A self-styled heterosexual man from Akron, Ohio, said today that he was "traumatized" over the weekend after attending a showing of the new Sarah Jessica Parker film "Sex and the City."

Hendrick Colton, 34, said that he bought a ticket to the summer blockbuster "Iron Man" at his neighborhood multiplex but wandered into the theater showing "Sex and the City" instead. "The minute the movie came on, I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong," he said.

Mr. Colton, a sales clerk at a Home Depot in the Akron suburbs, said he tried to leave the theater immediately but was seated in the middle of a row, making it impossible to escape without causing commotion. "All the people around me were laughing their heads off and shouting, 'You go, girl!'" he said. "It was terrifying."

A spokesman for New Line Cinema, the company that released "Sex and the City," said that the film grossed $55 million over the weekend but that Mr. Colton was the only heterosexual man known to have seen it.

Friends of Mr. Colton who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Akron man seemed shaken by the experience of seeing the movie and was concerned that others might now doubt his longstanding claim of being heterosexual.

Davis Logsdon, a professor of human sexuality at the University of Minnesota, said that a straight man could attend a film such as "Sex and the City" without experiencing any change in his sexual identity.

"A heterosexual man could see that movie and remain heterosexual at its conclusion," Dr. Logsdon said. "Having said that, it's totally gay that he did that."

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