As others have said, flirting is a “natural”, risk-free way to show sexual interest in someone.

I’m autistic and basically can’t do it. So I just go up to people I find attractive, and say “hey I think you’re cute, I’d like to get to know you better, would you also like that?” or some variation of this. Most of the time it doesn’t work, but quite evidently by what is lying next to me, it works sometimes.

Being yourself is not about not doing the things that are required to reach your goals. You still need to do them, i.e. express sexual interest. What is meant is that you need to figure out a way to do the things that are necessary to reach your goal in a way that you can actually learn to do.