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'Top Chef' runner up
was out diver at Iowa
By
Cyd Zeigler jr.
Outsports.com
Dale Levitski,
34, was the runner up on Bravo's latest season of Top Chef. I
met Dale at the Out 100 party and was thrilled to discover he
was an openly gay collegiate athlete in the early 1990s, diving
for the University of Iowa. Dale talked with me on the phone
about diving, cooking, and getting teased in high school.
How long
were you a diver?
I did 1-meter and 3-meter springboard in high school and
college. I was a gymnast before that. I grew up in Arlington
Heights, Illinois, in a high school of around 1,600 students. We
had a diving coach in my high school, and I was kind of burnt
out on gymnastics, so I took up diving. I broke the high
school's records the next year, so I stuck with it. I think
those records still stand, after 16 years. That's kind of
crazy.
How big is
high school diving in Illinois?
My state meet my senior year was probably one of the hardest in
the country. I think the top eight people at the state meet went
All-American.
How did you
get into gymnastics?
I was one of those crazy kids who would jump on anything or
climb anything. I was a hellraiser. I quit gymnastics my junior
year in high school because I broke my fingers, but I went back
my senior year.
And when did
you come out?
I had a boyfriend at 18 when I went to college. He was a former
All-American swimmer. And I had had gay experiences when I was
really young, before fifth grade. But it was really my sophomore
year, during the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" thing, that I slowly
came out. All my diving teammates knew, my coach knew. But I led
separate lives. It was just kind of a fact of life on the team.
Did you get
teased in high school, being a gymnast and a diver?
I got teased about being
gay my whole life. All the guys in fourth grade would beat me up
after school. I was probably more effeminate as a kid than I am
now. I started as a little tumbler when I was young. Then I went
into club gymnastics, then high school gymnastics after that.
The teasing absolutely bothered me. Instead of folding, I became
a competitive person. I decided I'd just be better than them at
what they were doing. So sports is what I went to, and I just
kicked their ass.
When you
were doing well in sports, did the teasing slow down or stop
Yeah. When I started
breaking records, I started making better friends and getting
more popular. As my athletic performance got better, by my
senior year, they all knew not to tease me. That, and I knew all
of their girlfriends.
So as
you were becoming more gay, they stopped teasing you for being
gay because of your athletic prowess?
Yeah, it's pretty funny.
Did you date
girls at all?
Once or twice, but that was pretty disastrous. My first
post-puberty gay experience was when I was at diving camp at
Indiana University, my junior year in high school. I was 16 and
he was 23. I ended up staying a couple extra days, and then I
knew.
Did you get
a scholarship to Iowa?
I was a recruited walk-on. I red-shirted my freshman year and
traveled the next four. I was on the team from '91 to '96. The
other three guys ahead of me, one was a Spanish national
champion, another was the Iowa state diving champion, who was
awesome. We ended up winning the Big Ten in diving my last two
years. Then I was a volunteer coach for another two seasons.
And they
knew you were gay?
Since my sophomore year.
The team knew I was gay for four years and then when I was a
coach.
And never
any problems from your teammates?
The swimmers definitely had a problem with it. But the divers
and the girls team all knew and they didn't seem to have a
problem. I'd go out to the gay bar in Iowa City wearing my
letter jacket. The whole climate when I was in college was
during the Clinton "Don't Ask Don't Tell" thing. I told my
roommates I was gay, and another one happened to be gay; he went
to the Olympics in '88. One of my straight roommates stopped
talking to me after I broke up with one of my boyfriends because
he liked him so much. I started dating someone new, but he
didn't know about it. So when I wasn't coming home some nights,
he got all pissed at me, thinking that I was sleeping with
somebody different every night. It was kind of cute, this
straight guy getting mad at me for being a slut, when that's not
what I was doing. He wasn't mad that I was gay, but that he
thought I was being a 'ho.'
Do you still
dive now?
No, unfortunately. I'm in the City of Chicago, so I'd have to
travel pretty far to dive. I was going to do the Gay Games, but
I couldn't pull it together to get there. I'd love to, except my
chiropractor would kill me.
One of the
things you said is that you're a real competitor. On the show,
there were several cut-throat competitors, but that wasn't you.
The sports that I did were judged sports on your own personal
merit. It's a highly individual thing, and that kind of
competition is a real individual thing. You really don't pay
attention to the other people, or you try not to. It's more of
an internal competition; in order to beat other people, you have
to be your best, not just better than them. In order to be your
best, you have to be relaxed in your best, and that's how a lot
of the judged sports work.
Did you
think about what kind of competitor you were going to be before
the show started taping?
Absolutely. It's such an individual thing. I wasn't going to
sabotage other people or shit-talk other people. I was going to
really embrace what I think is a truly great chef as a
competitor, and that's how I conducted myself throughout the
season.
Were there
times on the show you thought you were going home?
Twice I thought I was
going home. Once was the French Culinary Institute. I was
positive I was going home on that episode.
After the
last competition, did you think you had won?
Yes, I thought I won. At judge's table, they didn't tell me they
thought my lobster dish was that bad. I woke up the next morning
thinking I won.
How
disappointed were you when you found out you hadn't?
I don't think I was nearly as disappointed as I thought I would
be. Being the runner up is working out more to my advantage than
actually winning. Sure, I wanted to win. But I felt it didn't
really matter if I won because I got to a certain point. It's
about showing well and having your career go forward.
Having been
in athletics and in the kitchen, in which arena has being openly
gay posed a bigger challenge?
They're different. I was a less successful athlete being gay
than as a chef. Being an elite athlete and struggling with the
coming-out thing, especially in the middle of the country in a
really bizarre political time, I didn't have my shit together.
So I didn't compete nearly as well as I should have. But in the
kitchen, I really embraced it. Back then I had a crazy body, and
all the other cooks were intimidated. I was very aggressive in
the kitchen, compared to how I was in sports. I used being gay
as an intimidation factor. You're all standing in a small space,
and the lower-level cooks are mostly less educated and aren't
used to the culture of gay people. So just being a bigger,
intimidating guy, and being a better cook than them, I'd become
the kitchen leader. So I'd say, "I need that now, bitch," and
they didn't know how to react to a big gay guy emasculating
them. So I used it and made those kitchens my own.
You're
opening a restaurant, yes?
Yeah. It'll be at least six to eight months. We're building it
from scratch. Right now I'm at my friend's restaurant, called
Sola. I'm doing front-of-the-house because, unless it's your
restaurant, you make less money as a cook.
Are there
any cooking tips you can offer our health-conscious readers?
For a lot of people who are in athletic training or who are
health conscious, food might seem more bland because as a
culture we depend on fat for flavor. But you can use grape seed
oil to make vinaigrettes out of and sauté things, and it's
better for you than even olive oil. Also, properly cooking and
seasoning vegetables. Don't boil them as much. The less you
process them, the more nutrients you're going to get. Also, use
sea salt, never use iodized salt. Sea salts are more
magnesium-based and less sodium-based. And the way that it
accentuates flavor is a lot different.
How have
your fans reached out to you, and how can our readers get hold
of you?
People have gotten hold of me through
Myspace. It's been crazy. People saying they came out
because of me. The public support has been pretty amazing. Even
going to the Out 100, having all these people know who I am.
It's a very surreal experience. It was a gay-mafia feeding
frenzy, which I thought was really fun.
Nov. 16, 2007 |
