Say hello to Remy. He’s one of the many terrifying male models you’ll see in ads for Nioxin hair care products. Which is a shame, really, because this stuff is excellent. Honestly, the kind of models they use to promote this stuff is unfortunate, because the products themselves are really top-notch. I’ve been using the Actives shampoo and “Scalp Therapy” (conditioner to youse and moi) for a few months now and I’ve noticed a significant improvement in how my hair looks and feels.

But the reason I bring Nioxin up is because a number of experienced wetshavers recently emailed me, after reading about my shavesploits at the local Y. They all said the same thing — if I wanted that kind of revelatory shave without having to sweat like a pig to soften my beard, I should try simply applying hair conditioner to my face while showering at home.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard of this trick. Back in the day, somebody (I think it was the great Harry Jarnock) on the old Wetshavers forum suggested to an African-American gentleman complaining about the difficulties in shaving his tough, curly beard that he try slathering on some hair conditioner in the shower to soften his whiskers before shaving. The guy tried it and reported excellent results.

So this morning I tried it for myself. My schedule was too heavy for a workout today, so I showered in the usual way at home, except today I slathered some Nioxin Actives Scalp Therapy conditioner on my face and neck, and then proceeded to shower while leaving the conditioner on my skin to soften my hair up for the kill.

I’ve tried using Nioxin conditioner as a shaving cream before, with the almighty Feather straight razor, because the professional barber who did the straight razor demo in my Today Show segment, Mike Orzalli, uses this stuff to shave all of his customers and swears by it. The Nioxin worked fine as a shaving cream — it gets your skin pretty slick, and leaves it feeling cool and moisturized afterward. But today was the first time I’d used it as a pre-shave prep to soften my whiskers beforehand.

I rinsed my face off, got out of the shower, and went right into the shave. Merkur HD razor, Merkur blade, Vulfix #2235 silvertip brush, and Taylor rose cream. I could still feel the cooling effect of the Nioxin on my skin even after I rinsed it off thoroughly. Felt great. Kind of like how Proraso cools my face down after a shave, when I splash it with cold water.

The shave seemed to go pretty much as usual — uneventful, in the best possible sense. It was only when I rinsed my face and ran my hands over my skin that I felt just how shockingly close and comfortably I’d been able to shave myself. It was exactly the same kind of extreme closeness and maximal comfort that I’d previously only been able to achieve after a hard, sweaty workout at the Y.

The Nioxin Actives Scalp Therapy conditioner worked like magic to prep my beard for a much closer and more comfortable shave than I’m usually able to get. But the question is, do I want to have to slather hair conditioner all over my face in the shower in order to get a superlative shave?

No, I don’t. I’m a minimalist. I want to catch a perfect shave with the barest minimum of tools and poultices. Give me a razor, a brush, and some cream, that’s all I want to need to do this thing right. Anything beyond that and I’m in shavegeek territory. I think that’s the main reason I take a dim view of the Roberts Method of Wet Shaving — nothing against Charles or his zombie army, but my idea of hell is having to go through all the motions and jump through all the hoops and have all the crap on hand that an official RMWS shave requires. The cube, the cutting balm, the paste, and getting the exact ratios exactly right — it’s just not how I want to shave in the morning. I want to drink my joe, read the news, take a shower, and then swipe a steel razor across my face. Is that so wrong?

For the past week or so I’ve had two options. Either get a really good shave at home, or go sweat my ass off at the gym and get an extraordinary shave afterward because of all the good things sweat does to soften whiskers and prep the face for shaving. Now I have a third option — massage some hair conditioner on my beard, shower as usual, and then get a Bob Beamon shave, without the workout.

Someday I want to be able to get the Beamon shave without sweat or Nioxin. Until then, I’ll be using this stuff whenever I shave at home.

Today I had not just one, but two post-sweat shaves. Why did I need a second shave, you ask? Well, because…

The first sweaty shave was less than spectacular!

That’s right — I went to the Y like usual, worked up a sweat like usual, took a hot shower in the locker room as usual, walked over to the locker room sinks as usual, and shaved as usual. But what wasn’t usual, at least in the context of a YMCA shave, was the result. It just wasn’t a great shave.

I did everything I’ve been doing when I shave at the Y, and I even tried not wiping the sweat off my face while I exercised, so my beard could baste in the sweat to max effect. Still, the shave did not make the Earth move for me. It was okay, but nothing special.

So I drove home and decided on a whim to paint the exterior door to our tool shed, which had been looking pretty weather-beaten for some time. It was hellishly hot today, and between the weather and the painting, I worked up an even bigger sweat than when I’d exercised earlier in the morning. So when I was finished painting the door, the thought occurred to me — I’m all sweaty, I didn’t like the shave I got earlier, sooo, what are we waiting for? Let’s shave!

