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When I bought my first badger shaving brush years ago, the salesperson told me I needed -- needed -- a stand for the brush's well-being.

"You have to promise me you'll make sure to hang the brush upside down, so it will dry properly and you won't damage the brush," he gravely intoned, as if he were passing down sacred knowledge. So I forked over another six bucks for a dorky looking plastic stand, and hung my brush from it for a few weeks till I got over it and just set the brush upright on its handle every time I was finished shaving.

Then I bought a travel brush, and it, too, came with a protective accessory -- a little screw-cap tube which the little brush fit into, so its delicate bristles would be buffered from the dangers lurking inside my travel kit by a mighty sheath of thin plastic.

Every brushmaker, brushseller, and brushgeek I've ever met coddles their brushes like newborns. Is a badger really that big of a pussy? Look at the badger in the photo above -- he's rolling with a coyote, for cripes sakes! You ever hear a real coyote howl at night? It sends shivers down your spine. You think a coyote would be friends with a sissy animal? Of course not. Badgers are like the Charles Bronsons of the animal world.

Aside from that first few weeks of badger brush ownership, I've never hung any of my brushes upside down. When I'm done shaving, I rinse the brush clean, shake the water out of it, wipe it up and down on a towel, and rest it upright on its handle in my medicine cabinet. I've done this with cheap Art of Shaving brushes, expensive Simpson brushes, and moderately priced Vulfix brushes of all shapes and sizes, and not a single one of them has ever had a problem with drying properly between shaves, or losing hairs, or smelling musty, or anything else for that matter. I think badger brushes are a lot tougher than guys give them credit for.

I'm also over the whole travel-brush-inna-tube thing. I love that little Vulfix travel brush and use it whenever I travel, but I got rid of the little plastic canister. It's a Vulfix badger brush, after all -- it can take it. For shaving at the gym, I just threw a Vulfix #2233 in my dop kit. No case, no protective sheath, no nothing. Just threw it in the bag. It bounces around with my razor and assorted poultices, and when I'm through shaving, I rinse it off, swipe it on my towel, and throw it back into the bag.

I've been doing this for months and the brush looks and works exactly the same as it did when I first got it. I like that the brush is so tough. I love just grabbing it out of the bag and going to town, and then tossing it back in the bag when I'm done. This is how a man treats his shaving brush. Not rough, or callously. Just appropriately.

A quality shaving brush isn't a glass slipper. I'm glad I got over it. A badger brush is a hard plastic handle with some of the toughest bristles the animal kingdom has to offer sticking out of one end. The less I baby these things, the less I fetishize the routine, and the better I feel about this whole trip. Especially when I'm already hunched over my desk clipping Feather blades down to size and inching them into my Injector like some demented Keebler elf.