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I started coming up to New York at age 17. There was a girl I met over the summer somewhere; I was chasing her. I would drive up to D.C., where I had made some friends, which was about four hours away, and we would take the bus up to New York.

At 13, when I was a runaway, I was taken in by the most amazing drag queens in Portland, Ore. We didn't always know where our next meal was coming from, but there was so much camaraderie and love. Not to mention, those girls could paint a face, and I learned how because of them.

I left home when I turned 17 and ran away to New York. I did a lot of moving. I was based in New York and country-hopping, so I was always 'the new girl'.

I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.

I met Gemma, my wife, when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later, she started coming to my concerts, but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was, and that's how it started.

As I got older, I'd say probably when I got to, like, seventh or eighth grade, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and I went for an open call for an agent, a local agent out there, a woman named Joy Purvis, and she ended up picking me up.

Six months later I was in Paris. I was 16, and it all started to happen.

Since I was a schoolboy, I've been used to being recognized on the road by old and young, and being bantered with and, indeed, being taunted.