My attempts to render the supportive yet bitchy atmosphere of my imagined diet center, however, were ringing false. (“Have you been completely honest with us, Myrna? It says here you’ve been limiting yourself to six popcorn kernels, popped, for your daily snack.”) I grew blocked, writing less each day, too easily diverted by pizza and life’s rich pageant of dust. To get off my impasse’d ass, I decided I better check out a real diet center, maybe even go undercover as a client, assuming I could pass as fat.

At 6 feet, I’d never been more than fattish. I had my own weight-management system based on sound principles of nutrition and terror: If the scale edged toward 190, my fear of becoming obese — which, to my neurotic mind, meant slothful and repulsive in a Jabba the Hutt way — would kick in. I’d panic and buy celery-flavored rice cakes and rice-cake-flavored celery, and, as somber as Sean Penn, inscribe the words “Workout Log” in a notebook and systematically shrivel my pillowy self into a leaner, meaner 175-pound throw cushion.

I’d been too preoccupied with dust that spring to hop on a scale, but I was pretty sure I was at least semi-pillowy.

First I considered Weight Watchers, but then I remembered my mother’s lurid experiences at Weight Watcher group meetings circa 1973, where she was forced to fondle a pound of pig fat to visualize her weekly goal. I recalled her weighing fish fillets, squinting at a tiny wobbly scale; measuring apples with a measuring tape to ensure they were “small”; collecting recipe cards for pukey delicacies like Fluffy Mackerel Pudding; chewing every bite about 1,000 times as I stared at her suddenly cowlike jaw. Though I suspected Weight Watchers had evolved, this all seemed too exacting — and the Duchess of York’s desperate attempts to make the algebraic “points system” sound like jolly fun in her TV commercials didn’t help.

So when I passed a poster inviting me to “Lose 16 pounds for $16 — with personal counseling” in the window of my local Jenny Craig in New York City, that sounded promising. Back then, before Kirstie “Fat Actress” Alley’s Rabelaisian endorsements made Jenny Craig hard to ignore, I knew nothing about the company, except that it had reportedly offered Monica Lewinsky $10,000 for every pound she lost. That suggested poor judgment, but, on the plus side, I doubted anyone perkily named Jenny would try to scare me straight with pig fat.

That first day is a blur. I recall pastel chairs. Gigantic daffodil posters. A phallic object that stood about 3 feet high, printed with the words “You Can Do It!” Forms that required me to “honestly” check off my reasons for joining. I wavered between “a desire to be attractive” and “a desire to regain control.” (A desire to stop receiving online personals responses from overweight people who sell themselves as “famine-resistant” and consider you a match was not an option.)

The woman who took me through my free consultation had a used-car-salesman aggression and seemed eager to sign me up for life. “For you,” she said, “I’d recommend the Platinum Membership, which offers unlimited support during the maintenance phase.” I needed unlimited support? Hadn’t she noticed that I was merely pillowy, not fat?

“I only want the $16 thing,” I gasped assertively and escaped her clutches.

I arrived early for my first weekly appointment with my personal diet counselor, Melinda, whom I’d yet to glimpse. I was meditating on a before-and-after poster — a photo of a glum blob clutching a birthday cake, while her thinner Jennified self leaped in joy (“Results not typical”) — when a voice called my name.

“Hello, I’m Melinda,” said a smiling Latina woman, her hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. She led me to the weigh-in room, a stark, daffodil-less closet dominated by a digital doctor’s scale, and hinted that I’d want to empty my pockets and remove my shoes.

“Belt, too?” I begged.

“OK, but that’s it,” she said with a brisk efficiency, undercut, I thought, by a certain sadness. Or was it cynicism?

The news was disturbing — 192 pounds — but Melinda seemed unscandalized. Clearly, I could pass for fat. She propped me up beside the “I Can Do It!” totem pole, and snapped my “before” Polaroid (I look desperate to please), then ushered me into her office, and laid down the law. I was eligible for 1,700 calories a day: Three meals, three snacks. My weight-loss goal: 1-2 pounds a week. As a neophyte, I would begin with the prepared menus. She unfolded one, tantalizing me with my debut breakfast: Jenny’s French Toast. The bulk of this menu would consist of Jenny’s other delicious frozen entrees, cereals, soups, and so on. “That part’ll cost you about $90 a week,” Melinda said (or far less than I spent on takeout.). The rest, a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables, I would market myself, and variously steam, chop and disguise. I was urged to exercise more, possibly strutting to Jenny’s CD, “Walk Your Way to a New You.” I said I’d stick to the gym.

It seemed totally doable. As she updated my file, I should have been taking mental notes like a good undercover writer, but it must be mentioned that I was in a state of mild shock throughout this interview. Melinda, you see, was more of a “before” than an “after,” herself. Much more.

My Jenny Craig diet counselor was, not to put too fine a point on it, obese.

For research purposes, this should have thrilled me. My fictional diet counselor was chubby. The real one was extra-extra-chubby. But at first, I just found it unnerving. The truth is, I wasn’t merely afraid of getting obese and lazy myself, I was afraid of anyone obese. The corpulent triggered scorn and even queasiness in me, which only made me feel like an asshole.

