I’m trying to come to terms with Cremo Cream. Yesterday’s shave was so exceptional that I tried it again this morning — just slapped some on my wet face and went to town with the DE — and got an even better shave today than I did yesterday. Quicker, more efficient, and even closer on my problem areas, which are the sides of my Adam’s apple and the billy goat’s gruff under my chin.

This morning’s shave took less than half the time it usually does when I go through the whole routine of filling the sink with hot water, letting my shaving brush soak, opening the tub of cream, lifting the brush out of the water and giving it that quick, calibrated shake to leave it with juuust the right amount of water to build a good lather without making it too runny and messy, then lovingly brushing the lather all over my face and neck, up an down, down and up, side to side, over and over, while I inhale deeply the calming aroma of rose/violet/eucalyptus/lavender/etc., and then finally I’ve prepared my face sufficiently to put down the brush, pick up the razor, and begin the beguine.

With Cremo Cream, all that Edwardian foppery goes out the window. You just step out of the shower, splash some hot water on your face, spread a dollop of Cremo Cream onto your puss and away you go. Time saved: 5 minutes.

Once you begin shaving, you find that instead of having to make a ton of short, steady strokes with your DE as usual, along with the requisite sink dunks to clear the razor of whiskers’n'lather, Cremo Cream lets you shave with long, full-length strokes the entire travel of your face at a time, and each pass shaves closer and more smoothly than anything you’ve used before, so you don’t have to go over the same areas again to get them to squeak. Just a with-grain shave, re-wet your puss, and an against-grain shave, and you’re finished. Time saved: another 5 minutes, easy. Maybe ten, if you’re a real gone shavegeek who won’t quit scraping till every last whisker is floating face-down in the river.

And I may be going out on a limb here, but you may — and I say may, because I haven’t tried it yet, though I will tomorrow — be able to skip the aftershave phase entirely with this unique stuff. Because it’s so slick and lubricating, even an extremely close shave doesn’t seem to leave my face with any irritation whatsoever, and in fact, my face feels perfectly fine and dandy with just a cold water rinse-off.

Even the mighty Proraso, with its legendary ice-cold menthol and eucalyptus cool-down when you rinse with cold water at the end of a shave, clearly leaves your puss in need of some kind of soothing poultice to complete the cycle. Because I’ve tried going without, and my face, while I didn’t think it was irritated in the slightest, nonetheless felt a bit raw later on. Maybe the Cremo Cream will leave me feeling the same way if I skip the Trumper skin food I usually use as a post-shave — I’ll know tomorrow when I try it.

So clearly, this Cremo Cream presents a dilemma to the serious shavegeek. Sure, these guys all swear it’s the shave, stupid, but then you go to the forums all the tittering is about the gear. Like guitargeeks who can’t play an open E chord but can talk your ear off about every fuzzbox and delay pedal ever made, or why any wah-wah that doesn’t have a genuine Italian-made Fasel inductor from the ’60s SUCKS (see footnote 1).

Hey, I love all the man-toys — the badger brush, with its cool looking ivory handle and centuries-old link to the great figures throughout history, and especially the traditional scented creams and soaps with their timeless scents of florals, aristocratic colognes, and Kool cigarettes. I love this stuff to death. Building up a fine lather in my palm with a high-quality shaving brush made of the finest badger hair and swirling it all around my face is a sensual, decadent experience, and does much to turn what used to be my least favorite part of the morning routine into my most eagerly anticipated time of the morning.

But if you can get a better shave without them, well, then what?

Do you put your brush back in its box, and relegate all those fine-smelling English creams and soaps to your junk drawer, and give up the nicest part of the wetshaving experience, because rather than help you reach your stated goal of the perfect shave, they may be — can I even think this? — unnecessary?

Do you come to terms with the fact that the best DE shave you can get is one that only takes a few minutes of your time and requires only a razor and a $14.50 tube of Cremo Cream?

Do you willfully give up the toys, and the comparisons, and the variety, and the quilting bee chats with your shavebuddies, and the skyline of brushes, creams, soaps, razors, pre-shaves, post-shaves, mugs, bowls, barrels, and other assorted salmagundi that crowd your bathroom sink and lead guests of your home, when visiting the loo, to worriedly question your rank in their lives?

Do you accept Cremo Cream as your savior?

Well, do ya, geek?

1. I don’t mean to insult guitargeeks by comparing them with shavegeeks. Some guitargeeks have made positive contributions to society, such as Les Paul, Rick Nielsen, Billy Gibbons, and the guy who did the theme to the TV show “Police Cops” in that “Simpsons” episode where the cool Police Cop in the pilot was named Homer Simpson but was then changed into a bumbling oaf when the show was picked up by the network.