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Every once in awhile, a shaving product comes along that gladdens my heart and warms my cockles, mainly because I know it will deeply disturb the turgid schnooks on the shavegeek forums for all the right reasons.

Nancy Boy is a store in San Francisco's Castro district, aka "The Gayest Place On Earth", that sells its own line of men's cosmetics made with natural botanicals and scented with the lavender, peppermint, and rosemary that the founding partners Eric and Jack grow in their herb garden at home (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Nancy Boy's got all kinds of skin and hair care products, as well as a wicked sense of humor -- the two colognes they offer are called Butch and Fem, for shavebloggers and forum geeks, respectively -- and their links page is one of the most best I've come across. But the product they're best known for is their amazing Nancy Boy shaving cream.

Chris Fisher, shaving product hunter extraordinaire, was the one who hipped me to Nancy Boy. Here was a high-end shaving cream in a tub meant to be lathered with a brush, scented with lavender, peppermint and rosemary essential oils, and priced at half what the vaunted English creams cost. The only catch, of course, is that the tub says NANCY BOY, and has a baby blue flower logo instead of a manly coat of arms and "By Royal Appointment Of Various Well-Born Inbreds" emblazoned on the crest.

I was in love. You might even say I was "buy-curious".

I mean, who knows more about skin care -- gay men, or pasty-faced shavegeeks yakking about pipe smoking and Churchill? You ever see pictures of Churchill? The guy never exfoliated a day in his life. Sure, he saved the world from tyrrany, but hel-LOOO, would it have killed him to moisturize?

So I went online and bought a 6-ounce tub of Nancy Boy shaving cream for the princely sum of 15 clams. That's half what Trumper, Harris, and Coates shaving creams cost, and just a buck and a half more than Taylor. I even joined "Club Nancy Boy" to get my 15% discount and free gift (travel size Nancy Boy shampoo, nice stuff).

The shaving cream arrived in a few days, and I cracked the lid to check it out. Nancy Boy is a much lighter-loafered cream than the standard Brit stuff, smooth and creamy versus thick and goopy as with Trumper, Harris et al. Of the various traditional style shaving creams I've tried, only Taylor's Avocado is as light and creamy in texture as Nancy Boy.

What-ever. You don't make butter cows with this stuff, you shave with it. So I soaked my Vulfix #2235 badger brush in hot water, gave it a little shake to reduce the water it held to just the right amount, and swirled the tips in the Nancy Boy's glistening white cream.

The lavender/peppermint/rosemary scent hits you hard, the way you like it. The peppermint definitely dominates, but the trio of essential oils blends for an especially natural and pleasing scent that smells better every time I shave with this stuff. Taylor's Avocado -- my favorite of all the Taylor's shaving creams -- also has hints of lavender and rosemary, and wouldn't you know it? Nancy Boy happens to have avocado oil, just like the Taylor's cream. A very good sign.

Nancy Boy lathered up like a champ with a brush, just as thick and rich as the best English creams, and the shave I got was FAAAA-BULOUS! Really, it was just like using an expensive upper crust English shaving cream, only better, because it smelled nicer than many of them and at half the shekels to boot. What's not to like? My Gillette Super Speed glided over my skin like I'd laid down a lather of the finest creams Trumper and Taylor have to offer, and after a perfect DE shave, my skin felt just as smooth and moisturized as when I shave with Taylor's Avocado. I've been using Nancy Boy on and off for over a week now and I like it more every time I use it.

There is, of course, that niggling thing with the Nancy Boy brand name, and the pale blue flower logo. Not exactly the kind of manly-man accoutrement the typical repressed shavegeek craves when he swings the medicine cabinet door wide.

Me, I have no problem with it. Beloved Wife looked bemused when it arrived, and raised an eyebrow when she found me perusing the links page on the Nancy Boy site the other night. But then I showed her the link to a site featuring guys who like lolling around naked with party balloons, and I think even Rick Santorum would agree that one of the fundamental building blocks of a healthy man/not-a-man marriage is sharing.

I get a lot of "modern" shaving products sent to me for review, and unfortunately that usually means some kind of brushless, oddly-scented wonder goo that takes all the fun and pleasure out of the gentlemanly ritual of shaving, in the name of speeding things up so you can race through your morning like a crazed mongoose.

But this Nancy Boy shaving cream is the real deal. It's essentially an English-style, brush-type shaving cream with a great peppermint/lavender/rosemary scent, hyper-pure botanical ingredients, and a price that's half what comparable English creams cost. It's high-end stuff, iconoclastic, and on my short list of the very best shaving creams I've used.