Las Vegas Weekly

Something to get off your chest? This guy will listen—for a fee

A confession: We don’t know why Steven Diamond is holding this spherical thing.

Steven Diamond hears more confessions than a Roman Catholic priest.

No, he’s not the guy who runs PostSecret.com—that’s Frank Warren—he’s a Las Vegan who operates a self-help hotline. For two dollars a minute, troubled souls can call in, anonymously, and share their deepest secrets.

“As soon as I turn the phone on,” Diamond says, “it starts ringing.”

Diamond chats with cheaters, rape victims and closeted gays on a daily basis.

“They want to talk to someone who takes a nonjudgmental position. They don’t want to be scolded or talked down to. They get that at home. They want an impartial third party who’s willing to listen to them and help them work through their issues.”

And that’s exactly what Diamond does. He recently fielded a call from a woman who cheated on her husband with a man who was HIV positive. She continued to sleep with her husband, never telling him about the affair or the disease.

“Instead of doing what’s right,” Diamond says, “people often do nothing, thinking that if they avoid a problem, it will just go away.”

Diamond reminded the woman that she was in a life-threatening situation, and he encouraged her to visit a free STD-testing site in her area.

One down, a lot more to go.

Diamond once fielded a call from an elderly man who said that when he was 8, he accidentally lit his house on fire. He said that the fire killed his younger brother. He said that he’d never told anyone about what he’d done. He said that he was recently diagnosed with cancer. He said that his days were numbered and that he wanted to get his secret off his chest before he passed.

So he called Diamond. And then, he said, he felt a little better.

Two down.