Relentless Aaron writes books. In fact, Relentless Aaron writes a lot of books. Thirty-three in all, he tells me as he stands next to the line for the weekend prison bus which leaves from 58th street and 7th Avenue on Manhattan. He has a selection of his hefty corpus fanned out up and down both his arms – about 10 different books in all, which run from the saucily titled “Extra Marital Affairs” to the Harlem gangster epic “Pushed”. It is bitingly cold but he is undetered. “Anyone want books?” he hollers to the waiting crowds.
“I have a quota of a $1,000 of sales a day,” he says. “I’m under today, but I expect to make it before I go home.” I fail to see anyone buy a book while we stand together for half an hour, but across his books are emblazoned august straps such as “New York Times bestseller”. “I do everything,” he says, “erotica, murder mystery, psycho dramas, self-help.”
Relentless Aaron, real name Dewitt Gilmore, began his writing career in 1997 while serving a seven-year sentence in a federal prison in New Jersey. By the time he left he had over 30 manuscripts. “That’s why I’m here,” he says with a cocksure smile. “For the the people in prison, you never forget what happened, and I still feel a connection to where I once was.”
Relentless seems more interested in himself than any of the tired travellers do. It’s 10.30 p.m. now and the line to the van which dispenses tickets is shortening only at a trickling speed. The company running the operation is Prison Gap which has been going for 32 years; it started as an affordable method for people in New York City to visit their loved ones upstate which is a seven or eight hour journey by road. The price for the ride to Wende Correctional Facility is $60 and tonight about 45 are scheduled to board at 11.00 p.m.
The whole scene is being abjudicated by 38-year-old Tyrone Simons who is part of the four-person team who run Prison Gap from a small office on George Longwood Ave. in the Bronx. “It’s a family-run business,” he says. “Ray Simons – the CEO and founder – is my uncle. He used to be a janitor and went to prison twice. When he was in he realised how difficult it was for his family and friends to visit him, so when he got out started this business – in 1975 – and was sponsored by his brother.”
Simons says the business exploded from 1979 to 1990 but since then there has been a steady decline. “We used to get 1,200 people on 15 or 16 buses, but it’s shrunk now.” Why? “I think because of economic factors and public apathy.” He looks quizzical. “The visitation scene is not what it used to be.”
The medley of characters and personalities hanging around the station are intriguing. There are lots of black faces, young and old, mostly female: children going to visit their dads, wives and girlfriends going to see their loved ones, young men and women going to see their parents. A real buzz of energy infuses the whole arena, as people gossip and jossle.
It is time to board the bus at 11.00 p.m. and the crowds move over to the adjacet street from where it departs. The kids run around the ankles of their parents, and the driver opens up the underside of the bus, the riders sling their bags right in. There is lull in activity as people are finally settled in their seats. There is a volunteer who is trying to organise things; she is riding upstate to visit her husband, her services for Prison Gap as an organiser get her a free trip to see her beloved. She looks flustered.
Eventually, after twenty minutes of inactivity, the call goes up that we have to change buses. “This one isn’t big enough,” someone speculates. When we board the second bus, there is commotion as the well-known driver who usually takes the job has been replaced a new one. “Where’s Davy?” says one woman.
We take off at 11.25 p.m. The gushing light from Columbus Circle streams through the windows. The heating system is working overtime to battle with the frost creeping along the windows. It is working too hard, the bus turns abruptly into a sauna and people start removing clothing; this is fine until about 6 a.m. when they turn them off the temperature decreases markedly and wakes up the travellers.
One of the atypical commuters on the hapless adventure upstate is Isabelle Doonola, a 27-year-old Brazilian fashion designer living in Wiilliamsburg, Brooklyn. “I’m visiting my brother, actually,” she says. “This is his second time in jail but he should be out in January or February.
“The bus sucks big time,” she says, “you can see for youtself – it’s uncomfortable, the drivers get lost, it’s just tiring doing this.”
Her brother is in jail for what she calls “drugs” although she doesn’t know quite what he did. “My family in Brazil didn’t even know he was in jail for ages, I told them quite recently, but said it was drunk driving, they would be very upset if they knew the real reasons.”
Donola is a pretty woman with round cheeks and a winning smile. She is dressed in an ensemble befitting a clothes designer, and this expensively-clad lithe figure is stand-out amongst the other travellers.