I’d always assumed my knee-jerk sizism had a lot to do with my obese older brother who, as an obstreperous teen, had smothered me under the guise of “wrestling.” Had trodden on my ukulele. Guzzled entire cartons of milk in one tip (disgusting!). Sloppily rode his bicycle into walls (“I was distracted by the pedals!”). And just generally offended my discipline-nerd sensibilities. I was the sort of obsessive grind who would swing on a swing set before every exam, chanting, “100 percent!” to psych myself up. No wonder he wanted to suffocate me.

I’d avoided the overweight at school and, later, at work (awfully easy during the years I worked among the competitively scrawny magazine editors at Condé Nast). The obese, I felt — with the exception of Buddha and Aretha Franklin — simply weren’t giving 100 percent. Losers, you know.

Though Jenny Craig (located, incidentally, right next to a McDonald’s) was an incredibly friendly place and no one stepped on my ukulele, it pushed all my sizeist buttons. Melinda, I soon discovered, wasn’t the only overweight employee  there was always a lot of untamed flesh in view. I began to wonder if my novel’s plump diet expert was the rule, not the exception. Still, determined to see this through and authenticate my book, I buckled down to waste away the Jenny way.

I made it through week 1, growing addicted to the moment each morning when I previewed that day’s lovably dictatorial menu. I suffered through Jenny’s unnaturally orange Cheese Curls and her clammy Swedish Meatballs, only to be rewarded by the surprisingly ungruesome Jenny’s Turkey Dinner. I drank the equivalent of Lake Erie in water, forgot about salt, rediscovered the slightly soapy deliciousness of fresh spinach. I worked out regularly, eager to impress Melinda with my progress (I’d always been a suck-up). Seven days later, I emerged five pounds lighter.

“Men always take it off faster,” shrugged Melinda. (Had she just winked at me?) “So how was your week? Any parties? Business lunches? Drink things?”

“Uh … no.” I’d been prepared to confront my 192-ness, but not my recent social and professional isolation. Besides, I’d been too busy indoctrinating myself into the Jenny ethos to rave on. “How about you?” I shot back.

“Oh, my boyfriend and I had some crazy times this weekend,” she said, updating my file with curiosity-arousing jottings. “You know.”

Actually, I didn’t. Melinda had a boyfriend, with whom she had crazy times. Which one of us was the loser?

At first, I told none of my friends about this adventure. They were all either zealous runners, hip-hop aerobicists, suspected anorexics, or diet elitists who had black bags from The Zone delivered to their front door every morning. When, one by one, I sprang my news on them, I enjoyed their shock that a seemingly trim me was apparently just just well-camouflaged and trying to lose weight. And, moreover, that I’d chosen such an uncool method. Oh, it’s just research, I assured them, and quickly lightened the mood with stories of my “obese diet counselor, Melinda.”

“Really?” they’d say. “Like Chris Farley obese?”

“Well, not quite.”

“And they let her keep her job?”

“Oh, they’re all kinda overweight at Jenny.”

It made a decent anecdote.

But as I bonded with Melinda, discovering her sly humor and the comfort of her professional indifference to my fat, I felt guilty about anecdotalizing her. The fact is, I liked her more than some of my so-called friends. Her office had become a refuge from the “Logan’s Run”-ish pressures of the New York media. I was allowed to sag there. Fuck up. Like the week I forgot to drink Lake Erie and accidentally ate an entire Southern barbecue buffet. She was realistic about losing weight, spared me the New Age baloney (“I think we’ll skip the affirmations, OK with you?”) and subtly revealed that she knew the Swedish Meatballs sucked and prodded me toward the Meatloaf (on which we agreed to disagree). She was, not to put too fine a point on it, cool.

Once I reached my halfway point, Melinda eased me into cooking for myself a few times a week. The combination of Jenny’s zealotry and Melinda’s anti-zealotry worked. I was down to 174 pounds after nine weeks, and free to go.

I’d been taking notes for my novel all along. “Melinda withdrawn today; unfocused, yet ponytail still tight,” says one. I detailed the food storage room, with its vaguely socialist shelves of one-brand-only packages; scribbled down one old woman’s demands to be weighed naked or not at all. But instead of making me more confident that I could write a good novel, the experience exposed a bigger problem. It wasn’t just my account of the Right-for-You Diet Center that was hollow and cartoonish, but the entire book. I’d never got past stereotypes.

Flash-forward to 2005: I’d abandoned fiction but finished another book, though not without battles with sloth and pizza. Pillowiness impending again, I decided to return to Melinda, this time without the elaborate rationalizations. I just wanted to lose about 14 pounds.

The daffodil posters had been replaced with giant blow-ups of new spokesperson Kirstie Alley, and her Top 10 Ways to Lose Weight. (Number 6, “Get a few friends and do Jenny together,” sounded very gang-bang to me.) Melinda welcomed me back in her warm yet knowing way. She’d clearly lost about 40 pounds, but thankfully was still the same mildly cynical, winky person.

Three years later, I’d overcome some of my stereotypes. Become more aware that I’ve spent decades blaming all overweight people for the frustrations I endured growing up with my ukelele-stomping brother. (Hardly their fault.) I saw fat less emotionally, too. Grasped that it’s not, in itself, proof of sloth, but for me, more mundanely, just what happens when I eat more than I move — which all sounds very tidy, when life is not. That’s the tricky part.

