We watch a lot of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on Bravo. Not so much lately, as we’ve been pretty busy, but TiVo keeps us in the loop. Anyhow, I have taken special note of the part where the gay guys scream and shudder when the straight guy shaves. It seems they want us to shave with the hair, not against it. And slowly.

So I resolved the try it. My normal shaving technique is to not. Shave, that is. Hence the beard. But now that I am working, and should look halfway respectable, I’ve begun to take it up again (no, I still have the beard, but now I’m shaving the non-beard parts on a more regular basis). I must confess that my shaving would send the gay guys into conniptions: fast, against the grain, with little regard for my safety or comfort.

I am trying the gay way now, and I must say, I am having mixed results. Shaving slowly gives me the heebies, I can feel each hair rasping across the blade and it doesn’t feel good. And shaving in the direction of the hair is nice and smooth, but does not give me a clean shave. I am always left with a short stubble that you can’t really see, but you can definitely feel. (My beard is fairly light, so since there isn’t a lot of face and neck stroking going on at work, I can probably get by with this amount of stubble.)

Any advice out there? I’m using three blades already, though I haven’t changed the blade recently. I’ll try that next.