Haha I'm sure some of the senior members check this and have a bit of a nostalgic chuckle. I watched a whole minute of an instructional video and decided to just have at it. The oddest part of all is that I'm right handed, but shaving the left side of my face with the razor in my left hand came much more easy than the dominant side. Across the grain felt much more natural than with for some reason, but that might have something to do with the fact that I fixed my lather. And as far as the sweat, I didn't actually sweat, but I had that feeling where you know ALL of the blood is rushing to your head out of stress. In my head I was screaming "oh sh!t oh sh!t oh sh!t".

I still have a few bumps on my neck from cartridge razors and my safety razor (kept cutting them because I shave daily) but the straight razor just glided over them somehow. Not one drop of blood was caused by a razor bump.