As I returned to the front desk to collect my week’s food, a rather distraught, pear-shaped older woman came in from the street. She told the Jenny Craig women, who obviously knew her, that her husband had died. Colon cancer. There was a lot of hushed commiseration. “I just want the individual chocolate cake,” she said and proceeded to sit and gnaw away at the little cocoa clump, smearing icing down her chin.

It was a bit gross, but I understood.

But more than just a way to escape the chaos of real life, these enclaves are also becoming ghettos, increasingly targeted to specific groups. Golf addicts lock themselves away in sand-trapped communities such as Colorado’s Fox Acres. Sections of the Los Angeles suburb Monterey Park are specially feng-shui’d to serve the Asian population.

But the newest example will likely be the most controversial: Wilton Station, the first gated community in America to specifically, if not solely, target the gay market.

Now under construction in Wilton Manors, Fla., a bedroom suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Wilton Station will be an ambitious low-rise project of 272 varied condominium units: brownstones in dignified rows, loft spaces to tempt the trendy, and quaint porches to add a Mayberry touch. The prices, from $300,000 to $500,000, are less quaint. On-site retail spaces will let young professionals dry-clean John Varvatos sweaters or stumble out of a martini bar without leaving the complex. A vast health club will overlook a 72-foot lap pool, “beach” area, waterfalls, two spas, and a “Tiki Hut.” Other perks: a private screening theater, pet areas, and the conspicuous guardhouse, where security guards will let the privileged through that magic ingredient — the gates.

Its developers are calling it an upscale “village,” implying traditional values. Its detractors are calling it a yuppie suburban version of a gay ghetto — or, worse, a Mecca for sinners who’ll need saving. And it’s all happening at a time when gays are sparking widespread anger by attempting to “appropriate” the tradition of marriage, and President Bush is seeking to institutionalize homophobia with an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution.

Is this the new gay American dream: First you get illegally married, then you move to Wilton Station?

The $100 million project’s development team, all friendly, middle-aged straight men, see it as anything but a political statement. “To me, it’s not a controversial issue,” says Jim Ellis, chairman of Wilton Station LLC. “I want to build a really good product and it needs to sell. If people don’t like it, they won’t buy. Simple as that.”

Well, not really. Wilton Station, which will welcome its first residents in fall 2005, raises other questions: Will rabid conservatives protest it as an attempt to “appropriate” the “traditional” suburb? And, if it succeeds, will it trigger even more splinter-group enclaves?

At the moment, Wilton Station is nothing but a big empty hole: Twelve acres, formerly the site of a beer distributor’s warehouse, bordered by an (occasionally cacophonous) railroad, and a 300-foot stretch of the lushly overgrown canals that cordon off the town of Wilton Manors (pop. 13,000), and give it its nickname, “the Island City.”

The hole sits next to the local Kiwanis Club, which recently hosted a chili cook-off to raise money for needy children, and the First Christian Church, which runs a preschool. Nearby is the traditional center of Wilton Station, an intersection known as Five Points, where in the ’50s, two castle-like towers stood. In one, a woman operated a bird store; her parakeets and canaries flew about constrained inside the stone walls. A never-sold mynah bird was famous for its biting remarks.

Back then Wilton Manors was a typical town, full of modest bungalows and banal intrigues. By the ’80s, however, Wilton Manors had rotted into a mildly crime-ridden place, and gay escapees from Fort Lauderdale moved in to snap up cheap houses and gentrify the hell out of them. That initial trickle became an influx, and today an estimated 35 to 40 percent of the residents are gay or lesbian. It is the only American city, other than West Hollywood, Calif., where a majority of City Council members are openly gay.

Statistics reinforce the picture: In the 2000 census, the city of Wilton Manors had the highest percentage of households reporting as “unmarried partners” in the entire U.S. Only 37 percent of households are “married,” well below the national average of 59 percent. The number of households that include children is 20 percent below the national average.

According to locals, Wilton Manors is a place where gays and straights coexist peacefully in a sort of mini-Epcot of sexuality. “People have just realized that sexual preference isn’t that important,” says Rex Gillenwater, 48, the (straight) president of the Kiwanis Club, which counts the former mayor among “quite a few” gay members. “What matters is the kind of person someone is. Anyone who had a problem with it has moved away.”

Don Ice, an openly gay man who owns a pet-sitting business, finds the town hostility-free: “You have your little gay realtors, your little gay shops, your fancy hamburger place.” His only real complaint: He has to drive across the waterway to Fort Lauderdale to find a decent leather bar.

“It’s a great little place,” says Donna DeGroot, a retired Catholic schoolteacher, who has lived in Wilton Manors since 1989 with her husband, John, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former journalist. “And the gay population has made it an even nicer place to live.” The DeGroots’ home has tripled in value thanks to gay renewal, but their ties to the town are more than financial; they have a gay neighbor they love as a brother.

“Intolerance,” says John, “is not tolerated here.”

