Barbara was smart enough to know that she didn't want being a seagull to become her life's work. She saw too many women for sale on the night streets who were no older than her mother, and already used up. That was not for Barbara. She wanted something better.
When she got a little money ahead, Barbara enrolled in National Business College to learn skills that would help her get an office job of some kind. She also met a young man named Harry Kleman (a fictitious name being used here in the interest of privacy), who worked as a shipping clerk but was attending night school at a business college similar to the one Barbara attended. They quickly became intimate, and Barbara quickly became pregnant. The young couple decided to marry. It rankled Barbara that because she was only seventeen, permission had to be obtained from Hortense. But, determined that her baby would not be illegitimate like she herself was, Barbara gritted her teeth and asked for the necessary papers from her mother. She got them.
Barbara's child was a boy, whom she named Harry after his father.
For a while, the young family lived a modest but contented life, and their future, while not exactly bright, at least was uncomplicated. Barbara managed to continue in business college while working as a waitress, and things were going along well until she became pregnant again. Then, with her not working, the money got tight and the marriage got tense. To make matters worse, Barbara's past caught up with her.
Harry knew virtually nothing about the girl he had married: not about her illegitimacy, the reformatory, the seagulls. When he found out -- it may have been through Hortense, it may not have been -- he was stunned. Even before their second child, another son, was born, both Barbara and Harry knew that the marriage was over.
Both little boys were still toddlers when Barbara and Harry divorced. He asked for, and got, custody of his children.
All Alone Again
With her new life as a wife and mother snatched out from under her, Barbara sank into a pit of deep depression. Losing her husband and kids wiped out her future, leaving her nothing but a great emptiness in which she was once again all alone. It was ironic that her past, which had risen up to obliterate her life, rose up once again to rescue her from the abandonment she now felt.
Some of the seagulls, tiring of Oakland, were going south to ply their trade at other U. S. Navy facilities in Long Beach and San Diego. They invited Barbara to come along. Why not, she thought. She'd had more than enough of Oakland. Barbara flew south with some of the other 'gulls.
At this point in her young life, Barbara Graham went into prostitution all the way. No more young-girl-young-sailor platonic dates; now she sold sex, plain and fancy, on a full-time basis. By the end of 1942, before she was twenty, she had arrest records in both Long Beach and San Diego, on charges of disorderly conduct and vagrancy. Most of the time she simply pled guilty, paid a fine, and was released. If she was unable to pay the fine, she did jail time, once for sixty days. But despite what the law said, Barbara did not feel that what she was doing was wrong.
"Sure, I was a prostitute," she admitted to reporter Bernice Freeman more than a decade later, " -- and a damn good one. Why do people make so much of sex anyway'" she demanded. "It's part of our natural make-up, like getting hungry for food. If you want to eat, you go to a grocery store or a restaurant. If you need sleep, you sleep. If you want sex, why not get it' What's the difference'"
One sailor in San Diego apparently agreed with Barbara's philosophy, because he asked her to marry him. Barbara said sure, why not' She became Mrs. Al Bushnell (again, a fictitious name in the interest of privacy). Bushnell was a nice enough guy and the newlyweds were happy together -- for about four months. Then the sailor must have realized what he had done, because he quickly got an annulment, which Barbara didn't contest.
By then she was sick of southern California anyway, so she took off for the Bay area again, deciding to try her luck in San Francisco.
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