After a good scrubbing with WD-40 to remove the Rustoleum from my hands, I took another hot shower and did my second shave of the day. Only this time, I did it the way I’ve been doing it at home for awhile now. I filled the sink with water, turned the faucet off, and shaved in blessed silence save for the pinging sound of the razor cutting whiskers.

I don’t know if the first shave set the stage or what, but I’m telling you, the second shave was phenomenal. Just a quick with-grain pass and then a quick against-grain pass, and my face looked and felt like it did when I got that unbelievable straight razor shave at Truefitt & Hill’s a few months ago. My cheeks felt soft and hairless, and I could rub my hand under on chin without feeling stubble in any direction.

The tools were the same — Merkur HD razor, Merkur Platinum double-edge blade, Vulfix badger brush, Taylor’s rose shaving cream — I’ve been using for months at home. But I’m starting to accept that sweating your ass off before you shave makes all the difference between a merely good shave and an extraordinary one.

Several wetshaving experts have emailed me with the suggestion that I try slathering hair conditioner on my face while I’m in the shower if I can’t or don’t want to work up a serious sweat beforehand, because hair conditioner softens hair too and that might give me the same kind of shaves as when I work out. I’ve tried shaving with Nioxin conditioner as a shaving cream — the professional barber in my Today Show shaving segment uses Nioxin for all of his straight razor shaves and swears by it — but never as a pre-shave prep. So tomorrow I’ll give it a go and see if it can deliver the same kind of shave as does working up a serious sweat.

At this point, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about Karl Rove, Valerie Wilson, Bob Novak, –”

“Scott! Scott! Does the White House have any comment on whether Corey Greenberg got the shave he was hoping for after his workout today at the Y?”

“Scott! Scott! What does the President have to say about reports that the sweat Mr. Greenberg was able to work up this morning as he mindlessly stair-climbed to nowhere was, in fact, the ‘smoking gun’ at the heart of Shavegate?”

“Scott! Scott! Any truth to the rumor that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts once received a barbershop shave at the Federalist Society’s ‘Shave-Con ’98″ at the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas?”

“Scott! Scott! Nobody holds the White House press secretary to the same sartorial standards as the leader of the free world or even a night manager at a Stuckey’s, but don’t you know that nothing says ‘my favorite band of all time is Mike and the Mechanics’ like wearing a dress shirt with a second ‘fat wrist’ button at the shirt cuff?”

I’ll be happy to answer of your questions one at a time, thank you.

In answer to the first question, no, the White House has no comment on Mr. Greenberg or what kind of shave he may or may not have gotten today, or any other day.

Second, the President does not concern himself with the sweat of private citizens, unless that sweat happens to be the Vice-President’s, in which case he may bite down on either of the so-called ‘fat buttons’ on my shirt cuffs, which happen to be nitro-glycerin pills. I’m guessing that answered your question as well, David? Okay, are there any more questions before we wrap this up?

“Scott, why is Corey Greenberg hiding behind this charade when he could simply come right out and admit that:

1. He purposefully exercised hard enough at the YMCA today to work up enough sweat to soak his entire head and upper chest with beard-softening sweat;

2. He then shaved in his usual way, with a Merkur Progress DE razor, Vulfix travel brush, and Proraso shave soap; and

3. He did in fact get what has been referred to in the Blogosphere as a ‘Bob Beamon’ shave, so named for the legendary long jump champion whose flukish record-setting jump in ’68 stunned the world?”

John, I think I can answer that question. It’s clear that Mr. Greenberg does not want to admit that it’s the sweat of a good, hard workout which is the secret to those incredibly close and comfortable shaves he got at the Y locker room last week and yes, again today.

It’s also clear that Mr. Greenberg doesn’t want to admit this because he’s afraid that his obsession with possessing the native ability to shave himself in such a manner whether he breaks a sustained sweat or not will drive him to sweating like a pig before every shave, which of course is impossible.

Finally, Mr. Greenberg doesn’t want to be standing there at his bathroom sink at home on the mornings he must, because of his schedule or what-have-you, shave without first sweating, and then be thinking the whole time “I didn’t sweat, what do I do, I didn’t sweat, what do I do, how can I compensate, what can I do, I didn’t sweat, got to watch Wopner, what do I do, I didn’t sweat..”

That is all that I have to say about this individual and this so-called “Shavegate”. Thank you very much.

(McLellan walks out of the press room, and soon the press corps files out as well, leaving the room empty. A few moments pass, and then McLellan sneaks back behind the podium, grabs the microphone off of the desk stand, and begins to sing.)

All I need is a miracle…..all I nee-eed is you!