Or at least it’s a very minor factor, says Andy Weiser, a local gay realtor. “There is a redneck population in Wilton Manors,” he admits. “But this is still, by far, the most liberal part of South Florida.” The town even has its own police force, reputedly more gay-friendly than the local Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

Given the town’s placid gayness, and its explosive real-estate market, it’s not surprising that Jim Ellis and partners decided to build Wilton Station and market it so ambitiously. The first wave of national ads, eliciting requests for more information, debuted earlier this year in both gay magazines (the Advocate, Out) and mainstream titles (the New York Times Magazine). Buoyant same-sex couples — as well as hetero duos, and a woman clearly doomed to live alone with her dog — populated the campaign. Words like “open-minded” suggested gay-friendliness; the ads in the Advocate and Out went further, highlighting reception areas perfect for “commitment ceremonies.”

Though Ellis stresses that they are targeting both gays and straights and have a strict nondiscrimination policy, he expects the majority of buyers will be gay. “I could see it going as high as 60 percent,” he says.

Accordingly, the developers decided to find out “what amenities would be of particular interest to the gay and lesbian community,” as John Patrick, the chief marketer, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel this March. They set up focus groups, inviting up to 20 young professionals, both gay and straight, to weigh in on everything from lifestyle priorities to the nuances of moldings.

What did they learn? “These people care greatly about their bodies,” says the project’s architect Vernon Pierce, a straight man who grew up with a gay sister. “The health club was viewed as extremely important, so we designed a facility that will be second to none.”

“Another key area of concern was entertaining,” says Pierce. “So we upgraded the kitchens’ size, and made sure they’re open to the rest of the unit.” The gay contingent, he says, responded to the prospect of cooking while hobnobbing with guests. Pierce also expanded the terraces in many units to a whopping 7 feet by 19 feet.

“Because the gay community is gregarious,” says Pierce, “we thought: Why not create a bunch of public spaces? We changed the design of certain units to incorporate a 9-foot-square front porch.” Their research indicated that gays would actually furnish and use these porches.

All in all, the gay customer remained mostly true to stereotype. “They do demand a higher level of design,” Pierce says. “So we put in a lot more detail. Nicer columns, nicer paving patterns.” The result, judging from renderings, is a handsome development, not overly original, but “upscale” in that sun-drenched Florida way.

Inevitably, there has been some backlash. When Patrick shared the proposed “gay-friendly amenities” with the Sun-Sentinel, it set off a Howard Sternish outcry among some readers. “Hmmm,” posted one on the newspaper’s Web site. “Gerbil pens acceptable to neighborhood covenants? KY dispensers in the bedrooms?” Another poster pointed out that, if you substituted “black” or “Hispanic” for “gay,” the whole idea would be branded as racist. (Patrick has since left the project for unspecified reasons.)

Gay comedian and columnist Bruce Vilanch recently satirized the project in a thinly veiled Advocate piece about the fictional “Wavering Facades, the world’s first gated and secured metrosexual community: Anyone caught on the premises with an unmoisturized face or elbow will be escorted to the front gates.”

Perhaps understandably, Ellis is close-mouthed these days about the focus grouping: “We don’t want to build something that will be interpreted as specifically designed for the gay population,” he says, apparently less committed to commitment ceremonies than he was four months ago. And the project’s slick new, Flash-enabled Web site would seem to confirm that Ellis and crew are newly wary of depicting the project as “too gay.”

Or, for that matter, gay at all.

On the Web site, most of the code words (“open-minded”) have vanished. As have clear indicators that Wilton Manors is not Everytown, USA. In the animated intro, a few same-sex couples (easily confused with chortling straight buds or gossipy wives) zip by so quickly you’d be forgiven if you missed them in the crowds of happy heteros. Only one pair — two preppy guys cozying up on a Vespa — seems particularly Wildean.

Bill Murray, the media director of the Family Research Council, a prominent conservative group that opposes gay marriage, was struck by this: “At what point in the recruitment process, will [the marketers] expose themselves and their desire to create a largely gay community? It doesn’t seem like the company thinks it has a very good idea because they’re hiding from the fact.”

Stephanie Blackwood, who co-owns Double Platinum, a New York gay marketing agency that helps companies such as Procter & Gamble and America Online tap into the $450 billion gay market, has a more reasoned reaction: “The site is very ambiguous, which is not an uncommon strategy. It allows [a gay person's] filter to tell him those are gay boys in the pool together, whereas a straight man will just see two guys.” This approach, known in advertising circles as “gay vague,” became popular after early attempts to run explicitly gay ads in the mainstream media backfired. The famous 1994 Ikea television spot, in which a loving, squabbling gay couple shop for tables, was quickly pulled due to bomb threats.

The site’s vagueness is entirely strategic. “We spoke to a lot of experts,” says Jim Ellis. “One marketing company would say, hit the gay market in the face. And another company would say, don’t even go there.” He opted to barely go there.

As a result, says Blackwood, the site may trigger a different backlash: from disappointed gay buyers. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say there’s a risk the Web site might alienate gay buyers. When given a choice between an ad that speaks to me vs. one that speaks to my straight neighbor, I’ll choose the ad which acknowledges I exist.”

Ellis knows that the 17 to 25 million gay American market not only exists, but is extremely desirable. (Readers of the Advocate earn an average income of over $100,000, and are four times as likely to earn over $200,000 than the general population.) Will he tweak the Web site, given such risks? “We’ll play it by ear,” he says. “Adjusting the message as we see fit, depending on the feedback.”