“I wish prison wasn’t this punishment, I mean my brother went straight back in. They should get them to see psychologists and offer them support so they don’t do it again and don’t get depressed.”
The lapse into comatose quickly followed the departure from Columbus Circle. The lights were turned off, and only one personal light was utilised for reading purposes. The atmosphere definitely pointed towards sleep. A faint snore could be heard from the top of the bus. The problem with this bus was the area apportioned for legs was, to be generous about it, spacially challenged. It was required to pivot yourself into a conscricted position that could lock you in – knees hard against the chair in front, feet at an angle, body slanted in the opposite direction – so that even if you were punched you would stay locked in. Various murmurs clouded the moistening air as this positional method was found to be anathema to falling asleep.
The windows had no curtains, so when the light of morning struck there was no choice but to be roused. It was about 6 a.m. when the legitimate groans surfaced. The scenery outside is now decked with the immacatulate white paint of thick snow. It was six and a half hours since we had left but we were not to arrive at the first prison for another two hours. In the meantime the driver gets lost and the redolent scent of burning metal and plastic engulfs the bus as it struggles to get over a hill.
We stopped first at Livingstone, then Attica, and then our stop at Wende, from where they would continue to Albion and New Orleans. There were six of us at this stop, most had already evacuated the bus. When are you coming back, I asked the driver. “Don’t know,” he responded. Can you come and pick us at 2.15, I requested. “Sure thing,” he said, looking perplexed.
The Wende people left their visits early – at 2 p.m. – to be ready for the pick-up. It was a long wait as it turned out. This was a warm wait until 4 p.m. when the visitors center closed and we were standing in the cold for an hour before our ride back to New York arrived.
One of the waiting women only gives her name as Lola and said she was 58-years-old. “This bus is a joke,” he says. “$60 for a wild ride, breaking down, don’t know where they’re going. We are paying money to get stressed. And the bus is freezing. And look at the blankets they sell fo $5; why don’t they just give them to us? We pay enough!”
With the griping finished, she tells of her son’s incarceration. “He doesn’t deserve to be there,” she says. “I was his witness in the trial and of course he’s innocent. But he accepted a plea bargain, and I learned to deal with it, he’s learning to deal with it also.
He was 17 when he first went in, now he is 25. “He doesn’t get depressed,” she expands while we stand in the snow. “He studies a lot, orders materials and book to read.”
Lola says she was originally due to serve seven years, but was eventually given a stiffer sentence because he tried to escape. “It was only because they sent him to a psychological unit, and he wanted to be reevaluated and he thought they would do that if he tried to escape.”
The bus finally arrives and the driver looks too tired to even open his eyes. There is a fusillade of abuse from the waiting mothers and wives. “You fat bastard, where have you been?” The driver, who must be in 50s, just smiles the smile of an alcoholic and allows to unload their frustration on his self.
Back on the road we are lost again. The passagers congregate at the front and do some ad-hoc map reading. A few wrong turns are ameliorated with some vehicle gymnastics in tight spaces as we turn around on one-way roads. We go back on ourselves so finally arrive at Livingstone, where the people waiting have been since 8.30 a.m. that morning. It is now 5.30 p.m.
The baying crowd are now unloading endless abuse. A chorus of “Fooooooooodddddd!” goes up, with the punter adopting a British accent to heighten the effect. Most of the people on the bus have not eaten since the evening before, nearly 12 hours. We eventually stop at a Burger King, and after bellies are fed, the febrile mood eases. People fall asleep and chat softly.
About two hours from New York the driver pulls up on the highway and goes outside. Various rumours circulate up and down the bus by a process of osmosis. “Is he drunk?” asks one. “I think the wipers are broken,” another offers. Eventually he gets back in and starts driving with no explanation.
By the time we arrive back in New York City it is 1.30 a.m. and people still have voyages to supplement this epic odyssey. “I still have to get the train to New Jersey tonight,” sighs one woman. Others say simply “I’m getting a taxi, even though I can’t afford it.”
As the long-suffering driver pulls up to the Duane Reade where it all started a small round of applause goes up from some of the more understanding travellers. “Don’t clap him!” shouts one irascible woman at the back. “Someone should shoot that nigger!”
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