusing on post-service life? Would you encourage more veteran writers to write these essays?
BL: I would love to read more stories from veterans writing about post-service experiences. I recognize that writing about these experiences, especially ones dealing with mental health or substance abuse, can be challenging, so I know not everyone is ready, able, or willing-to write about these experiences.
The two post-service nonfiction books that come to mind are My Life as a Foreign Country by Brian Turner and The After: A Veteran’s Notes on Coming Home by Michael Ramos.
LR: Can you articulate for vets interested in writing these kinds of essays the payoffs of exploring post-service life through writing?
BL: For some, I think our service feels like a defining characteristic of who we are. It is definitely a part of me and I am proud of my service, but it isn't the only part of me. I think writing these kinds of post-service essay and stories are important because it shows other vets that we can write about more than just our military experience. We don't have to only write about military experiences.
LR: Let’s dive into a few specific pieces. The opening essay, “Gumshoe,” is one of my favorites. In it, you discuss your older sister who died the day she was born---a subject that was kept hidden from you and your siblings. You approach this through the lens of detective-work and your love of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? books. Can you tell us about this essay and why you chose that specific lens?
BL: The Carmen Sandiego books I loved as a kid are designed as mysteries where you act as a “gumshoe” investigator to solve the capers done by Carmen and her gang. When I started writing that essay, I realized that my experience of figuring out (or, in some ways, not figuring out) the story of my older sister was like what I was doing in those books. I was trying to find the clues that would lead me to the truth about my sister and sometimes I didn’t find enough clues and ended up at a “dead end.” The end result was a sort of “hermit crab essay” where the structure of the essay was inspired by the content.
LR: Another favorite of mine is called “Battle Buddy.” This essay appears early in the memoir, and it is about basic training and your lack of connection to the other soldiers. Each soldier is paired with a “battle buddy” to watch out for. To my ear, the disconnect you felt by not being able to click with a “battle buddy” seems to echo through the rest of the book. Can you talk about this piece and how it contextualizes the others?
BL: Writing “Battle Buddy” was an interesting experience because the essay just flowed out of me. It was such an easy essay to get on the page because I think I’d been bottling it up for so long and once I tapped into it the words just came rushing out. No other essay in the book came out in the same way. Most of the essays took several drafts to complete. But I think the ease with which “Battle Buddy” came together told me that there was something special about it. It helped me think about other connections or attempts at connection. For a period, the entire book was titled “Battle Buddy” because I thought the idea of finding those people, places, and ideas that click with you was threaded through the entire collection.
LR: I love “Sea Legs.” This essay discusses your experience teaching aboard the USS Chancellorsville. It sets up, in its culmination, a showdown between you and the ocean. This essay reminds me of a cure I once heard for seasickness---if you throw up, eat again, and keep repeating this until you don’t throw up anymore. How long was it between the experience of teaching on this vessel and writing the essay about it? And was this experience easy or difficult to make sense of?
BL: Writing “Sea Legs” was almost the opposite of experience of writing “Battle Buddy.” That essay took forever because it took me a while figure out what I wanted to say about that experience. I often write from notes, and I had a lot of notes and journal entries from my time on the USS Chancellorsville. I found so much of the experience teaching on the ship to be interesting, but I didn’t realize that I was really writing about confronting fears and examining the things you think you understand, only to realize that you never really understood those things in the first place. Teaching on that ship was my first experience of going back to the military after my time in the army, and I found the experience comforting in some ways and also completely foreign (a lot like how I see the ocean). This essay was an attempt to write into that idea.
LR: The essay “Breathe In” highlights the toll that military service has left on you and other veterans. This essay discusses burn pits, highly utilized in recent conflicts, and the long-term damage they can cause to veterans’ health. I find fear to be a powerful emotion in writing, as it can morph into and exacerbate many other emotions and/or take over a narrative. In this essay, how did you balance a very real and tangible fear with the message you want to convey?
BL: I knew I needed to include some background into what burn pits are and how people are getting sick from being around them, but I didn’t want the piece to read too much like a news report or a Wikipedia entry. My solution was to ground the essay in a place (the Minneapolis VA) and a story (my first visit to a VA). This helped to keep the essay (and the ideas) grounded and helped me walk this line between story and rant or opinion piece.
LR: A few grab bag questions: Did you have to make any “tough cuts” or “last minute additions” in the final editing? Was there a piece in here that you really wrestled with? Do you have one that came easier than the rest?
BL: As I mentioned earlier, “Battle Buddy” was a breeze to write and “Sea Legs” took the longest to write. I also really struggled with the essay “You Think I’m a Boy” which is about mistaking a student’s gender identity. I always learn so much from my students, so thinking about how my students in China presented themselves and contrasting that with how I presented myself while I was over there was a useful experience for me as a writer.
LR: Do you want to shout out any vet writers we should be reading?
BL: There are so many veteran writers doing good work, but to name a few: Brian Turner, Tonee Mae Moll, Katherine Schifani, Máel Embser-Herbert, Richard Brookshire, Michael Ramos, Jacqlyne Cope, Lauren Kay Johnson, Ricardo Ruiz.
LR: What’s next for your writing? Any new projects in the works?
BL: I am working on a memoir about the loss of friendship, learning to navigate ambiguity, and figuring out how to move through an increasingly chaotic world, inspired by seeing a missing person poster for someone I served with in Iraq.
LR: Thanks again, Bronson, for discussing your book with us. This is a fantastic memoir! Please check out The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship. Order here: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/T/The-Lonely-Veteran-s-Guide-to-Companionship