.

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.