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" Bud was a priest, a goddamn white-jacketed, bay-rum-smelling high priest whose temple was the barbershop in the basement of a hotel in Lancaster, Ohio. Bud&amp;#039;s church had Holy Scripture--The Sporting News and The National Police Gazette (which always displayed on its cover a semiclad young woman); holy artifacts--two ornate barber chairs and a row of tall, clear bottles; and a holy icon--a picture of legendary Ohio State quarterback Rex Kern. My dad took me there for Saturday worship, and Bud would drop the booster seat into a chair and begin the service with &amp;quot;Short-back-&amp;#039;n&amp;#039;-sides-longer-on-top?&amp;quot; And then his clippers would click, and my dad would pick up the Police Gazette. After a few years of visiting Bud&amp;#039;s ministry, I was a full-fledged member of his religion, baptized by the slap of witch hazel and the dash of bay rum into the Orthodox Church of Minimal Grooming. The faith had only one commandment: Thou shalt not fuss. And I swear by Bud&amp;#039;s straight razor that until the very moment the exotic and lovely Kakae massaged &amp;quot;hydrating gel&amp;quot; into my face with her sinewy fingers, I never did.  But I had accepted an invitation, and now Kakae&amp;#039;s hands did the devil&amp;#039;s work at the Golden Door, a $5,250-per-week spa tucked into the hills near San Diego. She steamed me, toned me, masked me with collagen, and wrapped my hands in liquid paraffin. She cleansed, exfoliated, and moisturized. She read a haiku. She was an emolliating succubus so seductive that I walked out with half a dozen bottles, elements of the &amp;quot;personal program&amp;quot; Kakae had designed for my beauty. &amp;quot;Why not?&amp;quot; a spa employee asked. &amp;quot;Burt Lancaster used to send a driver down here to get products all the time. Men do this.&amp;quot; Forgive me, Bud, for I have sinned. I not only followed Kakae&amp;#039;s plan, I obtained more elix-irs--bottle after bottle of moisturizers and shave creams and exfoliators. I fell into a male-cosmetics subculture, and I could not get enough. But beyond just wanting to smear my face with every new tincture, lubricant, and de-toxifier, I wanted to know how these products worked and what made the stuff in them integral to prettifying my face. After all, if I was going to goop it on my mug, I thought, shouldn&amp;#039;t I know what it is--and shouldn&amp;#039;t you?  SOAP Soap was my slippery slope, my gateway drug. Kakae said I needed it, and now I began each day excited by the latest bar or liquid. WHAT IT IS: For a thousand years or so, soap was made by boiling up a pile of dead animals, skimming the fat, and adding a dash of something alkaline. These days, many soaps--good old Ivory is one exception--are actually synthetic detergents made with fatty acids that come mostly from coconuts. HOW IT WORKS: Soap cleans because it has surface-active agents, or surfactants. Surfactant molecules have two ends. One end grabs water, and the other end surrounds oil and makes it soluble. All soap works this way, but the chemistry differs depending on skin type: \u2022 Oily skin? Dry it up with soap that has salicylic acid.  \u2022 Normal skin? Use soaps with vegetable oils or lanolin, which is obtained from the oil glands of sheep.  \u2022 Dry skin? Look for silicones like dimethicone and cyclomethicone, or glycerin, which can moisturize, too.  \u2022 For people with sensitive skin, there are cleansers like Cetaphil, which contains propylene glycol (the stuff they use in antifreeze and to de-ice airplane wings), a gentle oil-dissolving solvent. I tried them all. I washed with Escada, Burberry, and Chanel, all highly scented. I smelled rich, like a pretheater cocktail party. I used Aveda, Aramis Lab Series, Kiehl&amp;#039;s, Clinique, Annick Goutal, and half a dozen more. My skin got clean, and, remarkably, it did not feel dry--but not one washed away sin. EXFOLIATOR A couple of days each week, after cleansing with my special soaps, I exfoliated. Dr. Ronald Brancaccio, a professor of dermatology at New York University, told me that people make a new sheet of skin every fourteen to twenty-eight days and that men who shave scrape the dead skin off each and every day. But I fretted about my forehead and my nose. Kakae said they were buried under yellowing, dead derma, and that to free my face from its burdensome cocoon, I would need to exfoliate. WHAT IT IS: Imagine running 160-grit sandpaper over your face. That&amp;#039;s what most mechanically exfoliating lotions feel like. Which is why chemical exfoliators, such as salicylic-acid cleansers and ones with alpha-hydroxy acids (AHAs), are preferred by Dr. Diane Berson, also a professor of dermatology at NYU, who says that the gritty kind &amp;quot;can cause little abrasions or cause a lesion to erupt.&amp;quot; HOW IT WORKS: Mechanical exfoliators just scrape the skin off, using nice-smelling but painful natural food refuse, like apricot pits and walnut husks. Caswell-Massey makes a scrub with diatomaceous earth--clean dirt--and almond meal. This felt gentler, like 300-grit sandpaper. Biotherm Homme D\u00C3\u00A9sincrustant Visage painlessly removed my dead derma with minuscule polyethylene balls. To slough off the top layers of skin, chemical exfoliators use salicylic acid, beta-hydroxy acids (BHAs), or AHAs, including malic acid from apples, lactic acid from milk, or glycolic acid from sugarcane. Clinique&amp;#039;s Scruffing Lotion and Biore&amp;#039;s Pore Perfect toner are two that contain some forms of BHA or AHA. Both made my forehead shinier than a marine&amp;#039;s shoes. SHAVING CREAM This was step three in my morning routine. In the past, when in a pinch, I&amp;#039;d frequently shaved with things like my wife&amp;#039;s hair conditioner and