What is it about hotels that makes us all go so bizarrely and baroquely berserk?

Give an average bloke a room key and a mint on his pillow and suddenly that person turns into a rule-breaking, wild-eyed, Charlie Sheenian sexual outlaw. Stick an average broad in a hotel bar and she turns into Rielle Hunter. (More about her hotel antics in a moment.) A friend of mine who works in the hotel industry keeps me abreast of all the latest trends in anti-social and revolting guest behavior. According to my "hospitality insider," nefarious guest activities are only becoming more foul and disturbing. My pal's job involves the design and refurbishment of soft furnishings in the rooms of gracious hotels. Though he enjoys his work, he has started to feel somewhat constrained, specifically in regard to fabric choices. Whether for upholstery, drapes, or bedding, every textile he selects must now be BCP-resistant, by which he means resistant to-drumroll-blood, cum, and poo.

Before you leap to the comments section to express in no uncertain terms just how disgusted you are, know this: I am disgusted too. The pantheon of gnarly activities people get up to in hotels is objectively disgusting. It would be disgusting if you were not disgusted.

Let's all try to stay calm and face facts: When you check in to a hotel today, you are entering a veritable Sodom and Gloccamorrah. The most likely outcome? You will wake up in the wee hours to the sounds of adjacent guests trashing their rooms a la Charlie Sheen at the Plaza. Though Mr. Sheen is the ne plus ultra of room-trashers-he was even falsely accused of befouling a room at the Ritz last week-he did not invent the genre. The highly strung thespian is the latest in a long line of people whose talents have extended beyond the world of entertainment and into demolition. Historical highlights include Keith Richards (the Hyatt in L.A.); Johnny Depp and Kate Moss (the Mark Hotel in New York); and Courtney Love (the Covent Garden Hotel London). The most mysterious trashing of all time was perpetrated by the Who drummer Keith Moon. In 1967 Mr. Moon claimed he somehow managed to do $24,000 worth of damage at the Flint, Mich., Holiday Inn-no offence to the caliber of the soft furnishings at the Holiday Inn, but this cannot have been easy-before stripping off his clothes and driving a car through a fence and into the pool. No wonder motel proprietors sometimes snap and then stab guests to death in the shower. They are living in a perpetual state of PTSD.