Proposal: Let’s Open A Love Store

Look, this is all I’m saying: If they sold love at the store, it would be easier on us all. I’d buy it. You’d buy it. We’d all buy it. You’d have to read the labels, sure. There’s no telling what they put in that stuff these days.

You’d find the gourmet products on the top shelf: Artisanal passion. Small-batch pining. Hand-pulled heart strings. You know — the expensive stuff you can’t really afford but which you splurge on occasionally when your paycheck comes around, or maybe after the kind of soul-crushing day where you feel like you need to treat yourself to something extravagant.

The kind of love that expires not long after you open it, the kind that gradually burns itself out into a cold lump of charcoal? You’d have to get that from the cold case. It would come in thick glass containers and would be nestled next to the probiotic supplements. (Use daily to keep your gut-borne microfauna healthy and happy, with little smiles on their microbial faces.)

The juicy, messy, overripe love would sit mouldering in a clearance bin near the front of the store, surrounded by a halo of fruit flies. Your instinct might be to avoid it, to be suspicious of it because it’s marked down so low. You never know until you cut one open, though. Sometimes those loves are the sweetest. Just make sure to cut around the bruises.

For people always on the go, Type As too busy to sit down and love at the noontime hour — let alone three times a day! — there’d be little four-packs of love-replacement shakes. Tuck one in to your briefcase in the morning. Throw one back between meetings. It would fill you up, make you forget what you’re missing. I mean, sure, they make you a little gassy and they’re a little bit chalky and they don’t taste all that great, but hey! Who has time for the real thing, am I right?? It’d be like Soylent™, but for lovers!

Or maybe, like me, you’re the kind of person who’s definitely in the market but would rather not get dressed and/or leave the house. What about a subscription-based service where they send you a different kind of love every week, so you get to try them all? One week’s would come with an Eastern Asian flair, the next week’s would have a spicy Latin American vibe, and the next week you’d get this weird fusion thing where you’re pretty sure some low-wage warehouse drone mixed the contents of two different shipments and then sealed them inside an insanely over-packaged parcel. All delivered conveniently to your door!

All I’m saying is, love is hard to come by, even though there’s supposed to be a limitless supply of it. In this on-demand economy, there’s a wealth of ways to commodify this thing, to give the people what they want. There’s a whole service model here waiting for a VC with a few extra bucks and a soft spot. With 21st-century technology and a captive 20th-century audience, I know this could work.

I submit it here for your consideration.

Please hurry?