OK, so I’m giving the whole wet shave thing a try after scoffing at one of my colleagues a couple months ago when he mentioned it.
What convinced me? Look at the first picture at the above link. How could I possibly argue with Cary Grant in “North by Northwest“?
More to the point, I realized a few years ago that the standard Gillette shaving system just wasn’t cutting it. (Or rather, it was cutting it.) The first thing to go was the Mach 3, which is seemingly designed for razor burn. Out with it went aerosol shaving “creams.” These things are less cream and more foam and appear to serve no purpose other than marking what skin you have already run your razor over. For me, that’s just unnecessary; I could tell because that skin’s red.
So after years of shaving two or three times per week (and getting a fright on mornings, mid-shave, when I remembered that I would have to shave the next day for some meeting or appointment), the past 24 months or so have been a period of gradual improvement. The first step was the hardest: somehow, it just felt right to shave before showering so that I could give my face a good rinse and scrub off all the foam. Now, the idea of it makes me cringe. (Still, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds; usually, I’d hit the steam room for a bit before the shave.)
Next came the shift to real cream (initially Kiehl’s) and toner instead of alcoholic aftershave. This, too, took some getting used to. The new creams were thick and, well, creamy, and clogged my razor (usually a Sensor Excel and more recently a disposable Schick Extreme 3, which is really much smoother than the Mach 3) almost instantly. Sometimes the razor couldn’t even cut through the cream on my face, which mean more pressure, which meant more nicks and burn. After all this, at least alcohol would close the pores and numb the pain, even if at the expense of dry skin later in the day. Light toners didn’t help.
Around this time, I began using a straight razor for shaves, on occasion. Advantages: perfect shave, little or no razor burn, totally macho. Disadvantages: frightening (think “Dressed to Kill”), cuts, the strop and sharpening, 30 minutes+ to steel myself to use the damn thing. Final prognosis: I am just not mature enough for this. Not even close.
Then I discovered the missing ingredient for a perfect, non-straight-razor shave: water. Lots and lots of water. Don’t laugh. I blame my father, who never taught me how to shave. And it’s not like water mixed well with the aerosol shaving foams anyway; it just rinsed them off. So this was a new thing. And it made all the difference. Now I could shave three times per week, maybe four times, without too much rawness and without the risk of cutting off any body parts. Who would have thought: water?
And then I read Corey Greenberg’s piece above. The next day, I saw a beaver-tail brush at Whole Foods and bought it ($23). It did great lathering Body Shop shaving soap, with a bit of warm water–much better than just smearing the stuff on my face followed by palm-fulls of water from the tap. Also, going through the routine is relaxing: soaking the brush, wringing it a bit, working up a lather (finally, a use for my semi-hated Loomis Chaffee mug–and incidentally, Windsor, CT, was the last place I received a professional straight-razor shave–but the insurance company made the barber’s old father stop offering them around my junior year), daubing it on and brushing up up up all over, and then making quick work of it with the razor–no more than one or two strokes down and one up, against the grain. The result is near-perfect.
But not perfect. What if I shave in the morning and need another go in the afternoon–say, before a big date or drinks at the club? Even with this routine, that’s not advised. But maybe a double-edge razor will get me a bit closer to the straight-razor ideal without all the downsides. The razor–along with stainless German blades, two creams, a top-of-the-line brush, a stypic block, and a stypic pencil–are due by mail this week.
It is embarrassing to admit that I’m quite eager for the package to arrive. So much so that I went over to Blue Mercury today to pick up some unrelated products that I knew would quell that same excited nerve: a new exfoliating wash, a new bath soap, a Mario Badescu masque, and a Skinceuticals nighttime moisturizer. (And now I’m wondering whether it’s yet late enough in the evening to try any of these.)
And it should be embarrassing that I’ve expended so many characters to say so little, so poorly. But it is really procrastination, and that is so delightful an end in itself. And as a reward for making it to here, I will now roll and enjoy a cigarette. (Which is, in itself, probably enough to undo the benefits of all these things purchased today.)
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