Ever go to the doctor knowing he may tell you something you don’t want to hear?

“The good news is, you don’t have all the characteristics of what we term a ‘classic’ hermaphrodite.”

“Here’s something you can wear underneath your clothing to deal with the uncontrollable dribbling.”

“I don’t mean to alarm you, but please don’t move — something just dissolved the fingertip of my rubber glove.”

Thus it was that the esteemed Doc Lox emailed me with his theory for why my post-workout shaves at the YMCA were so much better than the shaves I get at home.

“It’s the sweating,” he said. “The sweat and exertion softens your whiskers and flushes your face of its oils, which makes for an especially close, comfortable shave.”

I know medical professionals are trained to deliver their diagnoses without emotional consideration, but he must have known the pain his words would inflict on me.

Because I don’t want to have to factor a good solid huff’n'puff in just to get a great shave — I want to be able to duck into the bathroom on an airplane, splash some tepid water on my face, swipe my cool-man Merkur travel razor across my puss and emerge minutes later with a Cary Grant shave. The notion of having to break a prolonged sweat before I can get the kind of shave I crave, well, it sucks is what it does.

Desperate to discount the sweaty puss theory, I decided to debunk it with a plan of pure genius. I’d go to the Y, but I’d only do a light workout — nothing too strenuous, just a few slo-mo miles on the treadmill like the other old ladies on the machines next to me — enough to rouse the blood but nothing to get moist over. Then I’d go down to the locker room, shower in the usual Y fashion, shave in the usual Y manner, and prove that the secret ingredient in these transcendent Y shaves was something, anything else but the sweat.

I had my Merkur Progress and my Proraso shaving soap, and my Omega boar’s hair brush. I had the running water in the sink, to rinse the razor and drown out the sound of my whiskers getting cut. I had my Proraso liquid post-shave balm to slather on for good measure at the end.

But it was no use. What I got was a good shave, but not a Bob Beamon shave. I may as well have spent the last 45 mins sitting motionless in a La-Z-Boy watching “Matlock” for all the good that the sweat-free workout did me.

Fine. Good. Glad I tried it, at least. In science there are no disappointments, only data.

Naw, screw that. It totally sucks.

See, here’s the thing. When you first get into this old-school wetshaving trip, you amass a huge pile of razors, brushes, creams, pre-shaves, post-shaves, cutting balms, soaps, blades, every little shaving aid and accessory that might nudge the results a little closer to the ideal.

Then later on, as you get up to speed, you start whittling it down to the bare essentials which happens to fit my minimalist philosophy to a T — travel light, bring only the tools you need for the job and no more, and leave the sink as you found it, without a trace, as if nobody had ever shaved there at all.

I’d gotten myself to the point where all I needed for a consistently great shave was a razor, a brush, some cream, and a post-shave balm. A simple, pared-down rig that could fit in my pocket if it had to, ready to give great shave anywhere and under any circumstances. And this made me happy. I’d figured it all out. The grok had been reached.

Then I had to join the Y and find out that shaving after a sweaty workout takes the whole trip to another level. And now I’m screwed, because once you get one of these shaves, you’re spoiled for anything less. Now I have a new high water mark to compare all my at-home shaves to, and they always come up short. I just can’t always go work out before I shave — it’s not feasible.

I haven’t fully accepted that it’s the sweat and exertion which make the magic happen. All I know at this point is that the other parts of the YMCA puzzle — the going there, the wearing of the shorts, the shower with the nice-smelling almond institutional soap, the running water in the locker room sink, the other men doing their thing at nearby sinks — don’t seem to matter.

The only thing left to do is go work out again tomorrow, only this time sweat like a pig who happened to wander into the kitchen at Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ in Decatur, Alabama. Then, and only then, will I know whether or not it’s the sweat that’s the secret to shaving nirvana.

What was I doing yesterday, anyway? I tried replicating my YMCA shave at home, to see if I could scale the same heights of closeness and comfort as the shaves I got last week in the Y locker room, but really, all I did was shave like I normally do at home. The only thing I did the same as when I was at the Y was use the same rig — Proraso shaving cream, Merkur Progress razor, and Proraso liquid aftershave lotion. None of the unique elements of the YMCA shave were present.

I’m talking about the things that made the Y shaves different from my usual at-home scenario. The running water in the sink versus the sink full of water. The gaggle of betoweled geezers standing at the other sinks beside me, in various stages of post-huff grooming. The flush in my cheeks from the first real exercise I’ve gotten in fifteen years, unless you count “pushing” a powered mower with a stogie in your pie-hole exercise.

None were present and accounted for yesterday, so no wonder my shave was merely good instead of insanely great like it was back at the Y. Clearly, I needed to add one or more of the Y-centric elements to the experience if I was going to figure out why those locker room shaves were so exceptional.

