Another Courtship-Impaired BL'er with HFA
What I have found to work best for me (as a heterosexual drug nerd with high functioning autism) has been to identify the parts of society most likely to have the highest population densities of autistic drug nerds (for example, a symposium on medicinal chemistry or the pharmacology subsection of a public library) ,go there, and begin approaching and talking (as one would be expected to in a social purlieus) with people. Because of the similar interests and so forth, one shouldn't find conversation to be as cumbersome and abortive as in random places (like in a retail store, waiting in line at a Starbucks, sitting at the bus stop, etc), but I would still take caution to commence interactions first with pleasantries and platitudes and take things from there.
As both a bona fide nerd with a veritable mélange of nerdy interests and also someone squarely on the autism spectrum, I should warn you not to get your hopes too high or set your expectations too unrealistic, here. Any progress that can be made in the autist's social skills and intercommunicative competency is at most only small progress.You'll never be able to spontaneously build a rapport or effortlessly sustain a tactful, smooth, and graceful conversation with a neurotypical person. You should accept that you're simply on a different perceptual wavelength, so to say, than are non-autists. Sooner than later, one experiences an unbearable ennui after having the disquieting epiphany that anyone and everyone with which one can flirt or fraternise is of an uncomfortably similar background and personality to oneself. Eventually, one feels himself in the company of facsimiles rather than friends.
Eventually, one develops a hankering for something more, something less bromidic or homogeneous or familiar—one begins to long for the company of people with whom one is not academically connected or neurodevelopmentally similar. One starts to yearn for a diversity of friendships, or at least begins to covet the abilities needed to build such a diversity of friendships. I am at this latter stage of my life. If there are further stages in the lifelong process of intellectual apart from what I've heretofore experienced, then I'll be the first to publicly pronounce it.
But so far in my life, each stage seems to be just another form of sublimating my desire to be normal and have more than just two equally-undesirable social styles: "active but odd" or "passive but aloof" (as
this pithy article illustrates).
