Today I did the unthinkable.

The unbelievable.

The unnatural.

Even, perhaps, the unholy:

I used Cremo Cream with a brush.

And it kicked ass!

Honestly, it exceeded my wildest expectations. Because I’ve tried using a shaving brush with brushless creams like Cremo in the past, and it was always a bust. Most of the modern boutique creams like Baxter’s, Sharp’s, Jack Black Ate No Crack, Kiehl’s, Lab Series, Zyrrrhhhhh, you name it, they’re all designed to be slathered on your puss with your bare hands. The thought being, later wif dat tired-ass horse’n'buggy routine with the brush and the mug and the barbershop quartet! Just use your hands, yo.

Problem is, none of this crap works, yo. Except for Cremo Cream. Thanks to beloved wife, who tried this stuff out on her gams when I couldn’t be bothered to take it seriously, I finally caught a shave with it last week and it knocked me for a loop. Here was a modern, space-age shaving cream inna tube, expressly designed to be used brushless, invented by the guy who came up with the idea for the dry-erase magic marker board for cripe’s sake, yet I’ve gotten some of the best shaves I’ve ever had with it. Better, in fact, than some of the most jizzed-about creams and soaps in the shavegeek pantheon.

But as unbelievable as Cremo Cream is, the fact that it’s brushless gave me pause. Because I like using a brush. No, I love using a brush. As convinced as I am that Cremo Cream delivers a world-class shave without using a brush, I’m not giving up my brush. It feels good on my face. I like using it. I like it, okay? I’m not giving it up.

So the question became: can you use a shaving brush with Cremo Cream and still make the magic happen? Because push comes to shove, if they can’t tango, it ain’t my brush that’s getting the heave-ho.

I called Cremo Central to see what they thought of all this. I also wanted to make sure that the non-standard ingredients in this stuff wouldn’t mess with a badger-hair shaving brush — hey, you never know. Some shavegeeks swear that the lanolin in Proraso and Musgo Real shaving creams gunks up the bristles. But these are the same guys who use “Pip pip!” and “Tally ho, chaps!” online while it’s more like “Care for some butter-flavored topping on your popcorn, sir?” in real life, so take it for what it’s worth.

The Cremo folks told me using a brush with Cremo wouldn’t degrade its performance, but they reiterated that the cream was designed to work best with just a hand application. And no, they said, it wouldn’t harm or coat the brush in any way.

So this morning I jumped our of the shower and grabbed my Vulfix badger brush, soaked in a sink full of hot water, and did my usual wetshave routine except with Cremo Cream instead of traditional shaving cream. I squeezed a quarter-sized dollup of Cremo into my left palm and proceeded to pump’n'swirl the waterlogged brush around and around for the usual 10-15 laps.

I had lather! Real, live, honest-to-god lather. If it wasn’t quite as opaque, thick, or dense as what I get from the trio above, it was much more opaque, thick and dense than what I got from just slathering it on my wet face with my hands. Much more.

The shave, I’m convinced, was even better with the brush than without. It was breathtakingly smooth and effortless. I thought Cremo Cream was slippery before, but wait till you try it with a brush. And the best part is, the Cremo lather kept getting thicker, richer, and more lubricating for each successive pass. I don’t know how or why, but each time I lathered up again, the Cremo got better and better. I did three passes — with-grain, against-grain, and a diagonal clean-up pass under my chin and on my neck — and the last pass was even slicker than the first.

And the crazy thing is, after every relathering, the head of lather on my brush seemed to grow bigger. I’ve never experienced this with any other lather, whether from a cream, a soap, or a shaving oil like Pacific. What else have you ever tried that creates more lather and gets more lubricating the more you use it? Nothing in my experience.

The shave was perfect. Baby’s butt smooth. Not a hint of skin irritation. No red marks on my neck. It was as good a shave as I’ve ever given myself, and it was one of the easiest, too.

I’m sold on this stuff hook, line and sinker. Cremo Cream is plenty good when used as directed, but add a brush to the mix and it jumps to the head of the class. If the Cremo folks could just make it smell like something other than a pina colada, and add a smaller tube to the line for travel, I’d be hard pressed to shave with anything else.

You can order a big 6-oz. tube of Cremo Cream for $14.50 from Ray Dupont at Classic Shaving. Do it. I just ordered two more tubes from Ray, and between beloved wife and me, I know I’ll be ordering more. Highly recommended.