One of our style editors took pity. 'You've never moisturized?' she asked gently. 'I don't remember,' I admitted. Judging by her expression, she graciously decided to assume I had amnesia. 'Well, we'll have to do something about that,' she said. And so began my eye-opening, skin-altering, brain-addling, four-month adventure in the world of male beauty regimens.

First, a little background. It isn't that I am unaware of the guy-beauty industrial complex. I know, for instance, that Clinique basically started it all with its pioneering men's skin-care line in 1976--a program it's relaunching this month. According to Jenny Belknap, vice president of global treatment marketing, the relaunch was triggered by the company's discovery that, while women traditionally bought the men's products for their husbands and sons, 'we firmly understand that now men are buying for themselves.' To make the line more male-friendly and less boggling, Clinique is cutting back from 25 products to 19 and shortening product names. Not that men seem all that intimidated by skin care: According to Mintel, a Chicago-based market research group, 63% of guys 25-34 report that they use moisturizer.

Though I am legitimately hazy regarding my own historic moistness levels, I did go through an exceptionally vain phase in my mid-to-late 20s, a couple of decades ago. I had a Manhattan stylist renowned as the 'King of Blondes' highlight my hair, whose natural color suggests a particularly lackluster mouse. I visited a Mexican spa where a bored local woman rolled me in seaweed as if fashioning a giant joint. I spent wads of money on stress-relieving massages, including one that concluded abruptly when the theretofore silent, aged Asian masseur stopped kneading my right shoulder and shrieked, 'The wing is broken! The wing is broken! It cannot carry the child!'

I remember at one point growing convinced that my boss was monitoring my under-eye puffiness, but, soon after, I regained my equilibrium. My grooming routine was gradually reduced to: unscented Dove soap, Barbasol shaving foam, interchangeable drugstore shampoos and some despised hair gel that made me feel like one of those oil-coated ducks blinking in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

So, naturally, I was wary when the aforementioned style editor dumped a box of skin-care and grooming product samples on my desk: 'We'll start with these,' she said. 'You'll use four products at night and eight in the morning.' I nervously mentioned that I didn't live in an alternate universe where mornings last 107 hours. 'Just get up earlier,' she said.

In the shower the next day, I washed my hair with my new Davines Love Smoothing Shampoo, a pricey Italian product designed to rehabilitate messed-up hair, and immediately felt like some dapper Milanese guy who eats oddly shaped pizzas and whose apartment is full of strange, half-size appliances. Next, I used Clark's Botanicals Face Wash (a soothing, mild, herbal goop) and shaved my face with what appeared to be pink icing, but was really a premium rose-scented cream from the storied British company Geo. F. Trumper. Next came a spray toner, an antiaging serum and the pivotal moisturizer (mine came from the Jack Black brand). Then I did a few jumping jacks to maintain my stamina and applied an age-combatting smidge of La Mer Eye Concentrate under each peeper using the complementary wand. (Wands? Arguably manly in wake of Harry Potter phenomenon? Discuss.)

Finally, I groomed my hair with Baxter of California Soft Water Pomade, which gave my hair the texture of a mink pelt, but was still a bit greasy for my taste.

I walked to the subway feeling fresh and tingly and evangelical about the value of taking time to value oneself. I also felt a little like Patrick Bateman, the murderous skin care devotee from 'American Psycho,' but was too busy caressing my curiously soft face to brood on that. Upon reaching the subway 15 minutes later, I realized that, in my heady self-absorption, I'd forgotten my wallet. I felt less evangelical running home again.

By day three, the tingliness had given way to a burning sensation around my jaw. Was this my choice: To feel youthful but on fire versus old and content? The culprit turned out to be the rose shaving cream, which the style editor replaced with Proraso Shaving Foam for 'pelli sensibili' (sensitive skin). After carefully testing this amazing product, I can honestly tell you that it's fun to say 'pelli sensibili' repeatedly in a heavy Italian accent.

And so it went. As I continued my regimen, either my skin improved visibly or my colleagues formed a vast conspiracy that required them to gush about my face. I asked non-coworker friends if they noticed anything different about me, but they were stumped and resistant to broad hints. Still I could swear that, in a certain group photo taken at a steakhouse about seven weeks into my program, I look like a cast member of a teen drama on the CW Network: weirdly lineless, buoyant, possibly a vampire.

By week 12, long after my co-workers had acclimatized to the undocumented miracle that was my face, I was bored by my regimen's demands and losing my motivation. I decided to tempt fate by subbing out my original, conventional moisturizer for Clinique's new Oil-Control Mattifying Moisturizer. Life so seldom offers opportunities to be 'mattified' that it seemed worth the risk. But, although the product left my skin powder-dry and Botox-taut, I was still feeling restless.

The style editor decided we needed to seriously up the ante and helped me book a facial with celebrity youthifier Tracie Martyn, who's rejuvenated Brad Pitt, Alan Rickman and Madonna. When I arrived at Ms. Martyn's Fifth Avenue penthouse studio, I was taken aback by the estrogen-y décor, which is entirely lavender and white with gauzy curtains that should properly be billowing in a strong breeze. A Borzoi would not be out of place. I was told that I'd been squeezed in between Diane von Furstenberg and a businessman who'd just run a marathon.

'About 20% of my clientele is male,' Ms. Martyn, a hypnotically placid Brit, told me once she had me on her table. As she applied potions with darting little swipes, tightened my jawline with a tool that emits electricity, and exposed me to red light that she said once healed astronaut wounds, she mentioned a male 60-something lawyer who visits her every week. She started cooing excitedly as my face responded--brilliantly, it seemed--to the electricity: 'Oh, it's looking very good.'

Back at the office, I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror, searching for evidence that it was more chiseled. One cheekbone looked pointier, but I couldn't be sure.

Confession: In the end, I abandoned all the products in my regime, except for the Italian shampoo, the 'pelli sensibili' shave foam and a truly addictive cleanser from Tracie Martyn that I added post-facial. Turns out that I'm just not vain enough to fuss with wands in the pursuit of advanced male beauty. I still moisturize occasionally--if only to ward off ridicule.