It’s fair to say that Bill Margold’s entitled to have a love/hate relationship with the late Harry Reems.

Reems, the legendary porn actor who co-starred in Deep Throat with Linda Lovelace was literally lifted out of the gutter by Margold and then later told the industry’s porn historian to go fuck himself.

Margold, coincidentally, wrote a piece about Reems that appears this week in the LA Xpress. It was quite prescient all things considered. Reems died yesterday of complications from pancreatic cancer. Margold wrote the article several days prior.

“When I was hanging out with Reems, his VA doctor told him that his internal organs were the size of footballs,” recalls Margold.

“I said why isn’t he dead? The doctor responded he probably drank so much liquor he’s preserved himself.”

Margold said his LA Xpress reminiscences weren’t written with the intention of Reems dying. Just a sad coincidence.

“He was very bitter, and it was based on a number of things,” said Margold.

“I know when I picked him out of the gutter in 1986, and took him home, [Jim] Holliday who drank a lot more than people know, I figured Holliday would know what to do with him. Holliday didn’t and ran from my apartment.”

In 1986, Margold got a call on a rainy Sunday night. He assumes it might have been Amber Lynn. Reems at the time was living with Lynn, Jamie Gillis and Honey Wilder and Reems was apparently so miserable to live with, he was tossed out of the house.

“I didn’t particularly know the man but built into my fiber is to help even the worst of them,” says Margold.

“I walked Reems across the street, and he goes, ‘I gotta piss.’ We were behind the the old Washington Mutual Bank building. Reems didn’t know where he was. I had to pull his dick out and he was pissing. In come the cops…

Story in progress