Thank you for your advocacy of monogamishy. (Monogamishness?) When I fell in love with my gloriously kinky and GGG wife several years ago, we were honest about our sexual desires—vast and wide-ranging—and we negotiated an arrangement that works for us. We encourage each other's outside crushes, and we both just want to be present while one of us is banging that outside crush. Your column gave us the tools we needed to talk with other potentially kinky folks. Thanks!

Anyway, on to our question: When one is staying at a hotel, what is the protocol for engaging in sheet-staining activities? For example, if a session might spread santorum, menstrual blood, female ejaculate, etc. all over the sheets, what to do? Is it better to cover the bed in towels and stain them instead? Are dirty sheets all in a day's work for the housekeeper, or should we refrain from such activities in hotel rooms? We don't want to make the housekeeping staff miserable—and we always leave a tip for the maid!—but we don't want to refrain from sex just because my wife is on her period!

Sheets Tarnished After Intense Nooky

You're welcome for monogamishamy—the correct noun form of the adjective monogamish—and I'm delighted that it's helped you and the wife negotiate successful encounters with "outside crushes," STAIN, and I trust that you and the wife strive to make sure those encounters are as rewarding for the crushes as they are for you two.

Now, about those sheets...

If you've booked a hotel room, STAIN, and it's shark week for the wife or a certain former senator routinely drops in (drops out?) when you have anal sex, there's always the option of bringing your own santorum- and/or menstrual-blood-colored/stained towels from home.

But let's say you don't want to bring towels from home—which is an admittedly anal-in-the-other-sense-of-anal thing to do. Should you lay the hotel's towels down on the bed or mess up the sheets?

"Mess up the sheets, please," said the head of housekeeping at the hotel where I happened to be staying when your question arrived. (HOH agreed to speak to me on the condition that I not name her, the hotel where she works, or even the city where it's located.) "We bleach the holy heck out of those sheets," HOH continued. "And it is easier to get stains out of sheets than towels. And sheets cost less to replace—at least ours do."

Anything else someone should do if they've made a mess of the sheets?

"If you want to be a total sweetheart," said HOH, "strip the bed. Pull the sheets off and leave them balled up on the floor. All the ladies know what that means, and I promise you that no one goes poking in sheets left on the floor. They toss that ball in the cart and send it straight to the laundry." Where they bleach the hell/blood/santorum out of 'em.

Finally, STAIN, thanks for mentioning that you always leave a tip for the maid. It made me feel less alone—I always leave a tip for the maid, too—and it gives me the opportunity to encourage others to do the same. Anyone who can afford a night or two in a hotel—on business, on vacation, on someone else's wife—can afford to leave a few bucks for the maid.