On balance, it’s probably a good thing that the Historical Guy who decided we should be clean shaven was handed that decision. Otherwise, he might have got himself up to some even more lethal project.
As things stand now, a man’s face is one of life’s great hostile environments, what with the scraping we do every morning and the stressing throughout the day. The surface of Mars beats us out only by a few toxic gases and we’re occasionally capable of giving even that one a run for its money.
Enter Mary Kay (yes, gentlemen, the same) and her MKMen cooling aftershave gel. Since I gave up acne medicine at 17, I’ve never put anything else on my face besides shaving cream. But a colleague of mine has a wife who could sell MK products to a toad in its most dormant life phase and she got to me.
‘Good thing, too. This stuff really makes the face feel more human after the Morning Scrape, not incrementally but almost in one fell swoop. Plus, it somehow manages a softening and soothing effect that persists throughout much of the day in spite of the moistener I ritually forget to apply on top of it.
Not cheap, but a little dab—to evoke an ancient Guy Saying—will do ya’. And it does feel good.
Canter Bridge 
Couldn’t have said it better myself! It is really good stuff…I think I’d call it “Soothing Aftershave Gel’, but I’m OK with ‘Cooling’. As for your oblique reference to toxic gases: kudos to the smoothness of that one, DB!