one of those gigs

I have been really busy this past week, trying to get everything done before I leave for Arizona on Friday. But today, I took time out to play a gig, mostly because it paid $100 for a few hours of essentially just sight-reading some pieces and playing a concert with a community orchestra.
Things started getting interesting when we all realized that the guy who had organized that gig was planning for four people, three violin and viola cases, assorted coats, and a string bass to fit in a car that was on the small end of midsized. We ended up having to stick the scroll (the top part, the curly thing on the end) out of the window maybe a foot, and then two people squished into chairs behind the bass and the other two people sat up front. The bass player was understandably worried about hitting something and breaking the top of his bass off, and I realized about halfway there that, in my prime position squished right up on the edge of the instrument, that if anything hit the bass head-on I would probably be killed or severely injured. I got all freaked out by the prospect of such an untimely and unfortunate death that I spent the rest of the trip with my arms crossed in front of my chest in the vague hope that, if we did hit something, perhaps I would only crush my forearms.
As we were leaving the school, the gig-setter-upper was also being vague about when we were supposed to be there. He kept saying it didn't matter, that rehearsal would just happen when we got there, which seemed fairly unlikely. And yes, we were about 45 minutes late, which pissed the conductor off, and then there was no music for me, which was problematic, and we missed the run-through of the hardest piece... Also, something that the gig boy had insinuated would be a short, easy piece ended up being an entire symphony, which I had luckily played before. The concert was scary, sightreading Prokofiev (which is hard) and trying to follow a conductor who was not, in all honesty, very good. At least I got my money, which will be at least partly used for a nice dinner in Tucson. My neck is all sore tonight, presumably from bass-induced tension, and I'm just glad it's all over. Now all I have left this week is two concerts, a zine to make about transgressively gendered musicians, and a suitcase to pack.