My Aspergers story - Please give advice.

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First time joining, stumbled across by accident. Not even sure if this is the right thread.

Okay so here's the deal. I was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome when I was 12 in 7th grade. I suffered more than social disorders then from what I gather from the average aspergers syndrome effected kid. I was brutally mugged that year and left on a sidewalk in the middle of the school. The people who where responsible where apprehended. My parents took advantage of the situation and quickly had me labeled with the disorder. I am not proud of it and I hide it. I am socially awkward in public, and I can't ever sustain a conversation with anything else but my interests, which is Space Exploration, Weather, Politics, history, Science, ect. I am generally considered one of the smartest kids of the school, but like I said I can never talk to people for long periods of time, and never able to sustain eye-contact. This is especially a problem with girls, as they might think I'm staring at something else on them, like their breasts when in truth I just can't maintain eye contact. I got quickly labeled as a creep once because of those two issues, and my babbling on my favorite subjects of the world. Ever since the Space Shuttle program ended in July 2011, my interests have really died down and I hardly mention it anymore.

I'm asking for advice, how do I sustain a conversation? How can I maintain eye-contact with friends?

Kyle

When Im talking to people I tend to look at their forehead, nose, or to the right or left of their eyes.

there are a few questions that one can ask to keep a conversation going, like:

what kind of music do you like?

what's your favorite movie and why?

do you follow any sports? if so, who's your favorite team?

do you have any pets?

I had to force myself to do eye contact. All I can say is, just stare right into their pupils, no matter how much you don't want to, and as you get practice, you may be able to pull it off. When I look into someone's eyes I usually look right into their pupils, but the thing is, I still don't do nearly as much eye contact as I should. I just forget I need to, and have a bunch of conversations without looking at someone.

It really doesn't help that my most recent girlfriend (now ex) was totally blind, so for obvious reasons there was no point having eye contact with her during conversation. I spent a ton of time around her, she was the person I interacted the most with for a while, so I got worse with my eye contact, since I got more used to being able to face any direction and look any way I wanted to during conversations.

At the same time, I don't really care whether people want eye contact or not. I really just don't care about the social role of it. I try to give people eye contact at the start of a conversation, when meeting them, during important parts of conversation, and so on, but I still spend much of most of my conversations not looking at someone.

there are lots of other questions to keep a conversation going. try the book, "the fine art of small talk" by debra fine.