Rough Edges

I'm a guy with more than a few rough edges.   The women in my life have generally wanted to smooth them off.   While I don't want to affront them,  I'm generally not interested.

My guess is that this lack of polish comes partly from my gender, partly from my upbringing in a pretty rough part of Newark NJ, and partly from my wish to hang on to a certain piece of blue collar class consciousness I grew up with (particularly inherited from my father.)

How does this show?  I like music with a hard edge and sexual words:   Chicago blues.   I like spy and adventure movies with explicit sex and violence.   I read a lot of spy and mystery novels.   I like to look at attractive women and am not ashamed to say so.  I'm not too put off by dirt.   I revel (sometimes) in funkiness (ie old diners.)   You will never hear me complain that the restroom in a restaurant is dirty. etc. etc.

But hopefully I'm not stuck in the rough either..   In the last several years, I have found myself listening to wonderfully smooth female vocalists:  Eva Cassidy, Liz Wright, Nora Jones, Raya Yarbrough, Jaimee Paul,  Hope Waits, and (Abby teases me for this one) even Sara McLoughlin.   Maybe I'll start listening to smooth male vocalists as well, though that seems like a bigger jump.

If everything was smooth and sophisticated, we'd be missing a lot.   I appreciate the smooth for the rough and vice versa.   How do we love the light if we don't also love the dark?