stupid facial hair

So I guess my facial hair is at the upper end of thickness/toughness. It's always given me problems - it's horribly itchy during all points of "growing it out" regardless of how long I let it go and how much conditioner I put in it, and if I shave more than about twice a week, my neck gets trashed with razor burn and I get pimples from ingrown hairs around my mouth. Yeah, good times.

I've dealt with this for some time and just kind of assumed that I was doing something wrong. When I started seeing Belinda, the facial hair _really_ hurt her when we'd kiss. I'm no stranger to the idea of beard burn, but it caused her a lot of pain. So, I set out to see if I could remedy the situation. The Gillette Mach 3, despite being the best disposable cartridge razor I've used, just wasn't cutting it. (sorry, pun.) I had tried expensive electric razors in the past with less than mediocre results, but I hit amazon.com to check out Norelcos thinking maybe their circular design would help. Instead, I somehow wound up reading reviews of the PocketGo P-70 Men's Shaver shaver. It is a single foil, battery powered travel shaver, but the reviews were pretty consistently great. Further, it was less than twenty bucks, so I figured it was worth a shot.

Upon trying the P-70 out, I, like the other reviewers, found it to be a formidable razor regardless of price point. It did a great job with my face above the jaw line - I would be happy using it every day for that. It didn't fare so well on the neck though, which is admittedly the real problem spot. I've found that a combination of the P-70 and the Mach 3 give me a shave about as smooth as I imagine I can get. The P-70 is water resistant too, so it's great for a quick touch up in the shower.

In my quest for an even better shave, I also checked out depilatories designed for facial use. There really aren't many viable options here. Most products I found were targeted at black men, and from the sounds of it, they have a worse time than me with the razor burn. Magic shave seems to be the longest running product of this type, but I have yet to find a positive review of it. Everything I read made it sound pretty caustic. Another product that came up in google and had great reviews was something called Formula 103. A new herbal formulation that at its principal delivered moisturizers as it worked, alleviating the problems generally associated with depilatories. This product was only coming up in product lists on Walgreens websites, but was out of stock there. I did eventually find a store that had some in stock: treasuredlocks.com The price was $5 here instead of the $3 something Walgreens had it listed for, and shipping was another five bucks on top of that. The results? This stuff did absolutely nothing. When I tried to email the company, it bounced. I can't help but wonder if the reviews were astroturf, the product got pulled from Walgreens because it didn't work, and the parent company went under. Who knows. All I know is that my steel-like Irish facial hair is too tough for chemicals.

For now the P-70/Mach 3 situation is getting the job done, however I would like to try out more traditional razor styles in the future.