When asked if he thinks his project will appeal to gay couples in, say, Alabama, who are afraid to hold hands in their hometown, who might see it as an oasis of acceptance, especially in this election year when gay issues are dividing the country, Ellis is vague, or possibly naive. “You know,” he says, “I’d never thought of that.”

The funny thing is, he may be sincere.

Those of us who think about such things have noticed that 2004 is a particularly volatile moment for gays. Gay activists have enjoyed recent victories, from the overturning of Texas’ sodomy law to the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as the Episcopalians’ first gay bishop. But the biggest victory — the wave of “civil-disobedience” gay marriages that swept the country — has galvanized the pro and anti sides more than ever.

At one end of the fear spectrum are the poker-faced “policy debates” of conservative groups like the Family Research Council determined to push through the proposed constitutional amendment restricting marriage to heterosexuals. At the other, unhinged Christian groups who counter gay protesters’ cries for “Equal rights!” by shouting “Jesus Christ!”

In the midst of this chaos, the sunny gates of Wilton Station seem to be touching a chord, coincidentally or not. The first wave of advertising pulled in over 3,000 requests for more info, well exceeding the developers’ expectations. Of these responses, far more came from the Advocate’s 105,000 readers than from the New York Times Magazine’s audience of 1.7 million.

The project — which, after all, is still just a construction site — has not yet caused a blip on the radar of high-profile conservative groups. The Concerned Women of America have no official comment. Nor has the Family Research Council urged its supporters to protest. But it seems inevitable that, if Wilton Station does trigger a trend — especially if “married” homosexuals with children set up house in such enclaves — the idea of a (mostly) gay gated community won’t escape scrutiny.

“We realize that gays and lesbians have to live somewhere. As Americans they can live wherever they want,” says Murray of the FRC. He adds, “We would never try to force them into de facto prisons behind gates. The problem arises when they try to force public policy to recognize their relationships as more than what they are.”

Murray sees Wilton Station as an example of the homosexual lifestyle presented in a deceptively positive light. “Really, there should not be a public sanction of these [gay] communities. People say, look, aren’t these [lifestyles] wonderful? The reality is: They aren’t if you look at the facts.” The FRC claims, for instance, that children reared by heterosexuals, specifically married ones, experience lower rates of drug use and arrest.

But even if Wilton Station is spared the immediate censure of the FRC or America’s Concerned Women, its gay residents won’t have to wait long to be condemned: immediately next to the site is Wilton Manors’ First Christian Church. “Are you aware that God’s words say it is an abomination for man to lie with another man?” asks its pastor, John W. Stauffer, by way of greeting. He describes his church as “evangelical and Bible-believing,” and, with no encouragement, goes on to quote Romans 1, which could only be called gay-friendly by the extremely charitable. “Our church is a lighthouse in a dark place,” Stauffer explains, “a place for sick sinners who have banded together.” He clearly feels the town will get a lot sicker when hundreds of affluent homosexuals move in on the other side of his wall.

The pastor confesses that he’s looking forward to the challenge of converting their reprobate minds. (He has already persuaded four of his flock to give up gay sex.) He plans to mobilize his special volunteer unit, “Evangelical Explosion,” to visit the residents of Wilton Station, and ask chatty sinner questions such as: “If you died, do you know for sure that you’d go to heaven?” When reminded that Wilton Station, much like heaven, has a gate to bar intruders like him, he pauses. “Well, we could stand out on the corner there … if they’re in their cars, they may be hard to get, but we’ll get them somehow.”

When told of Stauffer’s plans, longtime resident John DeGroot laughs it off: “Everyone has the right to have their head up their ass. I guess some people really like the view.”

Wilton Stationites may find it tougher to laugh. This source of irritation is not about to go away. The First Christian Church, which crams 400 people into its building twice each Sunday, has construction plans of its own: It intends to build a new overflow space — and, eventually, a grand new edifice — on land it owns across the street. And when that happens, if the Wilton Station dwellers remain reprobate, “We will welcome them again.”

Of course, despite Ellis’ projection that 60 percent of buyers might be gay, no one knows exactly how “reprobate” Wilton Station will turn out to be. As acceptance of gay life has grown incrementally (the current marriage furor aside), many young gays have realized they don’t have to move to West Hollywood or Manhattan (or Wilton Manors) to find an identity, sex and love. “People are coming out in smaller towns and rural areas and leading openly gay lives,” says Michelangelo Signorile, gay journalist and author of “Life Outside,” a book about the expanding gay community. “There’s a growing desire not to be cordoned off in a gay ghetto.” Meanwhile, he explains, although ghettos still thrive, more gays and lesbians are leaving them to buy property in quiet towns in upstate New York, or Northern California.

And here is the most bizarre twist in the story of the gated community in America. As gays move beyond the concept of the ghetto — the cluster mentality rooted in fear and segregated conformity — the rest of the country seems to be moving toward it. On one hand, you have gay clone style (cropped hair, muscles, artificial tans); on the other, the gated community’s approved flower lists and dog restrictions. The difference is that gay conformity grew organically from a need to strengthen identity. In a gated community, it’s mandated by deed.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have arguably been a factor; a lot of Americans now feel targeted the way many gays have all their lives. And the gated community, a refuge from chaos, fits the bill, even if it’s not particularly “safe.” In California, over 40 percent of all new developments are gated, and while nationally fewer than 10 percent of homes are currently behind bars, according to the Census Bureau’s 2001 American Housing Survey, that number is growing.

