It’s noonish at the Sydney Waldorf hotel. Gacy and I are drinking the remnants of the minibar in his room. There isn’t much sauce left; the goateed Manson keyboardist had had a prostitute over for much of the morning and they’d gone through most of the drink together. He says he’d just gotten rid of her, in fact, before I showed up. Gacy loved prostitutes, but he never actually had sex with them. Just called the agencies and had them send over their “brainiest” girl for some conversation.

“That’s more perverse in my mind than any sex act I could ever think up with a prostitute,” Gacy explains with a chuckle. So now that the afternoon is approaching, the MDMA is wearing off, the scent of hooker perfume thinning in the air, it’s time to talk some metaphysics. Yes, Madonna Wayne Gacy (aka Pogo) loves a good existential essay.

So Madonna, if you are to adhere to acting in such a manner as to create the greatest good for the largest amount of people, and had the ability to time travel, would you go back in time and kill Hitler or Alan Alda— or someone similar who brought much grief to the world? Would it be a moral obligation?

I read a Chinese story about a man who said he wouldn’t give one hair to save the world. Which I totally agree with. How do you know that you’re really saving the world? Maybe it would be a good thing to kill Hitler, but maybe if you kill Hitler there would be no Israel, so it would be a bad thing. The chain of events between good and evil things, you don’t know where it begins and ends. Maybe the world needed Hitler. Don’t get me wrong, I’m half-Jewish. I’d be in the fuckin’ camps too, they’d shake and bake me too. The point is you can’t really tell the outcome of events.

Well, then, say you could eradicate all the misery that Sting might create with his next five albums here and now?

Let me put it this way: If there were Satan, I would gladly sell my soul to him to prevent Sting from making another record.

Socrates was supposedly forced to drink hemlock because he posed an unsolvable moral dilemma. By the laws of ancient Greece, you were morally bound to return all borrowed goods upon the owner’s request. It was also considered immoral to kill a human being or abet anyone in doing so. Socrates asked, if a friend lent you a knife, then asked for it back to kill a fellow man with, you were morally obligated to commit an immoral act. Correct?

I would say that the preservation of human life generally outweighs some stupid code about returning objects on time.

What if he’s going to kill a real son of a bitch, though, somebody you hate?

Then I have to think about it. [laughs] I might actually help him: Make sure it’s sharp, and get the bastard right underneath then collar bone.

Do you accept the Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish them to treat you?

It’s common sense. It’s shown up in so many civilizations from so many religious and philosophical leaders that I think there’s probably a simple truth in it.

But what if you’re a masochist and like to be treated badly? Then would the Golden Rule dictate that you must treat others poorly?

Well, then you’re being a bit literal. The Golden Rule only works if you believe that you’re just and your actions are just. And sometimes you can use the Golden Rule to do terrible things: If you’re a certain strain of Christian you might believe that by going and knocking on peoples’ doors at 7 in the fuckin’ morning you’re saving their souls. Which pisses me off, but I’m pretty tolerant – I’ll allow them to knock on my door. That’s the way America should be: The same right that allows them to knock on my door at 7 a.m. with a book of fables allows me to sell my record. But probably not in their city because they’ll ban it!