Blake Diamond

Blake Diamond is the author of Stripped: A Memoir of a Male Stripper. For more than two decades, he worked inside strip clubs across major American cities—environments engineered around performance, attention, and controlled illusion. Rather than writing from nostalgia or confession, Diamond treats those years as fieldwork: an examination of what prolonged exposure to desire does to masculinity, identity, and self-discipline.

Now in his sixties, Diamond writes with distance and restraint. He is uninterested in glamorizing the work or apologizing for it. His perspective is shaped as much by what he resisted as by what he witnessed—men hardening, unraveling, or disappearing when being seen becomes the primary measure of value. His work avoids easy conclusions, favoring precision, awareness, and the long view.

Stripped is his first book. Diamond lives quietly and writes with intention, exploring the tension between performance and consciousness, and what it takes to remain intact inside systems designed to reward surface over substance. He speaks candidly about these themes in long-form conversations.