I had been in Ireland for six months, living mostly in Dublin, and I knew the unspoken rules of the Irish pub well enough to know that I was breaking most of them. I was a woman and I was alone. I was drinking stout instead of lager, a pint instead of a half pint. I was trying to pay for my own drink and, since there was no real lounge in this pub, I had no choice but to sit with the men. These were things a woman, traditionally, should not do, but I had a strong sense that in Ireland most rules had been created precisely that they might be broken…