My Jud Fry Problem

Jud would do you up against the smokehouse even if the corn weren't that high and the neighbors could see everything. Curly is a twit.

Laurey, in “Oklahoma!”, telling Jud Fry he’s got to be kidding as he explains sex.

I was watching “Oklahoma!” on TCM last night and naturally the old question popped up: How could anybody go for a simple-minded twit like Curly when Jud Fry, the alleged bad guy, is so much more attractive?

Yeah, there’s the porn addiction and he’s living in a smokehouse, but I figure he’s got interesting reading material in there: Henry Miller, Kerouac, Hubert Selby. Plus a pin-up of the stripper he messes around with when he’s in Kansas City.

Also, Jud, as played by Rod Steiger, is hot.

I felt this the first time I saw the movie, when I was seven, even if I didn’t have the literary references or know about sex. It wasn’t types; which I didn't know existed, although eventually I would realize that Jud, short, stocky, powerful, dark, was mine. It’s just something that’s confirmed every time I see the movie:

Jud: Difficult, moody, interesting, headed for San Francisco.

Curly: Boring.

Laurey is perfect for Curly. She’s a school-marm simp. He’s never been depressed a day in his life.

It’s easy to picture their life together:

EXT: A plain house on the great plains.

INT: Laurie and Curly, in bed, are awakened by their pet calf, which climbs into bed, eager for breakfast, and nuzzles Laurie.

Calf: (Singing, to the tune of “Oh, what a beautiful morning”); Mooo mooo, moo-moo moo moo, moo moooo…

Laurie, in a white cotton nightgown modestly buttoned to her eyes, brushes the calf aside. It falls to the floor with an ominous thud, converting itself to veal and awakening Curly, who turns to his bride.

Curly: How about it, Laurie? We’re married now.

Laurie: (speaking shyly through the heavy cotton nightgown.) Mwwf, Mwwff.

Curly gently pulls the nightgown down to Laurie’s neck.

Laurie: (Blushing) Oh, Curly, you’re incorrigible!

Curly: There’s that book-learning again. But it don’t matter none to me.

Curly pecks Laurie on the mouth. (No tongues.) She kisses him back. They fall back onto the pillows, satisfied.

ROLL CREDITS

Jud, on the other hand, would do you in a surrey, in the light of day. Fringe or no fringe, it wouldn’t matter. Sure, if it was early in the season and the corn was not particularly high, nosy folk could peek through their shutters and get an eyeful, but that would merely add the frisson of forbidden love to territory life.

And of course, there was always Curly’s dimly lit smokehouse, which reeked thrillingly of forbidden sex. And traif, which has an effect which is similar.

Go over there with a bowl of soup when you hadn’t seen Jud around and suspected he might be sick and no sooner would you step into his open-living space (bed, kitchen, hog-butchering hooks cleverly repurposed as dish-towel rack), when the erotic possibilities would hit.

Perhaps it was the jug of lube openly displayed on the bedside table. Or the pink-ribboned pantaloons, peeking out from under the bed, which you had recently seen on a sheep. They certainly didn’t belong to you.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was the intoxicating odor of slow-roasting meat, which had always inflamed you.

“Jud,” you’d say. “Is that…brisket?”

“Yep,” he’d say. “And I picked me up some rye bread and spicy brown mustard when I was over in Kansas City, at a Jewish deli. Everything’s up to date in Kansas City. They even got derma. But that’s for later. After I work me up an appetite.”

Then, though you barely knew him, Jud would seize you in his burly arms and thrust his beefy tongue into your mouth, which actually happened to Joyce on a blind date in the apartment of a guy she had just met when she was in her twenties and was so erotic that remembering it later she nearly swooned and had to switch to the third person.

Joyce didn’t even like the guy, he was humorless and abrasive and then this – let’s call it the Jud Fry reaction -- just happened.

I’ll tell you one thing: Nothing like that has happened for decades, certainly not since cataract surgery five years ago. I don’t get picked up anymore in the street, either. Sometimes guys flirt when I’m in the Mustang with the top down, but I don’t get to do that in February.

Thank God, I got to watch “Oklahoma!” last night. And Rod Steiger, the brute.