On Killing Your Darlings

Sometimes, in the revision process, a character becomes beside the point. In Shiva's Arms, I had to pull the character of Sam, Alice and Ram's son, back to a younger version of himself. In early drafts he was old enough for a scene like this:
Damn! Once the thought of the girl entered his mind, there was no way to get her out of his head. He had no choice but to pull up the memory of night they met--- the smell of the college bar, the musk of girls in tiny skirts, the ferment of beer...