"Saturday."
This is the last message I sent to my best friend before she turned into a ghost. She didn't die, but our friendship did and now I wish I'd said something more meaningful.
Ghosting, which was recently chosen as one of 2015's words of the year by Collins English Dictionary, is when someone cuts you off dead - the ultimate silent treatment. Your calls are ignored, your texts left unread and, if you're as unbearable as me, you might even find yourself full-on digitally blocked (even Linked in - I'm not going to late-night stalk your endorsements). Like the dad who goes out for cigarettes and never returns, my friend went full Houdini on me - poof, and she was gone.
There are times when disappearing into the ether is the only way to deal with a ghoul, I get that. Who could blame Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita for pulling an Irish goodbye on Humbert Humbert? It doesn't get much more creepy than a 36-year old man who obsesses over a 12-year old girl, even before he starts bribing her for sexual favours.
Lolita escapes Humbert's ever tightening-grip by doing a jib from a hospital and it worked, for a couple of years at least. Today, she'd probably instead have to delete her Snapchat and get damn busy with her location settings, but still, this is an extreme case. Most of us - and thankfully, I include myself in this - are not paedophile sex pests.
Bff or worst-date-ever, most people deserve a bit of explanation. Yet 11% of Americans admitted to ghosting someone they were dating in a YouGov survey last year. There is a sense that, through an illusion of exclusivity, ghosting is not just about ducking out quietly, but in fact a kind of self-elevation.
In Ali Smith's book There But For The, reluctant dinner party guest Miles Garth slopes off upstairs between the main course and dessert. He locks himself in a spare room and refuses to come out. Ever. In doing so he becomes not just a source of desperate intrigue to the remaining guests, who gather around the door trying to find out what they can about Miles, but to the whole country. He becomes a minor celebrity, not just conspicuous in his absence, but tantalising in his mystery.
In short, unless someone poses you a serious threat, ghosting is all a bit look-at-me, don't-look-at-me juvenile. How far can people-erasing go anyway? You can't delete people from the real world or your brain. We've seen it in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in Black Mirror, even Red Dwarf, and it never ends well.
I was a good friend (honest) - the sort that always remembered to hold the tomato in sandwiches and to put wine in the fridge. Yet now I'm left picking over every word, every time I mentioned a day of the week, and wondering how it could've been taken the wrong way. Besides, there are few greater pleasures in life than calling an arsehole an arsehole. If we ghost everyone who pisses us off, what joy will be left?