Fish Sticks (surprisingly, not his real name) is a world-renowned wetshaving expert, and he suggested that it was the running water in the sink which was probably the key to my other-wordly Y shaves. He said a sink full of water doesn’t rinse the razor as well between strokes, which does make sense.

Also, I’m convinced that the sound of the running water masked the sound of the razor pinging as it cut my whiskers, so I wasn’t tempted to go over the same areas again and again because I still heard a bit of the pinging. So this morning I didn’t pull up the sink stopper, and I let the hot water run continuously for the entire shave.

The gear was the same as before — Merkur Progress razor, Proraso shaving cream and liquid aftershave lotion. Soaking my Vulfix brush was, as you’d imagine, not as easy with a running faucet as it is with a full sink of water, but I managed to get it wet enough to do the job. The sound of the running water wasn’t nearly as loud as the locker room cacophony at the Y, but it was plenty loud enough to mostly drown out the sound of the Merkur razor’s pinging as it cut my whiskers. Rinsing the razor under a stream of running water isn’t as dead-easy as simply dunking it into a sink full of water — you can do that without even looking down — but I have to admit, it cleaned the razor better than the dirty sink water ever did.

And the shave? Better than yesterday, definitely. But it didn’t quite rise to the level of those ungodly locker room shaves. I shaved exactly as I did back at the Y — no pressure, just one with-grain pass and then one against-grain, with none of the extra diagonal under-the-chin passes I usually do to clean up the stubborn gruff — but I did not achieve that combination of glass-smooth closeness and zero discomfort that shocked me after my shaves at the Y.

Another pseudonymous wetshaving expert, Doc Lox, emailed me his hypothesis for why my locker room shaves were so much better than what I usually get at home. He explained that exercising does all kinds of things which may be beneficial in terms of prepping a man’s beard for shave. I’m going to hit the Y again tomorrow and see if I was imagining things last week or not.

As much as I like and respect RS, I hope he’s wrong about this. I can’t work myself into a sweat before every shave. It’s just not feasible.

What’s that, you say? That I’ve been crowing all this time about what perfect shaves I’ve been getting at home with this cream or that razor or this technique, so why am I whining about it now?

I’ll tell you why. If you could’ve felt the shaves I got last week at the Y after I worked out, you’d know why I’m obsessed with figuring out their secret. I’ve been plenty happy with my at-home shaves, but last week I was like Bob Beamon doing his standard-issue long jump when all of a sudden a scirocco smacked his ass and he landed a few impossible feet further, setting a record that would stand for decades because it was such a freakish fluke.

I must find my wild scirocco, and tame it till it nibbles on sugar cubes right out of my hand. Then, and only them, will I learn the secret to the freakish, flukish, Beamonesque YMCA shaves.

Well, this morning I tried duplicating a YMCA locker room shave in my own bathroom at home. I got such wicked good shaves at the Y this past week that I wanted to see if I could get the same results at home. I want to dissect the Y shaving experience, break it down, pinpoint the reason why my shaves were so shockingly good this week despite seemingly suboptimal conditions.

And I don’t want the reason to be other men standing around. Look, I’m perfectly comfortable with other towel-clad men standing beside me at the sinks at the Y locker room. What I’m not comfortable with are any possible reasons why I might need towel-clad men standing near me in order for me to perfect my shaving. As Nixon once said, that would be wrong.

What I was able to dupe: the hardware (Merkur Progress DE razor, Merkur Platinum blade); the software (Proraso “green” eucalyptus shaving cream, Proraso soothing liquid aftershave — the milky-white, non-alcohol stuff).

What I was not able to dupe: an hour of exercise beforehand; other men grooming themselves at adjacent sinks; sense of hurry due to parking meter outside probably minutes away from the red flag.

What I was able to duplicate but didn’t, and in retrospect probably should’ve: running hot water the whole time instead of a silent sink full of hot water for the duration of the shave.

The shave was good but not great. Even after five passes — one with-grain, one against-grain, and then three more diagonals on my neck and under-chin only — I not only had more feelable stubble on my billy goat’s gruff than I did after the YMCA shaves, but my face didn’t feel as perfectly exfoliated and tushy-smooth either, despite the added passes on my problem zones.

Or was it because of the added passes? I think it was. I think that the sound of the running water at the Y is the key to those insanely great shaves I got this week. By drowning out the sound of the Progress razor’s pinging noises as it cut my whiskers, I didn’t go over the same areas again and again and again like I always do when I shave with the Progress. I basically shave till I can’t hear the pinging anymore.

