Chatter

PATTI DAVIS: FIRST FAMILY AFFAIR

Unauthorized biographer KITTY KELLEY’s nasty new book on NANCY REAGAN lists PATTI DAVIS as a source, but the former First Daughter claims that she was twice tricked into talking to Kelley representatives, who failed to reveal their affiliation. Now Patti says she plans to set the record straight by writing her own version of life with the REAGANS. “The book is going to be about my family,” says Davis, 38, who has published two novels. “This is clearly a family that doesn’t work. It’s a family that has never worked, and that’s something no one, not Kitty Kelley or anyone else, understands but me. And the reason it doesn’t work is because we’re all strangers to each other, and that’s what I want people to understand. We’re always circling each other but never really reaching out. There are a lot of secrets in our house and in our family, and nobody really comes out and tells the truth. I was raised to keep secrets, but I’m tired of keeping them.” Has she talked to Mom and Dad about her planned book? “I don’t feel obligated to seek their approval about this book. I mean, my mother didn’t consult me before she wrote hers. Also, my parents have never embraced or encouraged the fact that I’m a writer.” Won’t such a book further damage her already badly bruised relationship with her parents? Says Davis: “I don’t know that it could be complicated any more than it already is.”

WIGGINS SPLITS AND TELLS WHY

American novelist MARIANNE WIGGINS, 43, the estranged wife of author-in-hiding SALMAN RUSHDIE, has filed for divorce after three years of marriage. “He’s a complete stranger to me, and the marriage is really, really over,” she said of Rushdie, 43, who is still under a death threat from Islamic fundamentalists who were offended by his novel The Satanic Verses. Wiggins, according to the Sunday Express, a British newspaper, said, “I’ve gone through an enormous amount of pain this last year, and I’ve lost a lot of sleep and weight. But I’m writing a fantastic novel on the subject that I hope to finish by the end of the summer.” Wiggins, who separated from Rushdie in July 1989, added that she had not yet found another companion but did say, “The rumors are rife about Salman, that he has new women friends—and why not? He deserves whatever happiness he can find and get.”

BRET MICHAELS: VEIN ATTEMPT

laving to explain the syringes in his trash really needles rocker BRET MICHAELS, a diabetic who is the pouty, long-locked lead singer for the popular rock-and-roll band Poison. “Misunderstandings happen all the time,” says Michaels, 28, who has to inject himself daily with insulin. “People think I’m shooting up. I was once in a Portland, Maine, hotel, and the maid came to clean the room, and she saw the syringe in the trash basket and called the police because she thought I was a junkie and she was going to get AIDS because she touched the basket. I had to go to the police station and prove that I wasn’t.”