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Gay construction worker thought straight friend was interested in him

By Atiq Roshan ⋅ March 7, 2008 ⋅  Email this article ⋅  Print this article ⋅ Post a comment

Sanchez: Happier place

Miami, FL — A homosexual construction worker is re-examining his approach to friendship with straight men after “getting his heart broke” by a man he thought was interested in him but was actually just using him to get close to a female friend of his.

Colin Sanchez, 25, says he felt like a naive fool for getting ensnared in a sneaky ploy worthy of countless straight-to-video movies about gay men falling for the unattainable.

According to Sanchez, it all started when his co-worker, Diego (not his real name), began spending lunch breaks with him. They bonded instantly and started hanging out outside of work shortly thereafter.

“I wasn’t even thinking of him as a potential lover. He’s not someone I would normally go for,” says Sanchez. “But as we spent more time with each other, I found myself falling for him. I started to think about the possibility of the two of us as a couple, short of picking a place in the Keys for us to move to.”

But everything changed, he says, when he asked his best friend Lori to join them for drinks one night.

“I was drunk on blush, slouched on the couch, and had orange lips when I saw Britney being taken out of her house on a stretcher on Entertainment Tonight,” he says. “That really struck a chord.”

“Diego kept asking about her, what she’s like and what not, so I finally brought her out with me,” says Sanchez. “I thought it was sweet of him to be so curious about my friends.”

Sanchez says the two got along very well. A little too well, in fact, as he would discover later, when Diego started acting very distant and stopped returning his calls. The lunch breaks together also ground to a halt.

“The next thing I know is that they got hitched in Vegas and there’s a bun in the oven,” says Sanchez. “It was like somebody hit me in the head with a jackhammer.”

The whole experience sent him on a downward spiral of substance abuse, binge consumption of Cheetos and Tic Tacs, and repeated listens to Cher’s “Believe” CD, but Sanchez says he got himself together thanks to the relentless tabloid coverage of Britney Spears’ ongoing meltdown.

“I was drunk on blush, slouched on the couch, and had orange lips when I saw Britney being taken out of her house on a stretcher on Entertainment Tonight,” he says. “That really struck a chord.”

Sanchez says that thanks to a really good therapist and “sweet, sweet Paxil,” he is in a happier place now and wishes his friends nothing but the best.

“I hold no grudge. Life’s too short for that,” he says. “My only regret is not ever getting him drunk enough to put out. Now I’ll never know what’s in them pants.”