Windows Live Messenger “screen name” = email?

I just got Windows Live Messenger, and so far as can tell, your “screen name”, the thing you give out to people to contact you through WLM, is your email address. I get plenty of spam as it is, hundreds of spam messages every week. At the same time, I’d like to be able to say, o the internet, “Hey, you can contact me through WLM, I’m “FakeName”.

Further, I don’t really want to give my email address out to specific people in order for them to contact me through WLM.

I suspect I’m missing the forest while trying to find a tree or something like that.