The Pick-up Artist
by Karol Nielsen
After graduating from the Columbia School of Journalism, I became the managing editor of a Bronx newspaper and my graduate school classmate became a stringer for The New York Times. I wanted to be a stringer, too. I gave him almost everything I had ever published and he recommended me for the job.
I became a Metro Section stringer and I covered a fire, a numbers bust, a gang fight, a gun standoff at Penn Station, the death of a homeless man across from a hospital, and other stories. My reporting appeared in the Times and I always bought a copy of the paper.
Once, a tall, burly man with a baseball cap and thick beard approached me at the newsstand near my Upper West Side apartment.
“Do you want to be an actress?” he said.
“No, a writer,” I said.
He shrugged and wrote his name and number in my newly purchased New York Times—James Toback, writer “Bugsy” and director “The Pick-up Artist.”
“Call me if you change your mind,” he said.
Turns out, he was accused of being a sexual predator who used to target women in my old neighborhood. Luckily, I moved across town and became a writer and never called.
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Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoirs Walking A&P and Black Elephants and three poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poem “This New Manhattan” was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.
