Joey's apartment, Seaside Heights, New Jersey...Bon Jovi's "Lay Your Hands on Me" is playing on the radio...

“Joey? You ready, honey?” Mom arrived at six am to help me get ready for the wedding, which wasn’t taking place until seven pm!”

“No, Mom…I’m still looking at the back of my eyelids.” I opened the door and she walked in with my kid sister in tow.

“Joey’s getting’ married, Joey’s getting’ married.” She taunted, but I was unfazed. I ushered the two of them into the kitchen while I put on a pot of coffee.

"Anthony is not waiting right now at the chapel, Mom. You may have noticed the sun coming up just now? I guess he’s probably still lying face down on his bed after the engagement party last night.” I didn’t add that I spend much of the time under him until skulking back to my apartment at four this morning.

“It still seems crazy, Joey,” My mother was anything but reserved when it came to her own opinion.

"Yeah, Joey, Holy fuckin' shit," Angie said. "Why the fuck wouldya wanna maahree a fuckin' guy? Nikki was askin' about ya at Primo's last night. She's fuckin' hot!"

"I'm not interested in girls, Ang...you oughta have figured that out by now." I said with my one-time only concession to Joiseyspeak.

“You're breakin' my heart, Joey. Do you know you're breakin' your mutha's heart? You bein’ what you are and all? I just don’t unnerstan (yes, she said it just that way) why the hell you’d wanna get marreed to a boy.”

“Joey’s getting’ marreed to a fuckin' boy…Joey’s getting’ mareed to a fuckin' boy!” Did I mention Angie was twenty-six?

“That’s the ho-wuhl point, that’s the ho-wuhl poy-oint!” I stuck out my tongue, which garnered a sigh from Mom.

“I guess I shouldn’t be expectin’ no grand kids any time soon,” my mother said with a pout.

“Well…that’s usually the way it works out, Mom.” I poured her a mug of coffee. I was tempted to put Angie’s coffee in a sippy cup, but she was a big girl, so I gave her the coffee in a Flintstone’s grape jelly glass instead. By the way, I had a cup of coffee, they had caw-fee.

“You…you still gonna get…” My mother was a whiz with confrontation.

“Snipped? Yes, mom. Docked…altered…fixed…transformed… all of those things that make me what I am will be either used somewhere else on me or end up on the Jersey shore in a medical waste container.”

“That’s fuckin' disgustin'.” Angie practically spat it out, along with a half-mouthful of coffee, catching Mom just below her neckline on her new blouse. Mom failed to appreciate the irony of her younger daughter’s statement. Hell! She failed to appreciate that she actually had an older daughter.

“So there’s no way I can tawk you out of this?” She looked up from her mug with her big doe eyes like a kitten painted on velvet and frowned.

“Nope. Come seven-twelve or so tonight, you two will be in-laws, so we might as well get started.

“You mean you are actually gonna go through with this…you’re gonna marry that boy? I don’t get it.” Angie mewled. She didn’t get much to begin with, but this was a real poser.

“I love him, and I am going to be his wife. And sometime in the next seven or so months I’ll have taken care of things the way they should have been all along.” They stared at me like I had two heads but Mom just grabbed a rattail comb out of her purse and said,

“Okay…if you say so. Angie…Let’s get staaahted!”

"Faaaaaahk!" Angie breathed out a sigh.

Well, I can’t believe it. Here I am tonight as my Anthony gave me, his new bride, the moment of her life; a night to remember for Anthony Seraphino Ruffo and me, Pasqualina Giuseppina (Joey) Calcaveccia Ruffo. I guess Mom and Angie may yet get used to me being “Heterasexshul.” Grand kids? Not for a while; hell, we just got married. And like I said, in seven months or so I’ll no longer have that pesky...uh...detail to deal with...