But with the running water at the Y, I couldn’t hear anything, so I just did a light downward pass, a light upward pass, and that was it. No added pressure on the razor beyond its own weight bearing down on my face, and no added passes on my neck. Just downward and upward and done.

Tomorrow I’m going all the way and letting the faucet run for the entirety of the shave, to better duplicate the fabled YMCA shaves. If it’s not loud enough to drown out the Merkur’s pinging without all the other locker room noises to help build the cacophony, I’ll plug my ears with my Etymotic headphones and listen to an iPod while I shave. Anything to cut off the feedback loop between my ears and my need to shave till I can’t hear the pinging any more.

Yes, it’s come to this.

I think I’ve finally cracked the Da Vinci Code.

No, not the best-selling fiction book. The real Da Vinci Code. Lenny’s own personal lifelong bugaboo, the one problem that thwarted his every attempt to grok it like he did so many other brain teasers both profound and not so.

The sad truth is, Leonardo Da Vinci couldn’t shave worth a damn.

How do I know this? Because I’ve studied the man, junior. I’ve read his journals, probed the margins, watched the Biography Channel special. The guy just couldn’t figure it out. It was like he was from Oklahoma or something. The man was designing helicopters half a millennium ago but scraping hair off his puss left him baffled. Bottom line: Lenny was a feeb when it came to sheerage.

“Why can’t I get a tushy shave?!” he wrote in in the Codice di Manscapery, right around the time that his beard grew so long and wild that he began to resemble Dusty Hill, noted Texas bassist who wouldn’t be born for another five hundred years (even though Dan Brown claims Da Vinci proved, through mathematical equations, that it was Billy Gibbons who actually played bass on every Top track after Rio Grande Mud, and that Dusty was merely a stage prop while sequenced synths held down the bottom, a claim supported by the fact that the single-coil pickup on Dusty’s main stage instrument couldn’t possibly produce the subharmonic throb heard in the band’s live performances, and owing to its lack of a humbucking coil would’ve hummed like a gospel quartet in the presence of all the elaborate stage lighting which hallmarked the band’s shows from its earliest days to the present).

Lenny couldn’t cut it, poor bastard. But I can, and have. I have grokked the secret to the perfect shave, and it is this:

Art Shaveau: Shaving as Performance Art.

If you want the perfect shave, you must shave in public. You must uproot your private bathroom ritual, your “Me Time”, and take your show on the road.

Yesterday I shaved in public for the first time, in the locker room at the Y where I work out. The shave I got — nay, was blessed to receive — was in the top five shaves of my entire life, despite the fact that the cream was unfamiliar, the sink couldn’t be filled to rinse my razor and let me shave in blessed and aiding/abetting silence, and I was made bracingly aware, due to the airflow of the Y’s formidable air conditioning, that my junk was on semi-display below the bottommost edge of the workout towel I sucked my gut in to wear around my waist.

So today I tried a different tack. If I could achieve such an historic shave with indifferent tools, what if I dialed my rig in a little tighter and really went to town?

Out of my gym bag dop kit came the Trumper’s rose shaving cream, rose Skin Food, and Merkur travel brush. In went a tub of the semi-soft Proraso shaving soap, Proraso’s liquid cream aftershave balm, and my $12 Omega boar’s bristle brush. I kept the Merkur Progress adjustable DE razor, set on “3″, and left the still-good Merkur Platinum blade in it.

Hot water running into the unstoppable sink, I commenced to shaving. Today I only had an audience of one — a 40-something everyguy at the next sink who looked like someone who would, after some deep reflection, name Mike and the Mechanics as his favorite band. While I soaked my brush in the hot water and worked up a lather on the Proraso soap, he rubbed Mennen Speed Stick on his pits and slathered Adidas hair gel into his modified Seacrest.

While I built up a lather with my brush, he looked over quizzically and frowned. Different is always bad. Good, I thought — tough crowd. Makes you work harder as an artist. I brushed the lather on my face and neck, and ran the Merkur over my face, first with-grain and then, after relathering, against. Mike and the Mechanics guy wasn’t frowning anymore — now he was watching me shave, mentally taking notes, or maybe he was silently singing along to “All I Need Is A Miracle” in his head, I’m not sure which.

I rinsed with cold water and felt that bracing post-Proraso facial freeze deep freeze that keeps this miraculous Italian shaving cream in my regular rotation, and slapped on some of the company’s milky post-shave lotion, which felt so good on this hot summer day that I may keep using it till the weather cools down again. Italy gets crazy hot in the summer — no wonder this combo is so popular over there.

The shave itself was fantastic — the best I’ve ever gotten from Proraso. Not a trace of feelable stubble was left anywhere on my face and neck, and the Proraso aftershave lotion left my face so smooth and cool in the summer heat that I’m kicking myself for not breaking this stuff out weeks ago when it really started getting hot here.

