Gali’s Latest Writing: When the Ball Crossed the Line
Sunday nights: an apartment overlooking the Pacific, Manchego and hummus, then down to the rec room for ping-pong.
That was our ritual—sometimes four of us, sometimes six or seven, paddles rotating, and a standing rule: no politics.
Meredith lived just up the street. In Los Angeles, where friendships often hinge on traffic patterns, that proximity mattered. She collected people like her dog collected burrs—random encounters in the park that somehow stuck. We were her strays from different corners of the city, but for those hours each week, we became a small tribe bound by the sound of a ball against wood.
This past March, we held a celebration of life for Peanut, Meredith's ancient mutt who'd been our Sunday mascot. Juan came with me. Cara found us in the big armchair at the edge of the party—Juan and I snug together while thirty-some people mingled, drinks in hand. "You two are so beautiful together," she said, pulling out her phone to capture our intimacy. "It's all about love, guys. I did ayahuasca once and that's what I learned. It's all about love." Juan smiled his careful smile, the one he uses when white people need him to validate their enlightenment.
We stayed for the slideshow—Peanut as a puppy, Peanut at the beach, Peanut gray-muzzled and dignified. Many shots I’d taken of Meredith and Peanut together—and one she’d taken of Peanut flopped in my arms. I was the one who rose to hold Meredith as she cried. Later, Juan and I walked home together, the ocean wind sharp against our faces.
Sunday evening, our regular game. Juan had headed home to West Hollywood that afternoon. Between matches, while the others went upstairs for more wine, Cara sat beside me. We were alone, still breathing hard.
"How are things with you and Juan?"
That's when I opened up. Told her about his status. How he'd been brought here at eleven. How I worried about him being dark-skinned, how I asked him to carry his DACA permit—always. How we'd added each other on Find My iPhone.
“I’m sorry, but people like Juan need to be deported.”
She held her paddle, made a swiping motion—emphatic, like swatting away not a ball but a body.
"It's the only way we'll fix the immigration system.
Start fresh, do it right."
I had no words. The ball had rolled under the couch. I could see its white curve in the shadow.
I wrote her a letter the next morning, trying to preserve something while staying authentic about the hurt. Only months earlier, she'd hosted me at her home for Thanksgiving, her gay son and his husband at the table. I wrote that if someone told her their marriage should be annulled to restore the sanctity of marriage, that wouldn't be political—it would be personal. Her reply fired back within minutes—she couldn't have read past my first paragraph. Just links and videos about criminals and invasions, arguments untethered from Juan or any of the actual immigrants who make up the fabric of life in Los Angeles.
Meredith never replied to my texts. Conflict overwhelmed her. I'd only asked her to understand, not to take sides.
When I told Juan what Cara said, his fury was immediate: "Never tell anyone!"
He was right. I'd handed her the ammunition.
I never went back.
But here's what haunts me: those nights when the ball flew between us. The satisfying pock of paddle on ball, breaking into dance moves with Chrissy after a perfect slam, battling through long rallies. Most of us hadn't played since we were teens; the giddiness felt like freedom—competition without consequence.
Sometimes we'd play until nearly midnight—just one more game, nobody wanting to yield. We could vanquish each other over the net, but not dare threaten each other's tightly held politics.
I took a certain pride in maintaining this friendship across the divide. "We just keep it about ping-pong," I'd tell Juan, as if I'd discovered some secret to coexistence.
When Chrissy played—just new to ping-pong—we slowed the game, made allowances. But there were no allowances for politics. Months later, after I'd stopped going, I ran into Kevin at Trader Joe's. He'd stopped going too. "I couldn't stomach their politics anymore," he said, examining avocados like they held answers.
For years, ping-pong had been Switzerland.
Thanksgiving Day, eight months later. I was walking on the Santa Monica Pier for fresh air, having called off my dinner plans because of a cold. Around me: Jamaican steel drums, an electrified sitar, Mexican women selling churros, Chinese immigrants painting tourists' names in calligraphy. The city's diversity on full display. Meredith's childhood friend called from their dinner table. "Everyone misses you," he said. I could hear laughter in the background, the clink of glasses. As if I'd simply stopped showing up.
The ping-pong table was never neutral territory. We could be intimate about everything—sex, drugs, the messy details of our lives—everything except the beliefs that would actually tear us apart. All those Sunday nights, we'd been speaking in serves and returns while our politics waited under our tongues.
When the ball stopped bouncing, we had no other language.
I walk past Meredith's building on the bluff a few times a week. My Stiga paddle sits in a drawer. Sometimes I imagine the table, the net taut as a border fence. Evidence of civility's limit—of my mistaking proximity for understanding.
The last rally Meredith and I played went on for minutes. Back and forth, neither of us missing, the ball blurring between us in that hypnotic rhythm that makes everything else disappear. When it finally ended—I can't remember who won—we just stood there, paddles lowered, breathing hard.
The ball rolled toward the corner, that familiar sound growing quieter as it slowed.
Neither of us moved to retrieve it.