skin lotion from a Best Western. I bled every time. But during my journey through the gates of emollience, I used Edge, Gillette Extra Protection shaving gel, Biotherm foam, Aramis Lab Series Maximum Comfort shave cream, American Crew Herbal Shave Cream, Glytone Serious Shave Cream 13, Aveda shave cream, Kiehl&amp;#039;s Close-Shavers Squadron, Burt&amp;#039;s Bees shaving soap, and Chanel Technique pour Homme shave cream. I bled every time. WHAT IT IS: Anything that will soften the beard and lubricate the face so the blade glides will work, which is why almost all shaving products are combinations of moisturizers and other agents like foamers and soothers, such as aloe vera. But still I bled. HOW IT WORKS: Several products did make me feel better about bleeding. American Crew has a nice menthol effect, and Aramis Lab Series numbed my face with benzocaine, so I did not actually feel the cut, and that also eliminated razor burn. The Glytone oozed with oil and moisturizers, which lubed up my face for a seamless, razor-burn-free ride. Nice. A product I did not use, oat-based Aveeno shave gel, is often recommended for those who suffer from ingrown hairs or razor bumps, as many black men do. DEODORANT OR ANTIPERSPIRANT WHAT IT IS: Antiperspirants contain aluminum salts, whereas deodorants contain bacteria killers. Which to use? HOW IT WORKS: Bacteria breed in your armpits, causing them to smell. You can stop the stink with aluminum salts, like aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex. They literally plug up the outlets from your sweat glands, which is why it&amp;#039;s antiperspirant. Or you can let your body sweat and just kill the odor with triclosan, an antibacterial chemical in most deodorants.  SUNSCREEN I also wanted to incorporate a sunscreen into my morning routine, and after talking to the doctors, I began a laborious search for just the right one. WHAT IT IS: Think of sunscreens as radiation condoms that let you play, not pay. HOW IT WORKS: Octyl methoxycinnamate, among others, prevents burns by blocking UV-B radiation. That&amp;#039;s good. But UV-A radiation--the basis for tanning beds--is even more damaging because it penetrates more deeply into the skin. So look for screens (like BioSun&amp;#039;s SPF-30 sunblock lotion) that have titanium dioxide, a white, powdered form of titanium, which deflects both A and B rays. Also, there&amp;#039;s a brand-new skin shield out called Z-Cote; it&amp;#039;s just plain old zinc oxide in microfine form. It dries completely and doesn&amp;#039;t rub off easily and is in sunscreen from the Body Shop and Solar Sense.  MOISTURIZER Kakae insisted on it, and the way she rubbed it on me made me think it might be okay. WHAT IT IS: There are basically two kinds of moisturizing agents, occlusive and humectant, and occlusive moisturizers can be further divided into oily barriers and silicones. Some, like Chanel Technique pour Homme, Polo Sport Face Fitness, and Lab Series Lift Off!, for example, include sunscreens, too. Most moisturizers, though, are a strange soup of occlusives and humectants. Common components include hyaluronic acid, a protein found in umbilical cords (a synthetic form, thank God); squalane, an emollient from shark livers; and allantoin, used to promote wound healing and derived from uric acid. And then there is urea, a component of pee (be calm--it&amp;#039;s synthetically produced), used as an antiseptic and preservative. HOW IT WORKS: Occlusive moisturizers prevent water from escaping your skin. The single best occlusive moisturizer you can buy is petrolatum, aka Vaseline. You&amp;#039;ll walk around looking like a glazed doughnut, but you&amp;#039;ll be moist.  Other moisturizers are oil-and-water emulsions, like those you&amp;#039;ll find in Kiehl&amp;#039;s and Face Stockholm or in, say, cocoa butter, as in Caswell-Massey&amp;#039;s 1752. SPECIAL TIPS: For oily skin, use moisturizers with silicones (dimethicone, cyclomethicone, trimeth-icone), as in Lab Series Lift Off! AHA Formula, Biotherm Homme&amp;#039;s Anti-Shine moisturizing fluid, and Bulgari body lotion. Humectant moisturizers are also common; they actually pull water out of the air. Finally, there are products, like Clinique&amp;#039;s Turnaround lotion, that use chemicals such as propylene (or butylene) glycol, glycerin, or AHAs, which can add moisture to the skin rather than prevent its escape. All the moisturizers kept me soft as a baby&amp;#039;s umbilical cord--and I never looked like a cruller. But by the end of the third week of my straying from Bud&amp;#039;s fold, my former fifteen-minute morning prep had stretched to two hours. I realized, one recent Sunday, as my wife and I prepared to go out, that I had completely turned my back on the Church of Bud. I showered, cleansed, exfoliated, shaved, moisturized, deodorized, and radiation-screened. I put Frederic Fekkai gel in my hair. I was trimmed, I was sun-protected. I was shiny--hell, I was greasy. I emerged naked from the bathroom and spread my arms so my wife could bask in my glory. She stood by the front door, fully dressed and ready to leave, as she had been for the previous hour. She was not impressed. &amp;quot;You will never, ever have another facial,&amp;quot; she declared, and marched into the bathroom to seize my Hefty sack full of products. She has since placed me in rehab. Under her counseling, I groom in carefully measured doses. I am permitted the use of soap, pricey shave creams, and a moisturizing sunblock (skin cancer being no joke). This whole ritual takes me fifteen minutes. And though my wife forbids me to say the name of the priestess who enlightened me, my morning ablutions still include a silent aside, thanking Kakae for making me moist. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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