As I said yesterday, I don’t know if it’s the running water masking the sound of the razor’s pinging whiskers, or the pressure of public performance, or the post-exercise flush in my cheeks somehow pushing the whiskers out further so they can get chopped closer, but these two shaves I’ve caught at the Y have been beyond spectacular. I wish I could shave this well at home. Tomorrow’s Saturday, my day off my new He-Man regimen, so I’m going to try to do everything in my own bathroom the same as my Y shaves — running water, Proraso, the Progress razor — and see if I can match what I’m getting from Art Shaveau. If I can’t, then I’ll be taking all of my shaves in public from now on.

A few weeks ago I joined our local Y, after a glorious fifteen year run of not darkening a gym door for any reason other than to vote. Man, it was a great decade-and-a-half — not a single huff nor a hint of puff, and in all that time, the closest I ever came to a jockstrap was watching bar dancers at the Man Hole.

I thought it could go on forever, this life of not exercising. I felt great, ate whatever I wanted, and kept hovering around my fighting weight despite the near total lack of physical exertion. Beloved wife kept lying to me, telling me I looked great. Even my growing man-breasts had the appearance, if you didn’t reach out and feel their udder-like softness, of well-developed pecs, from most angles and under select shirt fabrics.

I always thought that the myth about how guys suddenly balloon when they turn 40 was just one of those ha-ha’s that went along with the milestone — like those gag gifts at Spencer’s that all have to do with diminished sexual stamina and/or mental sharpness e.g. those big banners proclaiming “Lordy, Lordy, Bob is Forty!” with a crudely drawn cartoon of a senile-looking guy with a big wet mark on the front of his institutional pajamas. I’ll grant you, that’s some funny, funny stuff. But it wasn’t going to happen to me.

Then it did. So now I’m hitting the Y every day, trying to make up for lost time (like that’s going to happen). Will I get abs of steel again? Dunno, never had ‘em a day in my entire life. No, the best I can hope for at this point is to stave off that wet mark on the front of my jammies for as long as I possibly can. So I huff, and I puff, and I scurry on the Cybex like a hamster in his wheel.

The reason I bring all this up is because today I had my first-ever locker room shave. In all my years of playing high-school and college sports, and of working out in gyms as a young adult, my shaving and my locker room time-spentage never crossed paths. This was a first.

So I came prepared. I packed my gym bag dop kit with:

1 (one) Merkur Progress adjustable DE razor;

1 (one) pack of Merkur Platinum blades;

1 (one) Merkur travel brush

1 (one) tube of Trumper’s rose shaving cream;

1 (one) bottle of Trumper’s rose Skin Food.

I will say this for our local Y — the showers in the men’s locker room are fit for a king. Great pressure, plenty of hot water, and the soap dispensers are always filled with this really great-smelling almond-scented industrial soap that smells almost as good as Taylor’s almond shaving cream, which itself smells like an almond pastry. Nice work, fellas, or gals as the case may be. You could’ve gone with that blue industrial soap that smells like laundry detergent, but you didn’t, and I thank you.

I stand at the row of sinks after the shower and unload my tools, and it’s then that I notice, for the first time, that the sinks lack stoppers. They’re like the sinks at any public facility — by design, you can’t fill them and hence can’t overflow them.

This is a problem. I like to fill the sink with hot water, let the brush soak, and then dunk my razor in after every face swipe to clean off the lather and whiskers. I can’t do that with the locker room sink. I have to just let the hot water run, and rinse my razor that way.

Why is this no good? Because with the hot water running, I can’t hear the razor cutting my whiskers. That little pinging noise — especially loud when using the Merkur adjustable razors like the Progress in my hand — is not only pleasant and satisfying to hear, but the primary sensory feedback agent I use to gauge whether I need to go over an area again or not. I’m like a bat when I shave — if I don’t hear that radar ping that tells me I’m cutting whiskers, I’m flying/shaving blind.

But I’m also acutely aware that other men are staring at me. And not just because I’m trying to wear a small workout towel around my waist. No, they’re staring at my junk.

My shaving junk.

The young and the old, the buff and the saggy, they all check out my wetshaving rig. The younger guys are clearly confused, while the older men nod approvingly, and a few even give me fatherly smiles as they pass. I’ve seen a few guys catch a typical modern guy shave at that sink with a plastic disposable and some gel, but I haven’t seen any old-school wetshaving before I broke out my junk and got to work.

I hadn’t used a Progress in awhile — nice. This is an excellent, excellent razor. I don’t use it much lately because I tend to dick with the blade settings too much if I’m using an adjustable, but the Progress is my second favorite Merkur after the HD, and I always get a great shave with it.

