I'm 26, never had a gf, never kissed a girl, obviously a virgin. Been in a depressed funk for awhile now and am trying to get my life back on track and part of that is becoming a sexual person. That's a very hard thing for me as I have pretty much zero experience as such. I don't have a hard time talking to people, but the idea of flirting or essentially revealing that i want to be more than friends at some implicit level scares the crap out of me.

Basically I:

A) Don't have the basic skills (no idea how to kiss a woman or how to have sex beyond what I can gather from watching others/porn).

B) Am terrified of expressing myself as a sexual person with sexual interest. I feel the world will laugh at me: I'm behind in terms of career (pretty much nothing going there, but I'm working at it) and don't have any friends, though I do very well with people when I talk to them and actually go out to little things regularly. Problem is the people I talk to just kind of walk out of my life at the end of the conversation, man or woman.

I've read the books, know the lingo, but have never done an approach. What do I do here? How do I come to terms with this? Do I just pretend to be confident and happy and experienced and hope someone likes that, and then blunder my way through the physical stuff?