In Bowie’s later years, around the measure when his behavior was most outrageous, the pop star had a favorite saying: “Everyone finds empathy in a nutty family.” Bowie painted his baby as a repressed, eccentric woman who caused him to rebel as a kid. But, according to David Bowie: Starman , Bowie was described by his teachers as a dazzling, charming young thing with good manners—the kind of boy every mother would be proud of. There was one indelible incident during Bowie’s adolescence that would forever difference his clean-cut image. When his closest friend and bandmate, George Underwood, was about to go out with a girl Bowie secretly imagined, he sabotaged the rendezvous, planning to move in on her himself. The boys got into a heated fight, and Underwood threw an impulsive punch, accidentally scratching Bowie’s eyeball. The offence left his pupil permanently dilated, making that eye appear to be a different color than the other.
