{"id":35722,"date":"2021-08-23T05:00:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-22T20:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/23\/an-artist-in-search-of-good-material-being-a-receptionist-at-an-auckland-massage-parlour"},"modified":"2021-08-23T05:00:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-22T20:00:44","slug":"an-artist-in-search-of-good-material-my-time-at-an-auckland-massage-parlour-megan-dunn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=35722","title":{"rendered":"\u2018An artist in search of good material\u2019: My time at an Auckland massage parlour | Megan Dunn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this extract from her new book, New Zealand writer Megan Dunn describes her time answering the phone at Belle de Jour<\/p>\n<p>I got a job at Belle de Jour in 1998. I was 24 years old and had just graduated from art school. What did I need next? Life experience. <\/p>\n<p>The neon sign hung in the window of the ranch slider. The massage parlour logo was of a vintage femme fatale: a raven-haired Betty Page-ish beauty with bright red lips who wore a cheetah V-neck and elbow-length black gloves and toked a cigarette in a cigarette holder. Like Lauren Bacall. One of those classic screen sirens, a quip at the ready. You know how to whistle, don\u2019t you, Slim? You just put your lips together and\u2026<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/23\/an-artist-in-search-of-good-material-being-a-receptionist-at-an-auckland-massage-parlour\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this extract from her new book, New Zealand writer Megan Dunn describes her time answering the phone at Belle de JourI got a job at Belle de Jour in 1998. I was 24 years old and had just graduated from art school. What did I need next? Life experien&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2451,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,511,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-books","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35723,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35722\/revisions\/35723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}