I received a message from a reader of The Piercing Bible who wanted me to evaluate the placement of his apadravya piercing:

Hello, I recently purchased a copy of The Piercing Bible and I have to say that you have done an amazing job with it. I have read it from cover to cover and it has helped me immensely in choosing what kid of modifications I want, and how I want them done. Also, your body is an amazing work of art.

I'm way off topic but I felt like that had to be said. I recently had an apadravya done to celebrate my 18th birthday. I was wondering I could send you a picture and get your opinion on it. I would greatly appreciate it. Here are pictures of my piercing. I can't think you enough for looking at these for me. I have to request that you be as critical as possible.

The extra long bar was put in for healing purposes. I am having a smaller bar put in in a week. It will fit snug on the top and bottom like it's supposed to. Thank you for your time.

My reply:

The placement looks fine. I probably wouldn't have put in a bar that was quite that long unless you needed that length to accommodate your maximum erect size. Though I've found that for most men, the apadravya doesn't usually require as much excess length as the ampallang often does. Based on the usual proportions, I'd be surprised if that bar wasn't significantly longer than it needed to be. And, when jewelry is overly large, it does represent extra risk for trauma, which is not helpful to the healing process.

If your piercing is still new, you want to make sure the shorter barbell doesn't pinch when you're erect--not until you're fully healed should it fit that way.

Depending on your preferences, I would have discussed with you the concept of placing it a little further back toward the corona on the top. That would allow it to have a little bit of a backward tilt to it, which can make entry for penetration easier. When the bar is so vertical, it can make penetration a little more challenging, depending on the fit between you and your partner. This doesn't make your piercing "wrong" or "poorly placed" or "incorrectly placed," however. There are options on where it can go. I just like to talk to my clients about the pros and cons when I'm marking.

Also, I wanted to remind you (and my readers) that an apadravya is a combination of a Prince Albert (on the bottom) and a Reverse Prince Albert (on the top); once you are healed, you may want to experiment with different pieces of jewelry in the lower and upper portions of the piercing channel. The illustration from my book is attached in an effort to help clarify this. Naturally, the natural channel of the uretha is what allows jewelry to come out the tip of the penis. FYI-the additional piercing in the rim of the glans that is pictured here is a dydoe piercing.

He wrote a response:

Thank you very much for your feedback. I completely agree with you, the bar is extremely long. It gets snagged a lot and it's very annoying. I was informed that I could have my glans pierced further back, but after seeing pictures I decided to have it done vertically. The slight tilt didn't appeal to me very much.