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.

Chris Stedman is a writer, podcaster, and professor who teaches in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, MN. He is the author of the books IRL, Faitheist, and the forthcoming Nothing in Particular, as well as the writer and host of Unread. Chris is the founder of Good Judy Productions, a new podcast studio based in Minneapolis committed to telling stories that, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, take the “view from below,” or “the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.” The studio’s first series is currently in production and will be distributed by iHeartPodcasts. In addition to his podcast work, Chris has written popular essays for outlets including the Atlantic, Pitchfork, BuzzFeed, VICE, the Washington Post, and others.