"Where are you from?" It's the question you wait your entire life for because it means you went somewhere.
When asked, you’re supposed to supply some sort of playful anecdote. To accompany the answer with a claim to a forefather or punk band or even a grocery chain that has its humble roots in your hometown soil. The also-from-theres. With Rockville, there's isn't an answer.
It’s not the kind of forsaken or fuckall nowhere that attracts eccentrics or cults. It just isn't. Neither North nor South. Squarely a piece of Mid-Atlantic that didn't grow up to become much. There's nothing remarkable about Rockville. It is a somewhere between somewheres. You have to take the Beltway to better things.
I could always hear the interstate from the house. See the sound wall and the signs directing motorists. I spent years listening to the sounds of other people going other places. The stomach growl of tankers. Eighteen wheelers. The air escaping whistle of motorcycles. The bubbling mufflers. Car horns bickering in what must be traffic. I'd think, keep going. Nothing to see here.
I'm not sure why Rockville was put on the map other than to offer something to go around. A crosshatch of roads with houses taking up the in-between. Bricks and siding. Every neighborhood has the same basic configuration. Front lawn, front door, hall closet, basement, bedroom, wood floor, storm doors, space for cars. Lawn ornaments, dogs on leashes, the swim team riding their bikes to practice. Inescapably suburban.
The boundaries could be tested but what's the point. The cops have nothing to do but bust the teenagers and the teenagers have nothing to do but get busted. Some shoplifted. Took books without paying. Some took pills. One wrote "don't" on a stop sign. When I first saw it, I couldn’t help but agree.
REM wrote a song called, "Don't Go Back To Rockville" and I've yet to prove it wrong. In 4:33, they said what I'd always suspected. Rockville was shit and someone else knew it He asks, in lyrics, his love interest to stay with him. Not go back to Rockville, not "waste another year." Lucky her, I thought. To be wanted. To not be in Rockville.
We were all her, a girl getting off a bus from elsewhere. Or at least we could be, would be. Stuck in a loop of returning. We were convinced. It was our future. I wanted it and I hadn't even left yet. But I would eventually and then someone would say to me, "Don't go back to Rockville."
So I did. I went and did not come back. For semesters, then summers, eventually years. And the elsewheres were as fast and crowded as the rest of my CD collection promised. I lived in a city where bands got their start, stars bought apartments, and no one knew where Rockville was.
But there were holidays and birthdays and spring break with no money to go elsewhere. One thing Rockville has going for it was it was a hell of a lot cheaper than places that had earned their spot in history. I would find myself in line for the $25 bus home, the REM refrain playing in my head, cautioning against the visit, "don't go back to Rockville" and board.
I’d circle the idea for years. Never really staying, but not quite leaving either. I knew better than to go back with more than an overstuffed overnight bag. But still, I felt the pull of leftovers, radio stations, apple blossoms. Was I nostalgic? Or did I just need to touch everything, turn it over in my hand, and assure myself it was still boring? That I was right in leaving?
On my latest visit, I lay in the backyard, watching the turkey vultures circle roadkill and in that hypnosis mistake the constant hum of highway traffic for the lapping of a distant ocean. Where is that rock-strewn beach and how do I get to it? Maybe that’s where I go next. I think of the song’s last verse, "I know it might sound strange but I believe you'll be coming back before too long." And I believe it too.
Zoe Grace Marquedant is a nonfiction writer. She earned her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. Her work has been featured in the Analog Cookbook, VEE, SIZL, and Talk Vomit. She is currently a fellow with the Research Ecologies & Archival Development lab in Zurich.