My roommate is driving me crazy between his OCD and his stubborn adherence to nutritionally bad food.

Tonight I tried to re-heat a little bit of pasta in the microwave and like he always does when I am in the kitchen, he had to come out and hover behind me.  He thought the pasta would be too dry so he suggested a small jar of ragout sauce.  I opened it, it was brown, and expired 2 years ago.  He then dug out another jat of sauce that turned out to be pizza sauce and tasted awful. Then he wanted me to eat the pasta off one of these special fancy pasta bowls which he insists must be had-washed.  I said no, that a regular dinner plate would be fine. I finally just dumped my entire plate into the garbage disposal and walked back to my room.  I will go to the grocery store and buy some dinner later.  I basically only eat meat once or twice a week.  I am very nutitionally conscious.  My roommate eats 6 strips of bacon for breakfast, some more bacon on a club sandwich with potato chips for lunch, fried chicken for dinner wiht mashed potatoes, gravy and corn with butter melted in it…just grease all day long.  The smell nauseates me. And he really does not like anybody besides himself cooking in Mommy's kitchen.  Every time I cook or even heat up a can of soup he is there hovering behind me with "suggestions".

He is obsessed with eating the foods his dead mother used to make when he was little.  He is now 57 and his mother died last year and lived here with him til she died.  Both his parents, incidentally, died of strokes and heart problems and my roommate himself has had cancer, a stroke, a heart attack, chronic hypertension and AIDS.

This was actually her house, he moved in to take care of her.  Now she is gone and he is obsessed with keeping the entire house just like she had it, down to the smallest details.  He also has obsessions with things like how muchh seaweed is floating on the canal back out, he talks about it 100 times a day.  He is obsessed about ants, and believes the smallest few drops of water on a washed utensil or a countertop will attract hordes of ants, so everything has to be dried stone dry.  All dishes have to be washed before putting them in the dishwasher.  (Why bother with the dishwasher then?) 

He likes to sleep under a mound of blankets his mother owned so to do this the air conditioning must run at 65 degrees all day and the electric bill is enormous, with the AC and also all these little decorative lamps he keeps lit all over the house even in the daytime, "because my mother liked them and they're pretty."  Meanwhile I am freezing and expected to pay half of this bloated electric bill. 

He believes Kleenex will clog the toilet so he fills up the bathroom wastepaper can with these nasty wet used Kleenexes, which to me is unsanitary, especially as we are both HIV+.   There is no rational reason why a square of Kleenez would clog a toilet anymore than a strip of toilet paper.  He just believes it and will brook no denial nor change his behavior.

I am also expected to pay for half the groceries and he buys popsicles, cakes, pies, sodas, potato chips, greasy meat, butter and other junk I refuse to eat.  So I have started to just provide my own food and let him buy his own.  He is currently laid off and collecting food stamps and unemployment and yet goes to the store and spends $25 or $30 a day on groceries.  He won't economize with generic products.

The hallways closet door must be left ajar.  If I walk by and close it, he will open it again by the next time I pass by that door.  Why?  He couldn't tell you himself but it "bothers" him for it to be closed all the way. 

Everything seems to come down either to how his mother did and kept things, or it is how he likes it.  I have explained to him that he needs to budget now, he can't always buy everything he likes.  He won't listen. 

With him laid off and in my hair all day at home (I work at home) I am going nuts with his neurotic beliefs, rituals and behaviors.

He refuses therapy, feels there is nothing wrong with him.  Complete denial.