This is your brain on Bravo

It was Saturday afternoon, and I was watching “Pregnant in Heels,’’ and I was thinking of changing my name to Darren, or Bowen, or Miles — something about to trend, something more auspicious.

Also, while couch-bound and not eating, I decided to hire a gay assistant, a sassy Greek chorus who will primp me, roll his eyes at my quirks, and schedule my appointments. If I’m going to be properly man-scaped, gym-trained, and manicured, I’m going to need staff.

I am a person who needs “people.’’

My Saturday agenda, near the end of a full week of watching Bravo, also included phoning a friend just to start a fight. Without a steady diet of Totally! Major! Betrayals! passive-aggression, and seething jealousy, existence is much too flat. Life isn’t what happens while you’re making other plans, as John Lennon sang; it’s the tension that erupts during benefit galas and garden parties. Social armageddon, I think I love you! What would Bethenny’s 40th birthday party have been on “Bethenny Ever After’’ without her bitterness arc and her last-act explosion? Dead air.

Ah, Bravo. Feed my head. You are a fine drug, a thoroughly Fellini-esque state of consciousness where rubbery lips are glossed to a brilliant sheen, where the brick is exposed and the views are epic, where the hips are narrow, the sternums bony, and the breasts bulbous, where even straight men fit gay stereotypes. You are an escape hatch to a land where Barbies walk, talk, cry, complain, jiggle, delegate, ride in the backs of limos, throw liquids at one another, and have sex with men for five hours with Lady Gaga playing in the background, while the Kens tap at smartphones and write checks.

You so deeply intoxicate me with high fashion, vigilant personal grooming, exquisite cuisine, and multimillion-dollar real estate, Bravo, that I’m beginning to think taxing the rich may actually be a cultural minus.

The thing about Bravo is that, while it’s one of TV’s most decadent channels, along with E!, the home of the Kardashians and “Bridalplasty,’’ it is quite brilliantly conceived and enacted. Bravo is so well branded, the vibe is so consistent, you can stumble across it during almost any one of its original series, from “The Real Housewives of Miami’’ to “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover,’’ and immediately know where you are.