And then there’s Wilton Station. Largely gay and gated. Both segregated and integrated. Heteros and homos living together in a Tiki Hut of harmony. When you consider the spending power of the gay market, says Stephanie Blackwood, it is an “inevitability.”

It will be interesting to see how Wilton Station ultimately affects both social and housing trends in this country. If it succeeds without attracting undue controversy, look for other money-hungry developers to clone the formula. You have to give Jim Ellis props for trying something new, which is rare in development circles. “We’re rolling the dice in some aspects,” he says, “but I’m past being concerned about whether this will be well received.”

It will come down to the individual. “The more conservative gay people might find it very appealing,” says Simon LeVay, a gay scientist and coauthor of “City of Friends: A Portrait of the Gay and Lesbian Community in America.” “For them, it will be the ultimate of respectability, like moving to a gay area without having to deal with the raunch.”

For others, Wilton Station’s promise of escape may prove illusory. “There will be some people who will think I’ll be safe in this little gated enclave,” says Signorile. “If that’s why they’re doing it, it’s a bit delusional. It’s like creating a giant closet, and staying in it, instead of confronting the homophobia that’s still out there.”

“If you’re nervous about ordering,” the booklet murmurs with no detectable irony, “don’t be.”

Who knew beverages were so terrifying? Who knew we were so dense? Simultaneously patronizing and intimidating, the booklet begins by reviewing the “lingo,” 38 key ordering terms from the exotic (“misto,” Italian for “mixed”) to the folksy (diner-slang descendants such as “with legs” for “to go”). It moves on to tackle espresso dilemmas and syntax challenges (should you specify cup size before or after syrup selection?). A special milk section reminds you that “the moo is where you can be most expressive.”

Dotted with fey, wobbly illustrations to offset its preachiness, it is a curious document: “We’ve noticed,” it reads, “that triple, grande, decaf latte people aren’t the same as tall, iced caramel macchiato people.” What Starbucks’ research has failed to reveal is that neither of these people has anything in common with annoyed, adjectival-string-eschewing people who just want a cup of coffee.

“We think of it this way,” says Brad Stevens, director of marketing for Starbucks North America, shortly after the company announced a dramatic 41 percent rise in first-quarter profits for the fiscal year ending September 2004: “Espresso consumption is still growing in the U.S. There are still a lot of people to whom we can introduce the joys of espresso. And a booklet like this will help our new customers understand and uncover the fun of being a fan of espresso.” He pauses and adds, “It’s really about fun.”

That may be, but even the baristas at my local Starbucks seem confounded by the program. When I showed up, armed with my booklet, well-rehearsed, and robotically ordered a “Decaf, Grande, caramel, no-fat, dry, latte with legs,” the girl looked quite stunned by my prowess. As she concocted my drink (“So … by caramel, you mean the syrup?”), I saw that the old menu board had been replaced by a new one that distills the lessons of the booklet and its five zillion easy steps. I asked another staffer if customers were responding to the opportunity to customize their cups and become cocky complex-beverage requesters. “Not so much,” she admitted. “Most people are too scared.”

How did Americans, for whom a “cuppa joe” was the essence of simplicity for most of the 20th century, fall into the Starbucks trap? Despite Starbucks’ much-vaunted attention to quality and its reliably yuppie ambience — mournful Billie Holiday piped in, mournful homeless people marched out — it’s hard not to wonder if we’re not worse off for having allowed ourselves to be bullied into its baloney. Tall, grande, venti? “All it means,” says Mark Pendergrast, author of “Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World,” “is small, too much, or way too much. I refuse to speak Italian to order a size.” He’s not surprised, though, that so many of us do respond (25 million each week, generating $268 million in profits in 2003). “If you feel a bit humbled,” he says, “when you approach the great Wizard of Oz Coffee Maker — ‘I’m so scared, can I get through this ordering process correctly?’ — that can be appealing. It’s very clever marketing.”

Adds Steven C. Topik, a coffee historian at the University of California at Irvine: “Coffee prices are at an all-time low, but Starbucks prices are still extremely high. They’re selling mostly ritual and snob appeal. And foam.”

Ordering coffee was not always a test of courage. For decades, any American who wanted a cup could walk into a cafe, catch the eye of the waitress slinging her pot, and … nod. A word or two may have been required, but it’s unlikely either of them was “Valencia.” It was possible to do this without consulting a 22-page booklet, or spending surreal sums. The all-American “5-cent” cup of coffee was so much an article of faith, reports Pendergrast, that in 1947, when many restaurants raised the price to 7 cents, angry customers smashed their mugs and dumped cream and sugar on the counters in outrage.

Of course, much of this coffee was terrible: percolated, burnt, watered-down, ground from poorly roasted blends heavy with cheap African Robusta beans, the bitter alternative to the rich Arabica beans from Colombia or Costa Rica. (Even so, this was a vast improvement over American coffee in the 1800s which was polluted with additives such as chicory, barley, pumpkin seeds, brick dust, dog biscuits, sand, dirt, and more.) There were exceptions — coffeehouses and restaurants whose java was roasted locally and served fresh. This coffee wasn’t elaborate or nuanced, but if you drank enough, it did the basics: woke you up, got you talking, warmed your hands.

