“It made me think of a turn of phrase often used by Jean Rhys, usually about being drunk: ‘I was a bit drunk, well very.’ She never in fact said ’I was a bit sad, well very,’ about being old, but no doubt she would have done if she had not hated and feared it too much to speak of it.”

Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End

This comes from my new current favorite writer, the gifted memoirist and celebrated editor Diana Athill. How did I never know about her until now? Athill edited a raft of the 20th century’s best authors, including Philip Roth, John Updike, and V.S. Naipaul. She worked closely with Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea, and the two developed a close relationship. I’m itching to get my hands on Stet, Athill’s memoir about her life as a literary editor (how do they do the magic they do?), but now I’m reading her Somewhere Towards the End, where this quotation appears in a reflection on being old.

There’s not too much to it, that phrase, ”I was a bit drunk, well very,” but immediately upon reading it I wanted to use some version of it myself. But as I was by myself in bed (“I’m a bit lonely, well very”), and this morning still by myself as I gear up for work (“I’m a bit procrastinate-y, well very”), I would’ve had to do it talking out loud to myself. (Okay, I did.)

It’ll be more fun trotting it out in conversation, but only if it refers to something slightly transgressive, and transgressions, slight or great, aren’t making much of an appearance in my life right now. On second thought, maybe this can lead me to some much needed fun (transgressive behavior). There’s all that chicken-and-egg talk about language giving rise to thoughts, or thoughts giving rise to language, but how about using language—in this case a particular idiom—to attain a behavioral goal?

“I was a bit _______, well very.”

If I had readers, this is where I’d ask them to supply a few suggestions. As it is, the only commenters are Eastern European bots touting dubious (but transgressive?) health/sex concoctions. And “I was sexycummypotion, well very” just doesn’t work.

I was a bit over my head, well very.