The Trumper rose was a new one for me. This was the first time I’ve tried it. I love Trumper’s violet and use it often, but never the rose. Just never got around to it, and then I fell hard for Taylor’s rose shaving cream, so the Trumper kind of sat there unused. Well, this is good stuff, certainly, but I prefer the Taylor, to be honest. The Trumper isn’t as dense, and makes a more runny lather with the same amount of water in the brush as when I use Taylor’s rose. With a bit less water in the brush, the Trumper made a much nicer and thicker lather and worked fine, but didn’t smell quite as all-out rosey as Taylor’s. It’s a fine cream, but I prefer the way the Taylor smells, and it’s cheaper besides.

I had big misgivings about shaving with the hot water running the whole time, since I couldn’t really hear anything that was happening with my shave. But just as a blind man’s hearing becomes more sensitive to compensate, so did my sense of touch. Cut off from my usual whisker-blade-ping-hammer-anvil-stirrup-brain-hand-razor feedback loop, I focused on the physical “pings” traveling down the metal shaft of the Progress and into my hand to tell me where I needed to shave and where I didn’t need to anymore because it was smooth.

Did I say smooth? I meant glass smooth. Maybe I should plug my ears every time I shave, or maybe I should go back to the Progress, now that I can shave without pressure for real. Whatever it was, I got the best shave I’ve ever had with the Progress, and that’s saying something, because this razor’s given me some of my high-water-mark shaves.

A quick slap-on of the Skin Food and I was done. My cheeks and neck felt so clean and smooth I kept caressing my face until I noticed that the guys were staring again, so I waited till I got to my car to start up again with the faceturbation. Remember, junior gumshoes, you can always spot a wetshaver by the disturbing way he caresses his own face, oblivious to public distaste for such odd behavior.

Or maybe it’s shaving in public that’s the secret to the spectacular shave I got today. Shaving as performance art? Is this the next step after finally mastering the no-pressure DE shave?

I think I’m to something. Now I’m going to haul all my favorite shaving products to the Y and test them out there, naked, in the public eye, with only the sound of the running faucet bouncing off the hard locker room walls to drown out the thunderous applause from the sea of orangutan-teated old men trying to wolf-whistle with no teeth.

This “no pressure” thing is really paying off in triple cherries. Today I shaved with my trusty Merkur HD razor, Merkur Platinum blade, Vulfix #2235 badger brush, only this morning I hauled out my deepest, darkest, guiltiest pleasure when it comes to shaving — Trumper’s violet shaving cream.

I’ve waxed on about this excellent cream before. While other shaving creams may be slicker (Cremo Cream), more refreshing (Proraso), more moisturizing (Taylor avocado), or more soothing (Taylor rose), no shaving cream is more decadent and delicious than Trumper’s violet.

It’s purple. It’s Trumper. And it smells better than any other shaving cream on the face of the Earth. I unscrew the cap off the tub and jam my nose in there, inhaling deeply and dreamily. This cream single-handedly turned a lifelong flower smell hater into a floral scent queen. I went so nuts after discovering Trumper violet shaving cream that I hunted down some Claus Porto violet bath soap and not just one but two violet colognes, Santa Maria Novella’s Violetta (smells better on beloved wife than me, so it’s hers now) and Trumper’s own Ajaccia Violet cologne (a keeper). I can’t get enough of this scent. And the shaving cream is the best smelling of all this stuff — every time I take a whiff I can’t believe how good it smells.

Trumper’s violet also happens to shave like the devil, putting it in the top rank of shaving creams I’ve tested. I’ve got a lot of tubs of shaving cream, but the only one that’s always near-empty is my preciousssssss violet.

I always get a superlative shave with Trumper’s violet, but today was the first time I used it without any added pressure on the blade. Just let the weight of the razor do the job for me. And damned if I didn’t get the very best shave I’ve ever gotten from this purple wonder cream.

The funny thing is, the less pressure I use when shaving, the better the shaves get, and the less the cream seems to make a difference. I mean, yes, it pays to use a good quality shaving cream. No doubt about that. But when I don’t apply any added pressure to the razor, the differences between these various creams which used to be so stark have now shrunken to near-irrelevancy. Whether I’m shaving with Cremo Cream, Taylor’s rose, or Trumper’s violet — three creams which previously couldn’t have smelled and shaved more differently to me — as long as I don’t apply any added pressure to the razor, the shaves all go equally well. It’s like I’ve taken what was once a crucial variable right out of the equation. Which is great, right?

Um, right?

I’ve been going through this weird Queen/Bowie deja vu thing lately.

It started a few days ago when New York’s new “Jack” format radio station played the Queen/Bowie song “Under Pressure”, a song I haven’t heard in years and which I’m pleased to say I can finally enjoy again without thinking about “Ice, Ice Baby”.