It still does, at the sort of small-town cafes that have so far escaped the threat of Starbucks, which notoriously opens outlets adjacent to local coffee shops and drives them out of business. In Sheridan, Wyo. (pop. 16,000), a rancher’s town guarded by the Bighorn Mountains, the Silver Spur Cafe has been serving breakfast on North Main Street, a still-Hopperesque stretch, for 70 years. It’s a tiny place with room for 15 at the counter, where ever-vigilant waitresses top off your cup every 30 seconds, and regulars, who stay up to three hours, have slowly melded with the stools.

“Coffee? I’ve heard of it,” deadpans current owner Barbara Ross, 57. “We make it all friggin’ day. And they drink it all friggin’ day.” She serves two types, regular and decaf, for 75 cents in a 12-ounce white mug. Contractually, she’s supposed to brew Farmer’s Blend, a quality 100-percent Arabica brand that’s a major player in the restaurant-supply field, but the customers groused. “They told me it’s too strong. So we just run out to the grocery store and buy Folgers and mix it in. These old farts don’t know the difference.”

When I ask if the farts might benefit from a program that would help them build confidence in ordering beverages, she snorts: “These guys don’t need help asking for coffee.” (Not that they are entirely self-sufficient. “I told the waitresses it was their jobs to get the customers up and massage their butts,” she says, “so the customers could walk out of here.”) Ross is considering asking the ceramics store next door to make up mugs, personalized with the regulars’ names that she could hang on a pegboard, a popular tradition at many small-town cafes. (A tradition Starbucks may be trying to echo with their new $9.95 Customization Tumblers you can personalize with cute stickers — “Grande,” “Soy,” “Peppermint” — specifying the umpteen variables that hours of study time with the fun booklet have helped you narrow down.)

So far, the Silver Spur has gone unchallenged by the Seattle Behemoth, though a Starbucks did open recently in the Holiday Inn at the other end of town. “I didn’t know what a Starbucks was,” says Ross, suddenly sounding a bit like a pod person, “but my granddaughter told me it was just expensive coffee. Not worth it, everybody said.” Her clientele remain loyal, especially those who still, believe it or not, refer to coffee as joe or even a cup of mud. What would happen if someone walked into the Silver Spur and asked for an iced, decaf, triple, grande, cinnamon, nonfat, no-whip mocha? She laughs. “The girls would probably just tell them you’d have to go next door to the mini-mart. They have cappuccino, comes out of a vending machine.”

The beginning of truly mass coffee consciousness-raising in America predates Starbucks, and can be traced to the arrival of the fictional Juan Valdez, a proud romantic savage invented by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia in 1960. In a full-scale advertising assault, Valdez trudged into the hearts of Americans, as if to say, “Though my coffee is exhausting to produce — regard my poor demoralized mule! — it tastes so much better.” It worked: Five years later, over 40 all-Colombian brands were being sold in America, including General Foods’ Yuban. Soon, regional “specialty coffee” outlets such as Peet’s in Berkeley, Calif., followed, converting isolated pockets of Americans to coffee elitism, but it wasn’t until Starbucks (founded in 1971) hit its stride in the mid-’90s that “coffee education” became the absurd crusade it is today. Originally, the goal was to draw parallels between coffee and wine, a very adult pursuit, but judging from this new booklet’s kindergarten tone — “This is when you tell us what milk you want. And if you want something else, like ‘extra hot’ or ‘extra foamy’” — you might wonder if Starbucks has decided to broaden its educational efforts to include children, in a sort of caffeinated take on “No Child Left Behind.”

The analogy between Starbucks and a brainwashing cult is well-worn. Online wits call the company the “Church of Righteous Oneness with Coffee and Knowledge, or C.R.O.C.K.,” and gossip that a certain intersection in Brentwood, Calif., boasts a Starbucks store on all four corners. (“I believe that is an urban myth,” a Starbucks spokesperson clarifies.) The company satirized its own reputation for control-freakiness by allowing the producers of Austin Powers to locate Dr. Evil’s headquarters atop a Starbucks skyscraper. But with this massive new “Customization” promotion, chairman Howard Schultz and crew seem to have lost perspective and blundered well past cultiness. Did the devotees of Jim Jones need a 22-page booklet to order poisoned Kool-Aid?

There may be relief in sight but not from Starbucks. One competing brand, at least, has apparently decided to market itself as a sort of anti-Starbucks. That is to say, anti-pretension. Anti-gibberish. Anti-faux European. And most distinctly pro-American.

Chock full o’Nuts, a classic American brand that was born in 1926 as a series of Manhattan nut shops before expanding into coffee in the ’30s, is launching a major regional campaign designed to remind New Yorkers that it was their brew of choice in the old un-Venti-lated days. At its peak in the ’50s and ’60s, Chock full o’Nuts was the Starbucks of its time, with over 100 coffeehouses in New York, serving its signature nutted cheese and whole wheat raisin bread sandwiches, pies, soups, and a “heavenly” brew that founder William Black refused to compromise even as his competitors snuck more and more Robusta into their blends. “Better coffee Rockefeller’s money can’t buy,” he bragged, until Nelson Rockefeller sued. “Chock full o’Nuts coffee was very good,” says Pendergrast. “You could always count on it.”

