The lovely Miss Gaye turns 30 today. I'm sure no one is more surprised about it than she is, but whatever. Happy birthday!

"I'm sure no one is
more surprised about it than she is, but whatever."

Still reeling, Gaye, who grew up in L.A., began using drugs at 13. “I tried everything,” she says. Dropping out of high school her sophomore year, she modeled and recorded a weak-selling R&B album in 1992. All the while she was warring with Jan, a prescription drug addict at the time. “It was always ‘What are you on?’ And I’d say, ‘What are you on?’” Gaye recalls. At 18, she began dating Prince, 16 years her senior. “I was in love or infatuation,” she says. “I just thought he was beautiful.” When they split three years later, “my heart was shattered,” says Gaye.

In 1996, Jan entered rehab. “I was so angry with her for leaving me because she was my using buddy,” says Gaye, who lashed out by downing pills and champagne one night: “It was a cry for help.” She entered rehab the next day and has been sober ever since.

LOL I was actually referring to her raging (former) drug problem and suicide attempt.


[Edited 9/19/04 20:33pm]

I wasn't a homecoming queen nominee or a beauty queen, like Halle. I wasn't a perky cheerleader type, like Gabrielle. I hated school. I didn't know my father. I was bulimic. Nona had real friggin' problems, even as she was growing up and working in the public eye as a singer and model. I can't relate to losing homecoming queen by two votes, but I can relate to cramming my fingers down my throat because I thought I was too fat, or loving a man who was dangerously older than me and was taking advantage of me, or wanting my father to love me, but he wasn't there.

I think a lot of Nona's appeal is *because* she didn't have a great life, CandyEyce, even though she was Marvin Gaye's daughter. Jenn Daniels is the webmaster of NonaNet (she used to be a journalist), and she said something similiar:



I think Nona's going to go far - she has potential like whoa, and since she's not on drugs anymore or dating men who give her head trauma, I can't see anything stopping her, really.

Remember her "acting" in that crappy "beutiful experience" tv special.....how weird was that programme?

I think a lot of Nona's appeal is *because* she didn't have a great life, CandyEyce, even though she was Marvin Gaye's daughter. Jenn Daniels is the webmaster of NonaNet (she used to be a journalist), and she said something similiar:



I think Nona's going to go far - she has potential like whoa, and since she's not on drugs anymore or dating men who give her head trauma, I can't see anything stopping her, really.

Anyone who thinks that being the kid of someone famous or coming from a family with money some assurance that you get a great childhood is delusional.

Like I said we have a lot more in common than I realized. I was 5'7 when I graduated high school and had yet to reach 100lbs. Kids make fun of me at everyturn. Once a childhood friend nominated me for Valentine's Sweetheart (something like that)...the majority of the class laughted at my name being mentioned. I won't even go into what a jerk my fathr was or all the self destructive things I did...some that could have and probably should have cost me my life.

Anyway....like I said before...I'm just glad she's doing better.

CandyEyce said:

Especially when that kid didn't come from money. When Marvin died, his family pretty much went into poverty. He still owed his first wife Anna over a quarter of a million dollars, and even more money to the IRS (which is why the Gayes spent so much of their children's early lives outside of the U.S.). The only thing the Nona and Frankie Gaye inherited from their father was the man's last name. And I'm sure it was lovely to have to go to school and hear about how your dad was a drug addict (and arguably, a pedophile) who was murdered by your cross-dressing grandfather, and your mother was a Motown groupie who got passed around more than a joint at a frat party. No wonder she dropped out by the 10th grade.



I'm glad you're doing better as well! *hugs and hugs and hugs*