I was born after E.T. was released. The original. And I would have just beaten the sequel, but luckily that abomination was never born. So when I finally started producing my own testosterone and sprouting hair on my face, the cartridge razor was already a thing. It was pretty much the only thing. Mach 3 motherfuckers. Getting your face smooth was just like flying a supersonic jet. Except that it wasn’t. Not at all. But it was Okay. Every four days, I sidled up to the ol’ mirror, stared down the five scattered hairs – each one like a solitary pilgrim - and prepared for battle, armed with canned shaving cream and a supersonic-jet-razor.
And for more than ten years of my young shaving life, the only that really changed was that I went from 5 hairs to comfortably more than 25. But the same male models would give themselves bedroom eyes in the mirror, smiling smugly, touching their just-shaved faces like it was their only way to climax. The biggest things to arrive were shaving gel (spoiler: it turns into foam and lasts for eternity) and vibrating razors (because the only thing cooler than a supersonic jet is a supersonic jet that vibrates).
While razors were learning to vibrate and turning radioactive-waste green, I was growing up. Maturing. Living the glorious, hangover-strewn, cash-strapped life of a student. I still am. So fuck you. And when, as aforementioned student, you’re looking forward to a breakfast burger only to realise that you can’t afford it because you just used up the proceeds from your housemate’s involuntarily donated kidney to pay for a supersonic razor cartridge, it tickles a nerve. Maybe you “Here’s Johnny” the restaurant wall with a newly acquired axe. Or like me, you give radioactive supersonic vibrating jet razors the middle finger... Then the two fingers…. Then the middle one again and then the middle one of each hand in rotating and furious, blurring succession. And, mounting the nearest parked (and vacant car), you yell with poetic justice and rebellious fervour “Oh you Mach-ing fucking wankers!! Take your four blades, your KY-infused lube strip! Take your convenience, your fluffy foamy apparitions! Take all your trappings and jump ass-first onto a hot and rusty poker!” And with streamers, confetti and hurrahs raining down on you, you know that something righteous has just happened.
Granted, it will not win you a breakfast burger. But from that moment on you can take up the art of wet-shaving. And yes, it’s just as sexy as it sounds.