A $2 million to $3 million wave of advertising has plastered buses, water towers, construction sites and other “quintessentially New York” surfaces with images of real people shot by legendary Life magazine photojournalist Eugene Richards: weary but stubborn waitresses, thuggish but charming butchers and average Joes screaming their way through a ride on Coney Island’s Cyclone roller coaster. “Chock full o’Attitude,” snarls one ad. “Chock full o’Strength,” claims another. The ads are refreshingly raw. And they successfully trigger nostalgia for a pre-Starbucks world.

“We’re drawing on 70 years of history that’s authentic,” says brand manager Jennifer Stein at Sara Lee, which bought Chock full o’Nuts in 1999. “We didn’t make it up.” And while that history also includes the brand’s wretched decline in the ’70s after Black’s death, when the once-spotless cafes became filthy holes cluttered by surly staffs, there are still lots of good memories to exploit. Stein was happy to connect me with two loyal patrons in Queens who are still sufficiently alive to recall the brand’s glory days, and sufficiently babbly to veer off into footwear tangents. “The coffee was delicious,” says Willie Catherine Graves, 60, who visited the Chock full o’Nuts cafe at 34th Street and 8th Avenue when she was an office girl in the late ’50s. “I’d tippy-toe in there in my high heels — and I could wear them as high as they’d come, because I was young! They didn’t allow no dungarees then. Everyone was dressed up.” For her, the main attractions were the possibility of meeting a man, and a solid deal. “I had to go where my little pennies could take me,” says Graves, “where I could get the best lunch,” which meant a raisin bread sandwich, Heavenly Coffee, and coconut pie for less than a dollar. She’d sit at one of the sunny horseshoe-shaped counters with her girlfriend in the midday rush, tended to by a mile-a-minute waitress. Not a lot of dialogue was required to order: “I don’t think the waitresses talked to us at all. They couldn’t lean over and hold no conversation. They had to move!”

Graves’ gentle mother, Bernetta Graves, 83, while not so loquacious, was also a fan of the 34th Street location. “They don’t make coffee like that now,” she says wistfully.

They’re certainly trying to. Stein says that not only has the blend been improved, but that Sara Lee is committed to bringing Chock full o’Nuts back to New York as a full-fledged chain of cafes. The plan: to combine old Chock favorites like the whole-wheat doughnut and the cheese-nut sandwiches with new millennial design. For now, they’re starting small with two kiosks in the Herald Square area, but are actively looking for storefront locations in Manhattan. The company, which famously handed out free Chock coffee to shell-shocked New Yorkers on Sept. 11, feels the time is right for a return to a classic American brew. “It’s a lot easier to tug at people’s heartstrings right now after the Iraq War and the World Trade Center,” says brand publicist C. Zawadi Morris, a little too transparently. “There’s just been a coming together of New Yorkers. When you feel threatened, there’s a tendency to wrap your arms around what’s yours.” Instead of, say, pseudo-Italian mystifications?

Conscious of the risks of having my heartstrings tugged, I decided to visit one of Chock’s new kiosks and wrap my arms around a large “Soho blend.” It would seem there are still a few kinks to work out. Without consulting me, the reckless staffer began dumping three teaspoons of sugar into my cup with no sign of slowing down. Ay-yi-yi-stopppp! After her tut-tutting colleague dumped out the sugar and delivered my Heavenly Coffee, I tested it with considerably less optimism than the young Willie Graves in her sky-high heels. It tasted more like Purgatory Coffee, no better or worse than any Greek diner brew. As my nostalgia rush faded and a mild stomachache, surely psychosomatic, set in, I’ll admit I began to yearn for the Stepford competence of Starbucks.

There are, after all, many good things to say about Howard Schultz and his empire, which may soon be facing much stiffer competition than Chock full o’Nuts if that much bigger monster Wal-Mart — which tops the Fortune 500, overshadowing Starbucks at 465th — sees positive results from a cafe concept it’s currently testing inside a Plano, Texas, store. “Yes, Starbucks is pretentious, and yes, they’re making a fortune,” says Pendergrast, “but it’s also true that they’re selling fair-trade coffee, which is a very good thing, and they’re giving money back, and trying to develop a real relationship with growers.” It should also be noted that Starbucks pays well over minimum wage and grants even part-time employees full medical benefits. And then there are Schultz’s plans for more stores with drive-thru windows, the closest he’s come yet to openly admitting that Starbucks is really just a glorified version of McDonald’s.

“I have a hard time calling Starbucks evil compared to most of the corporations in the United States,” Pendergrast adds. “They’re certainly doing a better job with their suppliers than Procter & Gamble or Philip Morris. If you can get past the pretension, I think Starbucks has been wonderful for this country.”

Maybe it is better to just endure a little baloney in exchange for dependably good coffee. What’s a freaky, obsessive Customization program next to winning foam? Perhaps if we all buy $9.95 Customization Cups, we can just mutely shove them in front of the Starbucks cashier, and let him yell out the damn lingo? Maybe we should just accept that “there are certain mornings when you need to indulge in a handcrafted beverage prepared by your very own barista (Customologist),” even if “you feel somewhat uncomfortable ordering your beverage.”

On second thought — Customologist? — maybe not.