Cold Air Simile
"Didn't they understand that when they walked through a pocket of cold air like a ghost?"
The author compares the cold air on a Chicago winter day to the ghost of one of the young men that has died from AIDS. The air is not caused by a meteorological event but by the space left that the young man had previously occupied, and its chill is caused by the chill of his dead body. Whenever ghosts appear there is said to be a sudden chill and this is what the author is comparing the sudden cold air of winter to.
Jesse Helms Metaphor
Teddy says that "We all have a little Jesse Helms on our shoulder" and this is a metaphor for our universal human tendency to judge others. Jesse Helms was an anti-homosexuality politician who was vehemently opposed to women's rights, civil rights and gay rights, but his predominant bias was against the gay community. Teddy's observation concedes that everyone at the time felt that in some way that AIDS was a judgement on a person's sex life or morality, even those who were not judgmental per se.
Graveyard Metaphor
"How could she explain to them that this city was a graveyard?"
Fiona is again struggling with people's perceptions of the AIDS crisis being somewhere other than Chicago. She compares the city to a graveyard because so many have died, and it is no longer "just" a city for the living. There are as many dead in the community as alive.
Idiocy of Men Metaphor
"Why couldn't you ever go after your life without tripping over some idiot's d*ck?"
The metaphor Fiona is using is comparing men's tendency to start wars and violence to men in a locker room competing over who has the largest penis. She is angry because of all the plans that perfectly normal people have made, that have been sidelined or disrupted by grandiose politicians or violent terrorists posturing and trying to get the upper hand, and this is why she uses the metaphor in this way.
Competitive Grieving Simile
"There was this grieving like competition".
Fiona compares the people gathered outside of the hospital rooms where their friends are dying to a competitive grieving event, because in many cases, the public display of grief is not about the person who is dying at all, but instead about the person who is grieving. They want to show that they are the most important person in the dying man's life, and therefore they want to show that their grief is more deeply felt than everyone else's as well. She believes that the competitive nature of the grieving is a tool that people use when they need to feel like they matter to someone, even if they actually don't.
