Audio By Carbonatix
First dates are kind of like a job interview on steroids. The pressure to make a good first impression is intense enough to create a rift in the space-time continuum.
A California man is probably wishing that he could’ve actually time traveled after a disaster of a first date. It began with a stumble, segued into him jokingly telling her he’s illiterate, and ended with a headbutt.
Comedian Rashawn Bass (@rashawnbass91) recently went viral for sharing the excruciating details of a first date gone all wrong. As of this writing, his TikTok about the experience has 223,400 views.
It’s a tale that goes from bad to worse.
“Y’all ever go on a first date so bad you consider moving to a different city?” Bass says at the beginning of the 4-minute clip.
Then he gets into it.
First off, he arrived 20 minutes early. That gave him enough time, he says, to overthink everything. When the hostess asked if anyone was going to join him, Rashawn attempted a joke by replying, “No, I like to eat alone with two menus sometimes.”
“The tone—it just did not match,” he says. “It was at that moment I knew I was in rare form that night, and it was not going to go in my favor whatsoever.”
Still, he soldiered on. His date maybe wishes he didn’t.
How Bad Could A First Date Be?
The way Bass tells it, the best moment of the entire date was when she arrived.
“She finally arrives, and I swear the restaurant lights hit her like she had her own spotlight,” she says. “Just gorgeous girl. Boys don’t be sleeping on these goth baddies. I swear to God you missing out.”
Then awkwardness descended. He got up to greet her, tripped over his chair, and managed to kick the table leg hard enough to make the silverware jump, he recalls. Next he went in for a hug, and they wound up doing an awkward side-to-side shuffle before eventually bumping shoulders.
It was all downhill from there. Bass says he ordered a coke in a “fake deep voice” and then immediately resumed speaking normally.
“She laughs politely, but I can immediately tell she’s rethinking all of her life’s choices that led her up to this moment,” he says.
They segued to small talk about their days. Bass told his date his was “good too, except I cried a little. Which was meant to be a joke.”
Scrambling to recover, he qualified, “Tears of joy. From allergies.”
Perhaps looking for a distraction, Bass went in for a piece of bread from the basket. Instead of the smooth tear he intended, the “concrete” consistency of the loaf required him to break it off with enough force that a piece flew across the table and hit his date in the shoulder, leaving a little bit of butter in its wake.
“It stayed there the entire date,” Bass says. “She didn’t see it, and I didn’t say anything about it.”
The Date Continues Spiraling
Bass tried to tell her she looked great, he says, but managed to fumble that, too.
“Instead, I said, ‘You taste, you look great tonight,’” he recalls with a shudder. By this point, his date was just staring at him. So he took a sip of his coke and managed to suck down a piece of ice and choke on it.
Next his date asked what movies he likes. This was either the high or low point of the date.
“I said, ‘Anything with subtitles because I like to pretend that I know how to read,'” Bass recalls. “Guys, it was a joke, but no laugh, just pure silence. So I sip my drink again, spill it down my shirt.”
By then, he says he was apologizing profusely, to which his date graciously replied, “Dude, it’s fine.”
But why quit when you’re behind?
“Then she asked me about my hobbies, and I go, ‘Well, I like to microwave leftovers,’” Bass says. “This poor girl is trying so hard to be polite, but I knew I fumbled so hard there was no way for me to recover.”
Mercifully, the date finally ended—but not without one more classic moment. When Bass went in for a goodbye hug, their heads collided.
“All I could say was, ‘Wow, you headbutt like a champ,'” Bass says. “It was meant to be funny, but it wasn’t.”
Still Looking For Love
Bass’ tale of his first date gone horribly wrong had people howling in the comments.
“SIR?!?? Was this your first time in PUBLIC?!?” wrote a user named Krista.
Kaitlyn shared a similar sentiment, writing, “[Your] first day on earth did not need to involve her.”
KC Jackson joked, “Bro graduated from the Urkel school of dating.” Bass replied, “Take that back.”
Via TikTok direct message, Bass told BroBible that he has not heard from his date since.
“I reached out a couple days later and I got no response,” he said.
He said he had no idea that the video would go viral, but doesn’t mind because he can laugh at himself and hoped to make others laugh, too.
“I’m never that nervous or awkward on a first date. I was just struck by her beauty, mixed with clumsy mishap after mishap I simply could not recover,” he said. “I like to believe I’m pretty funny and my humor does very well, but once I saw she wasn’t being very receptive, I used it as a defense mechanism to calm myself down and just make it through the date in one piece.”
While Bass may not have found love that night, the experience wasn’t a loss.
“At least I have a funny story to tell for the rest of my life,” he said.