It's true that nerves can be pushed and feel pain. In a society that overenforces the promise of security, the reason offered by authority is this need to avoid pain. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound a cure; an ounce of protection and security is worth...

And without a doubt this has been proven to be true, so we have to keep it in mind. Gillette safety razors have made hair removal so much safer...really, a child could do it.

And as much as I appreciate safety razors for some body parts, the passion that I feel for straight razor shaving is worth so very much more than that promise of safety will ever be worth. True, I cut myself, a lot in the beginning, very, very rarely now. But I just did last week, right by my lip.

I shaved at night and went to work the next day. I'm a professor, so my students and colleagues, even at the committee meeting, they all saw that I had a gash. Who knows what they thought, but we all do tend to notice things like that on others' faces.

We all feel some sympathy for the pain, I suppose, a natural human response. Perhaps some of us are laughed at, too.

Why risk both the physical pain and possible emotional pain? For the passion. The danger is a thrill.

And the point to be made is that there's a fine line between pushing the nerves so they have something to feel and damaging or desensitizing the nerves. That line is the edge of the straight razor, to think about it metaphorically.

Because pleasure and pain are so close, if we avoid something that might be painful, we might never know the pleasure one can come to experience after mastering the skill and art of doing a potentially dangerous thing well.

I suppose I like to live a little, I guess. That's why I shave with a straight razor.

And the universe keeps telling me it's a wonderful thing, despite the occasional cuts. Matter of fact, it was only a day or two later, and the crusty scab line was still there so glaringly on my face, but then it was that I happened to connect in person with another straightrazorplace member, really by chance.

He happened to have recently cut himself, too, so we laughed. And we talked razors. It was quite wonderful, actually, and rare as I haven't met too many others who shave like I do.

I don't know if too many people like the way I live and think, but I guess I'm not shy about sharing my views.

While this post is about straight razor shaving, it really is also about what my writing partner and I tried to accomplish in our new book, a short novel. It most certainly is not a Disney story.