Then later that same day my mother-in-law’s over for dinner and she’s talking about the Live 8 concerts, and how none of the acts she watched on TV were as good as when Queen and Bowie teamed up at the original Live Aid to sing “Under Pressure”.

Then Saturday, beloved wife and I were out with some friends of ours, and our friend Amy recounted a tale, apropos of nothing, of sharing the same masseuse with the model Iman years ago, and hearing Bowie’s voice on the answering machine when it picked up during her massages. So she’s listening to Bowie call her masseuse to reschedule his wife’s appointment, and at the same time, the masseuse is applying pressure all over her back. Pressure. Bowie. And who in history has probably gotten the most massages of anyone? The Queen of England. Yes, the Queen.

What does all of this have to do with shaving? Well, I have a confession to make. Even though I’ve always repeated the standard wetshaving boilerplate “when shaving with a DE safety razor, use no downward pressure, and let only the weight of the razor rest upon your skin as you guide it across your face”, I haven’t totally followed my own advice.

Yes, Dear Reader, I press down on the razor. It’s wrong, I know. But what is “wrong” in a world gone mad, I ask you? What’s a little English applied to the blade on your face? I mean, isn’t this whole wetshaving trip supposed to harken back to Merry Ol’ anyway? So applying a bit of English should be a good thing, right?

Hey, it’s not like I’m leaning on it with all my might and scraping my skin like I’m removing an old “Live To Ride, Ride To Live” bumper sticker off my car. I just push down a little bit, is all.

See, when I first started learning how to shave with a double-edge razor, I followed the stock advice not to apply any pressure to the blade whatsoever, and my first batch of shaves were mediocre at best. Lots of visible stubble remained no matter how many passes I did. I followed the Shavegeek Elders’ orders, but all I got were terrible shaves.

So I started pressing down a little bit. And my shaves began to dramatically improve. Now I could get a super close, super smooth shave, just by applying enough pressure on the blade to force it to cut through the mini redwoods on my face forest. I was heartened to watch Straightrazorplace.com’s Lynn Abrams’ video and see him clearly pressing down pretty forcefully on his cut-throat razor as he demonstrated how to shave with it. I figured if a He-Man like Lynn was down with blade pressure, how bad could it really be to shave like that with a DE? So that’s how I’ve been shaving all this time, and getting great results.

Then I decided to try the new brushless Cremo Cream, which is about as different from a traditional English shaving cream as Freddie Mercury is from Dick Cheney. This super-slick, super-effective cream makes my shaves so easy they’re almost too easy — the razor glides over my face like it’s not even making contact, without the slightest bit of friction, and the Cremo even seems to mute the sound of the whiskers getting cut, too, ehancing the eerie sensation of nothing going on. But then you rub your puss afterward and marvel at the baby tushy shave Cremo leaves you with.

Shaving with the Cremo for a week seems to have had an effect on not just my shaves, but my technique. I noticed today, for the first time, that I’m not applying nearly the amount of pressure to the razor on my face as I’ve been all this time. For the first time since the very beginning of this whole wetshaving thing, I’m actually shaving the way I recommend to every newbie I talk to — without any pressure, just letting the weight of the razor do all the work. And the kicker is, my shaves have never been better.

I wanted to see if the no-pressure technique worked with a regular cream and not just Cremo, so today, for the first time, I shaved with just the weight of the razor pressing down on a lather bed of Taylor’s rose shaving cream. The Taylor isn’t quite as slick and glidey as the Cremo, especially when you use Cremo with a brush, but it’s plenty lubricating.

I let the weight of my Merkur HD razor be the only pressure bearing down on my skin, and I got the very best shave I’ve ever enjoyed from this rose shaving cream. As with the Cremo, I didn’t feel like I was really accomplishing anything with such a light touch, but when I rinsed off with cold water at the end, my face was so smooth I couldn’t feel any stubble anywhere, even under my chin.

Now, my Merkur HD is a somewhat aggressive razor. Its fixed-head geometry shows more bare blade than the old fixed-head Gillette DEs, so maybe it’s better suited to the abosultely-no-pressure shaving technique I’ve described. I’ll try using my Gillette DEs, both fixed and adjustable, and see if they shave as closely with no added pressure as my heavier, more aggressive Merkur.

Clearly, my learning curve hasn’t flattened out yet, which is great, because that means my shaves can get even better, if that’s possible. I suppose if a shave that takes zero seconds and cuts so close I don’t have to shave ever again and leaves me with zero skin irritation is the ideal, then I’ve got a long way to go. But I took a giant step closer when I finally let up on the pressure and let the blade do all the work for me.