Many people are sort of leery of making a big production over being gay, and they prefer not to draw more attention to themselves than they have to in order to communicate the message. Therefore, let's discuss offhand ways of coming out, here, and let's see which methods seem to be more popular. The easiest one, for me, is to talk about my past partners. I say something like, "My ex was really ridiculously excited about the first iPhones. He waited in line for hours to get one. I would never do that. I prefer to wait until things like that are selling cheap and second-hand. I'm not made of money, you know?" Another is to make a reference to how trends in the gay community sometimes reflect those in the general populace. For instance, "Gay guys are doing something like that 'curve appreciation thing,' too, and they're saying that 'real men' fit this sort of image of a 'husky' fellow with super-broad shoulders and a lot of body-hair. I'm not sure why some gay guys now are suddenly into oversized guys. I never cared about looks in the first place, and this silly trend seems to be just more superficiality." The thing is, I really find it very easy to "come out" in this kind of way. I rarely actually say that I am gay, unless I have one of those rare occasions that I feel like prancing out in my daisy dukes, which is sort of like painting yourself with rainbow tattoos, but when I'm putting the fact that I am gay into a context like that, I'm not so much at the center of attention. We're not talking about the fact that I am gay, but I am a gay guy trying to relate on an unrelated subject. I do this fairly often in various contexts, and I occasionally get a comment like, "Wait, your ex? You mean, a guy is...?" and I will say, dryly, "Well, yes." So let's sort of focus on how you can approach outing yourself in a more oblique sort of manner.
Those ideas sound like effective ways to implicitly out yourself. Unfortunately, I have no ex-boyfriends - that would require having had a boyfriend in the first place, and I've yet to be anything other than single. I'm also pretty out of touch with gay male culture. In my circles, this topic mostly comes up when my straight guy friends ask for my opinion of women that they do or don't find attractive. I've not worked up the guts to do it yet, but that seems like the most ... ahem ... straightforward way for me to come out. It's not like I haven't been dropping hints already. "Actually, in all seriousness, I hadn't noticed her sizable boobs and extended derriere," and responses along that line. With my past experience in religious fundamentalism, of which all of my good friends are aware, I'm uncomfortable with statements like the example above, because I'm afraid it could come across as a holier-than-thou "look at me, I'm not lusting after women like you are." Of course, the quickest way to fix that would be to shift the response to "Actually, in all seriousness, I don't notice attractive women because I've always been wired to notice good-looking dudes." This, I realize, is a pretty boring, standard means of coming out, but it does fit the criterion of being a revelation provided in the context of a discussion where the it's relevant to the topic. With that said, I wait with bated breath (and a subscription to this thread by way of my reply) to see what better options are out there...
You could just try for wry comments like "Ah, maybe a little broader across the shoulder and a bit taller." They can acknowledge that or not, and if they choose to, then they asked for it. By then, if someone asks the silly question, "Are you gay?" you're justified in saying "Man, I'm flamin'!"
"What'd you do on the weekend?" "Went to <name of well-known gay bar> with some friends" You could also just throw around some gay community/subcommunity specific words like bear, chaser, twink, the name of a gay only dating app/website that you use. The people around you will either know what they are and make the connection or won't know what they are and ask you for more information.
My way is to mention my involvements with LGBT stuff. So, do you have plans for tomorrow? and I'll talk about the group meetings I go to on campus and the organization whose events I sometimes attend/help at. I don't even say, "You know, the LGBT group," but just dropping the name makes it obvious. People either wonder and don't ask, or wonder and ask. Both are fine by me. I'm not doing it to deliberately out myself, but it does come up in conversation regularly enough. It also helps that I'm very vocal about my support for LGBT causes. That has led at least one person asking me what I was. ^^
