The translation tax

Why being understood is the most expensive luxury in the room

The lighting always seems to give in in the bathroom of a mediocre date.

It’s a flickering, jaundiced hum - a fluorescent purgatory that smells of industrial bleach and someone’s else cheap perfume. I’ve just spend the last forty minutes at the table watching a man’s face move, enduring a monologue about SaaS sales and optimal gym splits that feels like watching a loading bar that is perpetually stuck at 99%.

I stand there, staring into a reflection of a woman who actually brought a half-empty glass of Pinot Noir into the ladies' room. I adjust the burgundy bob — a sharp, expensive vow I made to myself — and I find my fingers hovering over a mirror in front of me, mentally typing a text to Gloria.

Gloria is my imaginary friend. Also, she’s the one of those souls out there who gets it.

Yup, I think I’ve finally reached a level of internal integration that has made me dangerously expensive to date. Not because of the wine list, but because of the Translation Tax.


The Translation Tax

The invisible cost of being misunderstood. It’s the exhausting mental labor of “dumbing down” your internal architecture so a stranger can understand the floor plan. It’s when you have to explain your magic in logical terms.

The Spectator in the First Row

It’s all part of the life as a showgirl. The fake tilt of the head, the practiced lilt of a laugh, the polite nodding until your neck aches. It’s the realization that the person at the table didn’t come for a conversation; he came for a spectacle.

He’s a keen observer of your art. He might be in the theatre but he definetely is not up there on a stage with you; he’s just sitting in the front row, enjoying the sparks while contributing very little to the fire.

To keep the “next round” vibe alive - you know, that potential milestone for which you have yet to decide if this person is worth another evening of your finite life - you start paying the tax. You shrink. You edit. You become the subtitled version of yourself.

But over time the tax accumulates. And at some point, you stop spending your currency on people who require a translation to understand your best language.

The High-Quality Data Point

The reason I’m consulting Gloria in the mirror is because I’m remembering someone I met a while ago in poorly lit bar god knows where. (I know exactly where on the planet Earth it was, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is that for those four hours, we weren’t actually on it.)

He was the one who didn’t charge a tax. We sat there until the chairs were on the tables and the staff was sweeping around our feet at 3 AM. I didn’t have to translate a single heartbeat. Instead, he asked me if I’m a witch.

It was the first time the Miss Solvent was allowed to be in the same room - undiluted and entirely unapologetic about it.

He left me with a “let’s see each other again” that never arrived. But he did something more permanent than staying: that person eliminated the Tax. By seeing me fully, he set quite an extraordinary baseline. I mean, sure, he isn’t just a “high-quality data point” - he actually never has been though my logic would like to call him that. He is the person who proved to my logical self that resonance doesn’t just belong to my fantasy books or feel-good movies.

He reflected my depth back to me before I had even learned how to carry it.

The Return

I’m glad I met him. Not because I’m waiting for him to reappear in another bar, but because he showed me the difference between a connection that needs a dictionary and a connection that feels like home.

I check my bob in the mirror one last time. I take a final sip of the red liquid in my hand. I walk back out to the table, look at the man still talking about his ‘optimal gym splits’ waiting for the show to resume.

But the show is cancelled.

I’m done.

I’m done speaking in a lower language.

I set the glass down and tell him I’m leaving. He looks confused, like a man who just saw a subtitle disappear mid-sentence. He tries to make a joke about the wine.

I don’t bother explaining that Pinot Noir is technically a red wine made from white-fleshed grapes — a complex bit of alchemy where the skin gives it a color it wasn’t born with.

Some things are only worth translating to people who already know how to taste the difference.

— Stay undiluted,

Miss Solvent